Model Warfare

[Image: A carved sandstone model of the incredible walled fortress-city of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, found where else but within the walled fortress-city of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan; photo by BLDGBLOG].

In his new book Oblique Drawing, architectural historian Massimo Scolari refers in a footnote to a story that I have to assume is familiar to many readers, but one that was new to me, connecting architectural models to acts of espionage.

"A significant example [of this connection] is reported by Vasari in the case of the siege of Florence of 1529," Scolari explains.

During the night, Tribolo and an assistant secretly built an accurate relief model in cork, several meters wide, of the city and its fortifications. It was smuggled out of the besieged city in various pieces concealed inside bales of wool. This allowed the pope, aided by Baldassarre Peruzzi, to direct operations from a distance.

"Although the relief was made in the style of a pictorial view," Scolari adds, "it was considered evidence of espionage."

This cork model, meanwhile, conjures images from some as-yet-unwritten novel in which small, seemingly discontinuous models of a city are made in cork and then set floating down the river out of town; guards seeing the models float past simply assume some toymaker's cart has overturned upstream or that a careless woodshop has tossed its inventory into the river.

But these models are acts of war, to be assembled into a complete model later, and the spatial details they reveal are the vulnerabilities of the city.

[Image: Model of Jaisalmer; photo by BLDGBLOG].

Elsewhere, Scolari refers to other connections between spatial representations of the city and the possible military implications of those representations, once they reach their intended audience. He describes, for instance, "painter-spies who depicted the enemy's fortresses," under the guise of a leisurely aesthetic pursuit, and even Goethe once being forced to watched powerlessly as "local authorities" in Malcesine, Italy, "tore up the drawing he had made for his own pleasure of an abandoned castle." After all, they reasoned, it might have been a fortifications study, or what we might call structural espionage disguised as sketching.

Among many things here, what's interesting about all this—aside from the dizzying variety of possibilities that arise when thinking about a kind of alternative history of the architectural model as a tool for heists, espionage, assassination, and urban warfare—is that this feared dual-use of architectural images is still alive and well today. We need look no further, for instance, than to often-illegitimate photography bans inside government buildings (or subways), or limits on cameras inside retail stores, or, in the case of my trip to India earlier this year from which the above photos come, a ban on taking photographs from a boat of the Mumbai harbor and even a nationwide ban on aerial photography that was only lifted back in 2004.

In all cases, images depicting architecture are seen not as representationally innocent parts of architectural history but, we might say, as warfare by other means. Indeed, one could easily imagine an entire wing of a spy museum somewhere consisting of nothing but declassified architectural models made with whatever raw materials were available at hand, assembled for no other purpose than to undercut the very spaces they aim to depict.

"If I Didn't Dress Up, I would Be Cold"

This gorgeous, statuesque women was walking down Madison when I caught up with her just as she was crossing the street. The minute I announced that I photograph stylish women her friend replied, " She is always the best dressed, she has great style." I asked her if she dresses this beautifully everyday and she answered, " I am dressed down today," and joked "If I didn't dress up, I would be cold." I handed her my card and continued on my merry, photo hunting way. I hope that she will email me very soon.

Holiday Cheer

I have been seeing so many festively dressed Advanced Stylers around town over the last few days. This delightful woman was rushing down Madison Ave yesterday when I asked if I could take her photo. Although we didn't get a chance to converse much, her wonderful smile will stay in my memory for a long time.

Monuments of Misdirection

[Image: Monumentalizing mismeasurement in Ecuador; photoby Meridith Kohut for the New York Times, courtesy of the New York Times].

At the end of her forthcoming book The Measure of Manhattan, author Marguerite Holloway refers to the impossibility of precisely locating, using today's GPS technology, the bolt left behind by surveyor John Randel, her book's subject, back in 1811 as he staked out Manhattan's future grid.

Being on the road right now, I don't have my copy of Holloway's book with me, so I won't be able to quote her book directly; instead, I will rely on the New York Times for some brief context. Randel spent "10 years staking out and marking the intersections from First Street to 155th Street with 1,549 three-foot-high marble monuments and, when the ground was too rocky, with 98 iron bolts secured by lead. (He had to resurvey 30 miles after vandals or disgruntled property owners removed the markers.)"

Manhattan at that time was thus, however briefly, a kind of game board or field of acupuncture points—a ghost grid, in advance of the city it surveyed—with thousands of monuments and bolts pinning down the spots where streets and intersections would soon appear.

Holloway's concluding point, however, is that even something as real and tangible as Randel's iron bolts, anchored by lead into solid bedrock, nonetheless remain extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to map with objective accuracy. The earth slips outside of our satellites and survey systems, even if only by a fraction of a centimeter, always just beyond the promise of perfect measuring.

[Image: The grid arrives before the streets it surveys].

