acceptance and love

Towers of ilium has come to terms with the personal automobile. It is still the defining invention of human development and modern civilization. It is here to stay as long as there is civilization. We will not abandon our cars and live in high rises. Jesus built my car, as the song goes.

Meanwhile the boom in speculative luxury housing might be reaching a climax in urban areas. Boston is building a little of that, but not as much as Miami, New York, and London. We'll keep this monitored with the usual casual indifference that distinguishes the fine journalism of towers of ilium.

where were you during the revolution?

Somewhere in China a solar panel factory is on double shifts. It's probably not pleasant work, and we can be fairly certain that environmental concerns and employee happiness aren't the top priority. But it's happening, and the visual consequences are proliferating in many parts of the United States.

Homo consumeris is a fickle creature--hard to predict, easy to manipulate, and eager to punish. But when it comes to residential solar power, towers of ilium is willing to make a prediction nearly devoid of cynicism. And although the consequences are yet to be fully realized and explained, we can see a million wheels turning in a million heads: if you can put these on your roof and you can plug your car into an electrical outlet....

Poor buggy whip makers.

rip van winkle early morning edition

Ah, where did the months go? Towers of ilium had a staff shake-up due to a loss of readers to print media. The world turns strangely these days.

The decay of American infrastructure is not a pretty thing. A Roman aqueduct makes great postcard material, but the dilapidated bridges, roads, and rail facilities in this country do not make for much of a tourist attraction. Lest we fall into the "Make America Great Again" trap we must consider that political will functions based on voter priorities. Maintenance does not impress on the campaign trail.

a mild success of urban non-planning

That the Lawn on D is the only successful green space in the Fort Point area speaks volumes about the development trajectory of that particular piece of Boston. Its existence is apparently accidental and precarious. Towers of ilium dispatched a reliable team of reporters to the neighborhood make an objective survey of the architecture. The overall impression is not positive; Windswept streets and uninspiring buildings compete with feeble clusters of commercial activity. Advertisements for "Loft Living" can't hide the paucity of amenities and character. Wastebaskets are hide to find. Dogs on leashes look sad and lost--uncertain if they are allowed to mark their territory of it is expressly prohibited by zoning regulations. Street crossings for pedestrians develop into mini-dramas that would make Samuel Beckett lose hope in humanity. Cars race by, searching in vain for the vast parking lots that once made up the district.

In twenty years, things may have improve somewhat, but the austerity and crassness of the infrastructure and architecture is depressing. Take us home to Boylston Street, or even Government Center.

where many martyrs fell

Towers of ilium was wrong about the boom in domestic oil and gas production that started about a decade ago. On a side note, Gerald Ford deserves some measure of credit for encouraging research in fracking--more gummint meddling in the glorious free market.

The oil endgame is probably a few decades off--at which point more than 20 million American homes will have rooftop solar. 

things that get forgotten

Towers of ilium frequently suffers from amnesia. In this post we will try to remember some important things about architecture and building science.

-Durability is an illusion
-Flow-through assemblies are okay if you have exterior insulation and rainscreen cladding
-Double vapor barriers in wall cladding is okay for certain panelized systems
-Roxul is still too expensive
-OSB can act as a vapor barrier
-Continuous insulation will soon be mandatory for all cold climate buildings
-Glass is a lie

pictures of 1980's nyc from the gothamist

Photojournalism, like all forms of eyewitness testimony, cannot be trusted. New York City, and Boston for that matter, were not nice places in the 1980's. Urban conditions were romantically bad, and we're fortunate that many photos were taken during this era. They give the impression of a disaster, which conceals the fact that cities were still engines of prosperity and represented significant concentrations of wealth.  This condition has expanded markedly since then, to the point where inequality is masked by the visual improvements in such places.