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The Rise of New Fonts

October 22, 2023 by suzannesmom

A collection of fonts from Nap Time Alternative.

When I was a kid and my father was a reporter for a Rockland County paper called the Journal News, he took me once to see how type was laid for printing. The newspaper was still using metal type. The typesetter explained how he had to think “mirror image” for the words to come out right when printed. I have been interested ever since.

The days of metal type are gone except among artisans, but the topic of type is still interesting to me. Sara Friedman at Hustle has a story on some new fonts and the struggle of independent “foundries” to get visibility.

“Ten years ago, Cindy Thomason was walking down the stairs at home when she heard her phone ring.  On the other end was an executive from Warner Bros. Entertainment, calling to let her know that a font she designed would be featured in the upcoming blockbuster adaptation of the Great Gatsby.

“ ‘I had to sit down,’ Thomason says. ‘I’m just somebody who decided to design a font on a whim.’

“A nurse in suburban Virginia, Thomason began tinkering with fonts in her free time using a software package she bought for $100. She’d listed the font, which she named Grandhappy, on an online marketplace called MyFonts. 

“That’s where producers from Warner Bros. found it, and bought it to use as Jay Gatsby’s handwriting in the 2013 film.

It should have been a dream come true, a big break for a hobbyist font designer. But Thomason’s cut for her design’s feature-film cameo was a whopping $12 — not even enough to recoup what she paid for her design software. 

“Thomason’s story isn’t an anomaly. … With 4.5k independent artists selling on MyFonts today, many struggle to attract customers and to make a living in an oversaturated market.  

“It’s only getting harder, as designers must compete with and abide by the terms of one company that’s approaching behemoth status: Monotype. The company owns not only many of the world’s most popular fonts but also exchanges like MyFonts where font designers bring their work to market. 

“The industry is inching toward a monopoly, and it’s leaving independent designers with fewer places to go. …

“Monotype arrived at the end of the 19th century. The company was founded in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, whose monotype machine invention allowed for increased speed and efficiency when producing type. Over the next few decades, Monotype, by then with branches in the US and the UK, developed popular typefaces such as Gill Sans, Perpetua, and Times New Roman. 

“In the last half of the 20th century … the mechanized process of Monotype’s signature machine faded out, replaced by phototypesetting and then digital typesetting, bringing fonts to screens. …

“Monotype [went] public with stock-ticker name TYPE in 2007. The retooled Monotype saw its annual revenues climb from $107m in 2010 to $247m in 2018 and became a powerhouse. …

“Monotype has claimed its purchases made life better for customers, who only have to navigate a licensing agreement from one company to access a bevy of fonts. But one font designer believed the acquisition of Hoefler & Co. felt like ‘a kraken eating up the industry.’

“MyFonts is known in the industry for being the gold standard for audience reach. Ellen Luff, who runs Ellen Luff Type Foundry and whose Larken font (starting at $42) is a MyFonts bestseller, told the Hustle there’s little choice but to use the site.

“ ‘When you’re independent, you’ve got your freedom, which is great. But then you have to balance being overlooked.’ …

“The power of Monotype and MyFonts isn’t the only obstacle for independents. Luff has spotted her fonts being used by corporations such as Apple and NASA, sometimes without her permission.  Luff says half of her clients come from retrospective licensing agreements made after she’s found her designs being used illegally. But going up against large companies is no easy feat for independent designers who have no legal teams to support them in negotiations.”

More at the Hustle, here. No paywall. Interesting pictures.

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Remember the Fireflies

October 21, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: National Park Service.
Mid-May to mid-June, synchronous fireflies light up the forest at dusk in Congaree National Park, South Carolina.

I used to love seeing fireflies as a kid, and now they are rare where I live. It makes me sad. What’s it all about? What is to be done?

Dino Grandoni at the Washington Post has this to say about the dangers to fireflies and possible ways to help bring them back.

“As a younger man, Joe Cicero saw ‘thousands and thousands of them.’ Swarms of fireflies put on a soundless fireworks show for him every summer in southern Arizona. The sight of the fireflies flashing in unison was so mysterious and mesmerizing that the entomologist made the study of the flickering insects his life’s work.

