Last Wednesday I went to the talk about architecture in Ithaca. It was a fascinating talk that brought up some points I hadn’t ever realized or thought about. Perhaps the most general and glaring point is all the development that’s currently going on around Ithaca. There are a ton of diverse projects. It’s a good reminder that there’s a lot more to Ithaca than just Cornell. One of the first project we talked about involved the new apartment on College ave. One point was brought up about the horrendous electrical wiring/power line management. I wonder if this is a problem elsewhere. It seems that the main concern is management and development. Since buildings have to be a certain distance from power lines, it makes it difficult to build taller buildings which fully utilize the lot space. I wonder what it would take to bury the power lines and if the main barrier to doing this is cost.

Anyways on the topic of architecture, here’s an interesting question: If you had to design your own house such that no house has ever existed like it before and you had unlimited space and resources, would you be able to do it? How would ensure your house’s uniqueness? I think this would be cool to do. I’m not sure exactly what I’d design but I like the idea of playing around with interior slopes, integrating groundwork/external natural elements within the interior (e.g. having like a full indoor forest with the unlimited space would be cool but you’d want something on a smaller scale and more manageable). It might also be interesting to play around with indoor decks/platforms/alcoves. I watched a ted talk a while back along these lines about designing houses made entirely out of bamboo. It’s worth checking out if you get a chance.

Another thing that was mentioned during the talk was the time it takes to get things approved by the city. In general there seems to be a disconnect between the city code and the architect/designers work. It was mentioned how hard it is to parse the specifications within the code for things like distinguishing between a cellar and a basement. It feels like architects themselves should have a more direct say in revising the law. Certainly you don’t want only architects designing the architecture law but there’s probably a way to strike a middle ground. After all there are good things about the policies, but there are also bad things. It’s just a matter of teasing out which is which.