The New Civic–Sacred: Designing for Life and Death in the Modern Metropolis

Design Issues ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-41
Author(s):  
Karla Rothstein

The environmental and social imperatives of twenty-first century cities require a rethinking of mortuary practices. Cemeteries across the globe are nearing capacity, and the number of deaths annually in the United States is increasing as the post-World War II generation ages. Despite their depletive and harmful environmental effects, casketed burial, cremation, and embalming have informed perceptions and policies, truncating access to alternatives. Although today's increasingly secular urban populations, for whom the health of the planet is paramount, are disconnected from “traditional” funerary rites, the importance of transitional mortal ritual endures. Through two design projects—one in an existing Victorian cemetery in Bristol, England, and the other augmenting iconic public infrastructure in New York City—this article argues for the potential of new disposition methods and enhanced public space. Countering the conventional dissociation of cemeteries from daily life, these new spaces of remembrance connect with the vitality of the city to promote intergenerational associations to family, culture, and environmental stewardship.

1910 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 83-101
Author(s):  
John Nicum

During the first century of the occupation of Manhattan Island by Europeans we find there two settlements of Lutherans, the one of an earlier, the other of a later date. The earlier settlement was that of Dutch Lutherans, who came over from Holland with the first settlers, whilst some seventy-five years later German Lutherans began to arrive, at first in smaller and then in ever increasing numbers until many thousands had settled mainly along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. It is now two hundred years ago that the first colony of German Lutherans arrived in the harbor of New York. They were the Palatinates who, in 1707, because of continued political and religious disturbances, had with their pastor, the Rev. Josua von Kocherthal, left the fatherland, and found a new home near where the city of Newburgh now stands. It goes without saying, that though most of them settled along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers, yet many of them remained on the Island of Manhattan. Whilst the immigration of Lutherans from Holland, after the middle of the eighteenth century practically ceased, that of the German Lutherans increased, and the Lutheran Church on Manhattan which at first was Dutch afterwards became German. And this first German Lutheran Church in the present city of New York had the good fortune to have among its pastors some of the most distinguished men and theologians of the eighteenth century, such as the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in this country, the Rev. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, D.D., and his son, the Rev. Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg, a man of burning patriotism, who in time became speaker of the First and Third Congresses of the United States.


2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (28) ◽  
pp. 151-161
Author(s):  
Jolanta Chwastyk-Kowalczyk

The article discusses occurrences of topics related to Lviv in Polish opinion-forming newspapers in exile in the United States after World War II. The author followed the New Diaryin the years 1971–1999, together with its appendices, Polish Week (1971–1981) and Polish Review (1981–1999), published in New York. These titles had a wide scope of influence. The analysis of the newspapers’ contents revealed that a small, dispersed community from Lviv, who emigrated to the United States and centered around the Lviv Circle, made their works public regularly in the pages of the New Diary. However, compared with the incidence of the same themes in the Polish emigrants’ press in Western Europe during the same period, it was a marginal phenomenon about accidental topics. The texts mainly focused on unmasking the Soviet authorities’ actions to eliminate traces of Polish culture from Lviv, the devastation of the Lviv Eaglets Cemetery. Additionally, they posted pictures of the Poltva, poems devoted to the city, and anniversary reminiscences of the Lviv defense of 1918. Topics related to Lviv abroad were mostly the domain of its former citizens, who had been forced to leave the city without possibility of return (thanks to the provisions of the Yalta Conference)—journalists, academics, and activists in exile, regularly associated with magazines from the British Isles (the White Eagle, News, Polish Diary, and Soldier’s Diary) as well as Culture from Paris.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Yamashita

In the 1970s, Japanese cooks began to appear in the kitchens of nouvelle cuisine chefs in France for further training, with scores more arriving in the next decades. Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Joël Robuchon, and other leading French chefs started visiting Japan to teach, cook, and sample Japanese cuisine, and ten of them eventually opened restaurants there. In the 1980s and 1990s, these chefs' frequent visits to Japan and the steady flow of Japanese stagiaires to French restaurants in Europe and the United States encouraged a series of changes that I am calling the “Japanese turn,” which found chefs at fine-dining establishments in Los Angeles, New York City, and later the San Francisco Bay Area using an ever-widening array of Japanese ingredients, employing Japanese culinary techniques, and adding Japanese dishes to their menus. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the wide acceptance of not only Japanese ingredients and techniques but also concepts like umami (savory tastiness) and shun (seasonality) suggest that Japanese cuisine is now well known to many American chefs.