I thought of this recently when two quick stories popped up on my radar:

1) Down in Ecuador, a country named after the Equator that passes through it, a monument dividing the northern and southern hemispheres is, as it happens, in the wrong place:

Those who visit the Middle of the World, a government-owned park that pays tribute to the Equator, are not drawn by the trinket shops or cafes offering roasted guinea pig. They want to stand on a yellow line painted on the ground here that is said to be precisely at Earth’s midpoint—0 degrees latitude, 0 minutes, 0 seconds.

Except that it is not.

The Equator is hundreds of feet to the north.

According to one person there, the ground conditions at the actual Equator are not stable enough to hold a monument nor to welcome the huge crowds that regularly arrive to see it; according to someone else, however, the monument's original builders "believed they were placing the monument in the correct spot, except that measuring techniques at the time were not as accurate as they are today, so they were off by a few hundred feet."

This is why a private counter-monument has been built, supposedly on the real Equator, in a place called Inti-ñan: "just a two-minute drive from the Middle of the World, at a small, privately owned site called Inti-ñan, there is a sign on a gate saying that its location is 'calculated with GPS' to be exactly at 0 latitude." However, as we glimpsed with the help of Marguerite Holloway, commercially available GPS is not as precise as most people believe it to be, and it is subject to its own asynchronies and drifts. (For those of you interested in the political implications of inaccurate mapping technologies, amongst other things, be sure to keep a look out for Laura Kurgan's Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics this coming spring).

[Image: From Laura Kurgan's You Are Here: Information Drift, 1994].

As such, we read, even nominally accurate GPS readings at Inti-ñan actually "varied depending on how devices were calibrated. That, [a local guide] said, was why, on this occasion, a visitor's GPS held over the line of bricks that Inti-ñan uses to mark its claim to equatorial exactitude showed that it was still several yards to the south of where it ought to be."

Passing their GPS receivers over the monument like dowsing rods or geodetic ghost detectors, these tourists of the world-system would thus realize, again and again, that they both were and were not standing in the wrong place, both arriving at and never quite reaching their destination.

2) The south pole is also adrift, surrounded by rings of obsolete monuments. Indeed, "in Antarctica, 'X' never really marks the spot."

In a recent piece for the Guardian, Frances Stonor Saunders explains that "the south pole doesn't stay still."

It drifts at a rate of about 10 metres a year, and because of the Earth's axial tilt... it also wobbles. Every New Year's Day, the pole's marker is moved to indicate its new position, though in the time it takes to drive the marker into the ice-pack the pole has already shifted slightly.

In fact, Saunders points out, "There are other poles on Antarctica, and they too move around, pursued by scientists with their markers."

There's the pole of inaccessibility, for the greatest distance from a coast; the cold pole, for the most frigid place; the pole of variability, for the spot with the greatest range in atmospheric pressure. The most (upwardly) mobile is the south magnetic pole, which has moved over 500 miles north-west since its discovery by members of Shackleton's Nimrod expedition more than a century ago.

All these lines and tropics, equators and poles, passing back and forth over the fallible monuments that mark them, as entire planet-spanning systems of measurement and location miss their marks by inches, feet, kilometers, degrees, momentarily accurate but almost always wrong.

(Antarctica story spotted via @nicolatwilley).

A Very Busy Week

I went over to Ilona's to check out her new feather gloves and chat about a big shoot we are working on over the weekend. There is so much happening in the world of Advanced Style this week including shoots for an incredible brand, working on The Advanced Style Coloring Book, interviews with the ladies, and we are getting ready to submit our documentary to festivals. I promise I will hit the streets in between all the wonderful chaos!!!

Joyce and Debra

Everyday I have the great privilege to meet and interact with the most incredible people. It's been so wonderful to watch  the "Advanced Style Ladies' become friends, and witness how they support and encourage each other's creativity.

Although Joyce and Debra have very different approaches to style, they have very similar approaches to lifestyle. I asked Joyce and Debra to share a few words on why they appreciate each other's style.

Joyce on Debra:
I appreciate her excitement with color. The different pieces she makes, they are so very her, you don't see them anywhere. She is unique in her style. It's fun and entertaining and everybody loves it. I love it.

Debra on Joyce:
I appreciate her elegance and her clarity about who she is. Joyce is a very dynamic, yet tender person. She is so sharp and smart in both her personality and style decisions. 

Jumping For Joy

Liz Friedman Jumping For Joy

Yesterday I met up with my good friend Fanny Karst and her new pal Liz Friedman. We first met  in London a few years ago and discovered that we share a great appreciation for older people inspired by our wonderful grandmothers. Fanny designs a gorgeous collection of made to measure printed dresses called The Old Ladies Rebellion . She is in New York until the end of the month showing her latest designs (by special appointment) and finding inspiration along the way. It was great to meet Fanny's new friend and muse, Liz, who was a great sport when I asked if she would jump in the air for a quick street style snap!