Ivan Himanen is an architect, urbanist, and researcher based in New York City.
Perhaps it begins with the genealogy of the American landscape… the fact that roughly one third of the country’s population streams over beige prairies and terra cotta mesas towards the two coasts, dropping off windward mountain faces to the edge of the oceans… the fact that those 100,000,000 people have formed some of the largest […]
Look what happens. I told Sasha he could help to renovate the house. From one immigrant to another, I told him. Let us make it like old times in Sankt Peterburg Arkhitekturnyi Universitet, our nicknames for professors, the long nights in winter and in spring, the Noviye Godyi and Easters, sunlight in the skylight at […]
Several years ago, for Rod Knox’s seminar on daydreaming, I wrote a short story called I&M— a dialogue between two unnammed characters, about philosophical questions, inspired by Before Sunrise. This is how it started. I: So, what’s new with you? M: Many things. Actually, it’s lucky I bumped into you, because I’ve been thinking about […]
This is an excerpt from Physics and Beyond, by Werner Heisenberg, published 1971, from a chapter called Science and Religion, of a debate between Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Paul Dirac, titans of 20th century science. …mathematics is a mental game that we can play or not play as we choose. Religion, on the other […]
On Thanksgiving Day this year, I experienced ye olde Hudson River in a new light, a quite simple light, one that tickled my explorerbone because it concerns the intersection of geography and civil engineering, literally in fact. We think of our world in diagrams, in images and figures that are easy to conjure, communicate, and […]
Bullet thoughts on a broad topic: X
There is a phenomenon in linguistics that I cannot remember the name of. It happens when a young, contemporary word slowly expands its usage and meaning until it replaces its predecessor. In other words, an offspring overthrows its parent. It isn’t universally true, but it is deliciously borne of the dynamics of culture, making it […]
It is strange how we live in a world that is built upon automation and repeated forms, and yet architecture is by and large a practice of customization. Every client demands something unique, and architects demand it of themselves. From an industrial, economic, and in some ways environmental point of view, architecture’s chief goal should […]
Yes, change is good. But wait, no, standards are better. No hang on, we have to let things evolve. On the other hand, consistency and tradition are better values…. Where between these two poles does architecture situate itself? The answer should be: right in the goddamn middle. There should be no noticeable creep to one side or […]
I started with the solstice but I had to measure it out. Not with carbon hair, nor melting ice, nor echoes from a siren’s mouth. So I hung Noah’s pants at dawn up on the cliffs facing south, And set the sun only once they had dried out.