Below is an excerpt from the introductory section of a white paper I am developing. Human society in the 21st century will be impacted by global forces such as pandemics, climate change-driven weather events, and geopolitical conflict. As witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, governments could improve their “disaster preparedness” particularly by assessing and utilizing existing […]
Author: the.vonz.himanen
Ivan Himanen is an architect, urbanist, and researcher based in New York City.
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Are Movies Getting Longer?
Do you ever find yourself sitting through yet another big-studio blockbuster, wondering when it’s going to end? I have been feeling this feeling a lot lately. Is the 2+ hour running time a standard since movies immemorial, or have they been slowly getting longer? Naturally, I had to do some data analysis to find out. […]
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Urban-Rural Legends
I. The Myth It goes back before COVID forced city dwellers to seek greener pastures. It goes back before white flight. It goes back to the founding of the United States, and the ideological struggle at its heart. It even goes as far back as the evolution of man, from hunter to farmer. It’s a […]
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Pieces of Lexington
Architecture is a slow profession. Fundamentally, since shelter for human life is best built to last, even the simplest single-family dwelling is complex enough to require the coordinated effort of multiple people, resources from far and wide, and months of planning and building. Any attempt to hasten this inevitably compromises some step in the process: […]
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Aspiration Man X
If you haven’t ever had a video game phase, you may find the first half of this essay weedy. If you have had a video game phase but did not come of age in the 1990s, you may find the second half of this essay obvious. If you had a video game phase when you […]
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Making cities by people
Inspired by a prompt from the Jan Gehl Institute, Charlotte asked me about cities on one of our morning walks. This is what I had to say. CG: How do you make cities for people? IH: Well, first of all, I don’t think it’s enough to say ‘make cities for people.’ You have to make […]
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Nuclear Lake
It’s a miracle of psycho-evolution and a sobering truth of human squeamishness that everyone– from hobos to kings, from soldiers to bakers– has their safe mental crevice to crawl into when they defecate. Some remember their parents’ kitchen, some summon the the picture of a deer drinking from a brook, others hum the Bottleneck Blues… Me, […]
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Music and work
I found this piece in an old notebook, dated November 13, 2013. Some like to listen to music at work, some don’t.I had a revelation about what music does in the context of work– I wonder if this is a common opinion– which I think is a more productive analysis.Instead of it being so black […]
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Once a week
I, enjoying a recent wealth of free time, had spent the first three months of 2020 volunteering and engaging with organizations in my community. CSA (distributing vegetables, graphic designing newsletters), Community Board meetings (asking questions about a proposed development, witnessing deliberations on zoning), Habitat for Humanity (building houses, sprucing up schools), Brooklyn Bridge Park (cleaning […]
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Karmic Economics
I: Modernity In his book Debt: The First 5000 Years, David Graeber sums up capitalism with a powerful picture which has stuck in my mind. He sets the stage in the late Middle Ages, which ended roughly around 1450 AD, during which the seeds for our modern financial world order were sown. In that era, […]