Future Primitive
April 4, 6:00 pm, Carpenter Hall 102
Mike continued on to describe some trips that he has taken. He goes to Israel a lot because his wife lives there. One particular thing that Mike loves is the open air markets. They are outside but if it rained there was shade. The food comes directly from farmers and it’s not over controlled. Down in Los Angeles, California, Mike has a ton of favorite restaurants. All of which are from strip malls. He questioned why strip malls? Because they are open to first generation families, several real cultures and real food. The strip malls may be ugly but they contain so much culture.
He jumped back to cities and natural life being connected. “Living City: interconnecting natural life and urban city”. He then showed on the slideshow Capitol Hill in Seattle. An area in Seattle that I personally have been to numerous times. I could picture it in my head right then and there. But it wasn’t the Capitol Hill that I knew that he had shown. It was literally a living city; one street would be filled with buildings and the street right next to it was full of trees and plants, then the street next to it buildings again, and the street next to that nature again. And repeated this throughout Capitol Hill. He questioned the room full of students and just in general: “Can you ever get the city so clean you can actually have salmon spawn?” He and us all knew that answer was clear that, that was impossible. But it was more of the concept behind the question, how clean can we actually get the city. He continued to show more and more unrealistic pictures of combining nature and the city. It was so interesting to consider and it made me want the cities to look like how he made them.
Mike then talked about natural hybrids. I was confused at first but he gave a variety of examples such as how in today’s world we can take things out of their natural environment and create the same environment with technology and they can live just perfect. Another was the example of the Tower of David in Venezuela. 45 story tower that is completely unfinished with missing windows, walls, and elevators and yet homeless people have seen to taken over the building and have been living in the city but without any electricity, etc for them so in a way Mike considers it a natural hybrid.
One of Mike’s most recent projects is actually with Habitat for Humanity. Something I can easily relate to considering me and my classmates had spent several weeks creating possible home plans for them. He praised double stud walls (which I now know a lot of knowledge about from earlier in the year) and said that they will not go away! They also were going to put a bladder type thing under the house, as a rain water system for flushing which I found interesting. As well as they would have fewer windows to make sure air wouldn’t leak out.
Overall I enjoyed Mike’s “Future Primitive” speech extremely interesting. There were times when I was a little confused about some of his contrasting phrases but he did a great job of explaining everything very clearly. He was a great speaker and I’m interested to hear more from him in the future.
NOTES AND SKETCHES :
April 4, 6:00 pm, Carpenter Hall 102
When first reading about the quick notes of what the Mike Jobes lecture was going to be about I was unclear of what he would speak about. The first minute of his presentation, made it clear, he would talk about sustainability. His first line was that he felt, sustainability, has been hijacked. I at the beginning of the presentation disagreed but by the end it made a lot more sense what he meant. He started off by putting up a slide show of phrases. Phrases that we don’t ever see or hear; they were contrasting. The phrases consisted of today’s world, like cities, and urban combined with words like wild, forest and ancient.
Mike made it clear that he was a huge fan of dense urban areas as well as natural life. He questioned if those could ever fit together and if so he would call it urban wild; one of the first phrases Mike put up at the beginning. I was quickly confused because I thought we already had places like that. I first thought of Seattle. Such a big famous city, but is surrounded by parks and mountains and tons of greens. But Mike meant literally putting the two right next to each, not just next to each but intertwined. Mike continued on to describe some trips that he has taken. He goes to Israel a lot because his wife lives there. One particular thing that Mike loves is the open air markets. They are outside but if it rained there was shade. The food comes directly from farmers and it’s not over controlled. Down in Los Angeles, California, Mike has a ton of favorite restaurants. All of which are from strip malls. He questioned why strip malls? Because they are open to first generation families, several real cultures and real food. The strip malls may be ugly but they contain so much culture.
He jumped back to cities and natural life being connected. “Living City: interconnecting natural life and urban city”. He then showed on the slideshow Capitol Hill in Seattle. An area in Seattle that I personally have been to numerous times. I could picture it in my head right then and there. But it wasn’t the Capitol Hill that I knew that he had shown. It was literally a living city; one street would be filled with buildings and the street right next to it was full of trees and plants, then the street next to it buildings again, and the street next to that nature again. And repeated this throughout Capitol Hill. He questioned the room full of students and just in general: “Can you ever get the city so clean you can actually have salmon spawn?” He and us all knew that answer was clear that, that was impossible. But it was more of the concept behind the question, how clean can we actually get the city. He continued to show more and more unrealistic pictures of combining nature and the city. It was so interesting to consider and it made me want the cities to look like how he made them.
Mike then talked about natural hybrids. I was confused at first but he gave a variety of examples such as how in today’s world we can take things out of their natural environment and create the same environment with technology and they can live just perfect. Another was the example of the Tower of David in Venezuela. 45 story tower that is completely unfinished with missing windows, walls, and elevators and yet homeless people have seen to taken over the building and have been living in the city but without any electricity, etc for them so in a way Mike considers it a natural hybrid.
One of Mike’s most recent projects is actually with Habitat for Humanity. Something I can easily relate to considering me and my classmates had spent several weeks creating possible home plans for them. He praised double stud walls (which I now know a lot of knowledge about from earlier in the year) and said that they will not go away! They also were going to put a bladder type thing under the house, as a rain water system for flushing which I found interesting. As well as they would have fewer windows to make sure air wouldn’t leak out.
Overall I enjoyed Mike’s “Future Primitive” speech extremely interesting. There were times when I was a little confused about some of his contrasting phrases but he did a great job of explaining everything very clearly. He was a great speaker and I’m interested to hear more from him in the future.
NOTES AND SKETCHES :
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