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INFRASTRUCTURE:

-treating the car as architecture: using it architecturally to enhance public space, etc.
see: Christian Santos GHSD thesis, spring 2007: "forming a central shopping arena, a hybrid of city street, parking, and retail that is variable in its programming, able to be closed off for special exhibitions and designed to promote multi-level viewing that intensifies the ground. Central to my goals here is the reincorporation of the car and the car arrival as a method of intensifying public activity."

-In Japan, vertical parking structures that mechanically stack the cars one on top of the other, and revolve the cars within for access. Looks a lot like a normal building, suggesting links between architecture and infrastructure. what if large public spaces are delineated by vertical parking structures?









THE AMERICAN DREAM:

-article in Praxis magazine questioning what happens when the condition of access to landownership (the basic ideal embodying the American idea of class mobility) is replaced by the condition of land scarcity (a product of land planning and policy of FHA and Home Owners Loan Corp, and the deliberate building restrictions put in place to protect and increase property values, shortage through exclusion). How is this affecting the perception of American liberties? How can architecture address this challenge?

-ideas: by expanding artificially suburban-like real estate within the urban condition /
by reproducing the symbology of suburban domesticity within urban condition


FRANCHISED / BRANDED HOUSING
-investigate the possibilities for franchised or syndicated housing, and attendant architecture and branding...
-or, just architectural branding in general, recall Learning from Las Vegas
-Wes Jones "This End UP: Package Housing", 2001: modular, premanufactured branded housing modules, i.e. IKEA module, DELL module...

-from Hong Kong I had some experience producing a Branded facade for a development company that is planning on building a number of different artists live/work studios throughout Hong Kong. K was their corporate logo...or gas stations, (totally neglected architecturally, see also infrastructure link)

DISMANTLING THE IMAGE OF GREEN :
-investigate how green / sustainability is used as a luxury marketing strategy.
-could go in two, or both directions:
1. luxury franchised green (ex: eco-hotel)
2. affordable prefab green (ex: multi-family or suburban housing)

-http://news.cnet.com/Entrepreneur-opening-green-luxury-resorts/2100-11392_3-6171935.html
Nappa Valley Gaia resort:
eco-terrorism in Vail:Project in Seville, Santiago Cirugeda, 2005, made with recycled building components, and other materials recycled from other uses, such as formwork, etc.: