Blog « CLOUD Disassembly RPI

Blog

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Olympic Ticketing

The availability and number of actual tickets sold has fluctuated throughout the years. The number of tickets available seems to have a somewhat close correlation to the size of the hosting country. For example the 2 games in the US, Los Angeles and Atlanta, have high number of tickets compared to the games before and after them such as South Korea, Spain, Australia, and Greece. The Beijing Olympics seem to be a bit of an anomaly with the extremely high population of China but still less tickets than the Atlanta games in the US. As an overall trend the winter Olympics are always smaller than the summer most likely due to the lesser popularity of them. Based on this information, sizes for future Olympic stadiums could be sized relatively based on the size of the population of the host country.

http://www.olympic.org/Documents/IOC_Marketing/OLYMPIC_MARKETING_FACT_FILE_2011.pdf

Posted in Blog, Media / Technology, RESEARCH | Post your Thoughts →

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Media Perception of Women in the Olympics (1932 and 2008)

The largely conservative news outlets during the 1932 Olympics in Las Angeles tended to have bias against women as serious athletes. Their role as wives and mothers rather then athletes were more significant. News of women’s scores, times, and wins were less distributed then the men’s. When talking about the athletes, women’s names were preceded by Miss or Mrs. suggesting that their marital status was more important then their individual accomplishments. This is contrasted with news coverage of the 2008 Olympic games. Generally speaking, women are treated equally to men; Olympic attention is given to those that preform well.

Here, the conception of women as housewives and delicate is an apparatus of the era’s news coverage. It seems to be a idealistic and nostalgic view for pre-1920’s roles of women. The apparatus is thus less concerned with news coverage and reporting and more focused on a view of society.

In the case of the difference in coverage between 1932 and 2008, the change in social norms (or perhaps more accurately, the perception of social norms) does not seem to reflect physical changes in people (particularly women) but rather societal changes.

So, how did these changes, which are so evident (see image), come about?

Posted in Blog, Media / Technology | Post your Thoughts →

Friday, September 16th, 2011

During and After Pictures from the 1936 Berlin Olympics

The link is to a site that has many images of the infrastructure built for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The images show the conditions of the structures as they existed for the games and as they exist now. The stadium has gone through a few phases of redevelopment, but most of the buildings only exist for the guided tour. The bell from the original bell tower is now displayed in the Maifield and the Swastika was removed from the tower during the stadium’s denazification that occurred during its British occupation. Other links from the main page show the changes in other cities before and after the Nazi party took power. After WWI, Germany wanted to have a renaissance to reunite their country and looked to the Greeks for inspiration causing a lot of the buildings to have an ancient Greek influence.

Posted in Blog, During the Event, Post-Event Conditions | Post your Thoughts →

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Happy Magic Water Park

As opposed to cities like Berlin and Sarajevo in previous posts, Beijing seems to have lost no momentum following their Olympic games in 2008. Instead of letting their facilities lay to waste, several have been repurposed – and not always in conventional ways. For example, the Water Cube, designed by PTW Architects with Arup, has now been transformed into the “Happy Magic Water Park,” which opened on August 8th 2011. Now the cube is generating great revenue for the city, coming in at the number 2 tourist destination after the Great Wall. Impressive.

According to the renovations led by Forrec (Toronto-based design firm), the ETFE material for the facade continues to play an important role in daylighting; illuminating the interior with diffuse light during the day while radiating back out to the city at night.

Read more at Inhabitat: Happy Magic Water Park

Posted in Blog, Post-Event Conditions | Post your Thoughts →

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Vancouver’s ‘Poverty Olympics’

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/08/vancouvers-poverty-olympi_n_453593.html

This is something interesting to see, the 2010 winter games in the Canadian government back in 2006 estimated that the cost of the games to the tax payers would only be C$2.5 billion. In reality the games spent closer to C$6billion and now many citizens are now homeless. Though in retrospective the amount spent on infrastructure is the least in recent years, China spent $40 billion, the US spent US$4.2 billion, Australia spent US$2 billion and Greece spent US$12 billion.

Posted in Blog, Project 2, Project 5, PROJECTS | Post your Thoughts →

Friday, September 16th, 2011

From Olympic Grounds to Battlefield

After the games move out of the respective cities, their Olympic Villages get transformed into parks, residential complexes, or become abandoned entirely. Sarajevo stands out, however, primarily due to the political and social strife rampant in the country, especially the Bosnian civil war. Their Olympic grounds have turned into battlefields, and their Olympic village now has become the city’s deadliest killing ground due to its proximity to the airport. The luge runs are a Serb staging area where artillery and sniper fire rain down upon the city.

Branko Mikulic, president of the organizing committee for the 1984 Games, admits: “When I took the leading role for the Olympics, I thought it would help Sarajevo develop its beauty and grace, and bring it into the 21st century. Now we know that will not happen. Sarajevo is a ruin, a concentration camp. And the world is not even acting to help. I cannot believe it—any of it.”

Posted in Blog, Post-Event Conditions | Post your Thoughts →

Friday, September 16th, 2011

geo-blocking

Beijing Olympics Broadcasting Report

Lots of good stats on viewership and the media methods at the Beijing Olympics.

Most interesting is the fact that YouTube was used to broadcast to countries who didn’t have a major service provider. People from other countries were blocked from those channels. This could mean in the future that information could be tied to specific locations in space.

Posted in Blog, Media / Technology | Post your Thoughts →

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Nail Houses

A Nail House in Beijing, In the midst of a Shopping Mall Construction, 2007

Nail Houses are becoming a common sighting in the news about new construction in China. The term was coined in reference to the fact that these houses are like a “stubborn nail” which is difficult to remove; a nuisance essentially. In Beijing in 2004, when confronted with plans for a shopping mall, which would displace 281 families, Wu Ping was the only resident to reject the offers the city gave for a new house or compensation. She became a media frenzy and spoke out against the policies surrounding new construction which is becoming all too common in many residential areas in China.

Considering the amounts of opposition to demolition in China:

How is the government selecting these sites?
Is there a better way to gauge the criteria in how site selection will affect the city?
Is this merely a product of high-density living/lack of open space?

Nail House in Shanghai's Jewish Quarter, Part of Expo Demolition 2010

Fabric of the Jewish Quarter previously

Posted in Blog | Post your Thoughts →

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Technology Potentials

Infographic which may be interesting when thinking about a timeline for the projects:

Posted in Blog, Media / Technology | Post your Thoughts →

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Rio de Janeiro – new methods of transportation in anticipation of the Olympic Games

http://sustainablecities.dk/en/city-projects/cases/rio-de-janeiro-the-gondola-opens-up-the-favela

In terms of public transportation, Rio de Janeiro is facing the same problems as many other Latin-American metropolises. The city is served by a comprehensive public transit system, including a modern metro, suburban trains and a large bus fleet. But transportation services are sometimes unable to keep pace with rampant urbanization, especially when it comes to the favelas. These informal settlements are constructed on steep areas where conventional modes of public transportation cannot be considered. As 20% of Rio’s population is living in a favela, a large part of the population has to do without any public transportation.

Posted in Blog, Pre-Event Urban Planning | Post your Thoughts →