2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony G Picciano ◽  
Robert V. Steiner

Every child has a right to an education. In the United States, the issue is not necessarily about access to a school but access to a quality education. With strict compulsory education laws, more than 50 million students enrolled in primary and secondary schools, and billions of dollars spent annually on public and private education, American children surely have access to buildings and classrooms. However, because of a complex and competitive system of shared policymaking among national, state, and local governments, not all schools are created equal nor are equal education opportunities available for the poor, minorities, and underprivileged. One manifestation of this inequity is the lack of qualified teachers in many urban and rural schools to teach certain subjects such as science, mathematics, and technology. The purpose of this article is to describe a partnership model between two major institutions (The American Museum of Natural History and The City University of New York) and the program designed to improve the way teachers are trained and children are taught and introduced to the world of science. These two institutions have partnered on various projects over the years to expand educational opportunity especially in the teaching of science. One of the more successful projects is Seminars on Science (SoS), an online teacher education and professional development program, that connects teachers across the United States and around the world to cutting-edge research and provides them with powerful classroom resources. This article provides the institutional perspectives, the challenges and the strategies that fostered this partnership.


1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
George J. Annas ◽  
Frances H. Miller

American culture reflects a paradox: the more openly we discuss death and its inevitability, the more money we spend to postpone and deny it. Sherwin Nuland's book How We Die, a frank description of the way our bodies deteriorate with and without medical intervention, topped the New York Times best seller list in the spring of 1994. At the same time, Jack Kevorkian, arguably the world 's best known physician, was being acquitted of violating Michigan 's law against assisted suicide, while a Michigan commission was debating legislative changes to permit physicians to help their terminally ill patients kill themselves. Despite such open discussion of death and expansion of the informed consent doctrine, U.S. medical expenditures at the end of life remain astronomically high. Most of this elevated spending is attributable to new medical technology.In J.G. Ballard 's Empire of the Sun, the United States, British and Japanese cultures are contrasted through the eyes of a young British boy incarcerated by the Japanese army in China during World War II.


Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Vladimir Pechatnov

Based on previously unearthed documents from the Russia’s State Historical Archive and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire the article explores the history of the first Russian Orthodox parish in New York City and construction of Saint-Nickolas Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the city. It was a protracted and complicated interagency process that involved Russian Orthodox mission in the United States, Russia’s Foreign Ministry and its missions in the United States, the Holy Governing Synod, Russia’s Ministry of Finance and the State Council. The principal actors were the bishops Nicholas (Ziorov) and especially Tikhon (Bellavin), Ober-Prosecutor of the Holy Governing Synod Konstantine Pobedonostsev and Reverend Alexander Khotovitsky. This case study of the Cathedral history reveals an interaction of ecclesiastical and civil authorities in which private and civic initiative was combined with strict bureaucratic rules and procedures.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-246
Author(s):  
Tobias Brinkmann

This article examines the impact of transit migration from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires on Berlin and Hamburg between 1880 and 1914. Both cities experienced massive growth during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, and both served as major points of passage for Eastern Europeans travelling to (and returning from) the United States. The rising migration from Eastern Europe through Central and Western European cities after 1880 coincided with the need to find adequate solutions to accommodate a rapidly growing number of commuters. The article demonstrates that the isolation of transmigrants in Berlin, Hamburg (and New York) during the 1890s was only partly related to containing contagious disease and ‘undesirable’ migrants. Isolating transmigrants was also a pragmatic response to the increasing pressure on the urban traffic infrastructure.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Franchi

Public Space is a photographic and video project examining the relationship between the public sphere and private corporations. The project explores various sites throughout Toronto and New York that are on private property but have been built with the intention of allowing the general public to have unrestricted access to these areas. These spaces are referred to as Privately Owned Public Space or “POPS”. The goal of the project is to question and document, through photographic and video practice, these spaces within the urban environment and to challenge others to consider whether these spaces are effective in achieving their intended use and if they are truly accessible to the general public. Loss of the public space is an ongoing issue that faces cities and developers often receive concessions to bylaw zoning requirements in exchange for incorporating POPS. This thesis project is a personal exploration of how these spaces are changing the urban environments of North American cities in the twenty first century.


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