“Four decades later, Cicero, now retired, still goes back to those oak woodlands. Today, though, they’re mostly dark. The fireflies have been decimated, Cicero lamented. ‘Down to just a trivial few relative to the big population they had back then.’

“For many Americans, their otherworldly glow signals the start of summer. But across the country, many of these harbingers of summer may be blinking out of existence. What was once a series of tales from old-timers about the decline of fireflies from the days of their youth is coalescing into a disturbing scientific truth.

“Nearly 1 in 3 firefly species in the United States and Canada may be threatened with extinction, firefly experts estimate in a recent comprehensive assessment. … New research is shedding light on how these ethereal insects are struggling to thrive in the brightly lit world we have built around them.

“And the problem is bigger than a single type of bug. … In so many spots where scientists look, insects of all sorts are vanishing, … leading to fears of a potential-though-still hotly debated ‘bugpocalypse,’ which could unravel food webs for birds and other insect-eating animals and cause calamity for farmers who need pollinators to grow crops.

“ ‘I know a lot of people who hate insects. I’ve never met a single person who didn’t like fireflies,” said Sara Lewis, a Tufts University biologist and author of Silent Sparks: The Wondrous World of Fireflies. …

“To understand the threats to fireflies, start underground. Fireflies in the United States spend the vast majority of their lives in their larval state, roaming the dirt to consume snails, worms and other soft-bodied grub several times their size. In contrast to their gentle summertime image, baby fireflies are vicious predators.

“But much of the swampy soil young fireflies need to thrive is increasingly being bulldozed for golf courses, suburban subdivisions and other types of development, making habitat loss a top threat. …

“ ‘These wetlands only occur right along the beach along the Mid-Atlantic,’ said Christopher Heckscher, an environmental scientist at Delaware State. … In Arizona, the Southwest synchronous firefly that Cicero studies is being trampled by different threats. Cattle and all-terrain vehicles in Coronado National Forest are stomping out its riverside habitat, he said. …

“When the time is right in the spring, juvenile fireflies seek a spot to pupate. Much like how a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, a young firefly rearranges its body to turn into an adult. Then they take flight.

“The adults live for only a few weeks — with one thing on their minds. Fireflies flicker at each other to find their mates. …

“Males of certain species work together to woo mates by synchronizing their pulses. Other varieties are more ruthless, imitating the flashes of smaller fireflies to lure them in — and eat them. There are more than 2,000 species of fireflies globally, each doing a different dance.

“Even in the best conditions, males drifting in the air struggle to find females on the ground. ‘Mating success rate in darkness is not especially high,’ said Avalon Owens, a research fellow at Harvard. …

“Increasingly, we’re the ones making it harder. The artificial light we pour into the night is interrupting these bioluminescent courtships.

“To test the impact of light pollution, Owens set up a mating arena on her porch in her home outside Boston in 2020 during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. …

“In a study published last year, Owens and Lewis found exposing a semi-nocturnal firefly species called Photinus obscurellus to a bright light on the porch completely prevented it from mating. Out in the wild, the [researchers] found males of a related species, P. greeni, preferred LEDs meant to imitate females that were bathed in darkness.

“Brightening the night not only makes it harder for fireflies to see each other, it may also trick them into thinking it is daytime, Owens said. ‘It erases their habitat,’ she added. …

“Not every type of firefly is in peril. Some are actually thriving in our well-lit world.

“The big dipper firefly, named for the swooping arc it draws in the sky, evolved to come out at dusk and does not seem to mind modern streetlights. In their field experiments, Owens and Lewis found artificial lighting had little impact on the big dipper’s mating. Plenty can be found in well-lit corners of Central Park in New York.

“For many fireflies, there is a painful lack of data on even baseline populations. While some species remain abundant, overall, we risk the loss of firefly biodiversity. …

“While reversing climate change and other environmental threats is monumentally difficult, saving fireflies from light pollution is relatively easy. ‘You literally can just turn off the light, and the threat is gone,’ said Candace Fallon, a senior conservation biologist with the Xerces Society, a nonprofit conservation group pressing the federal government to extend endangered-species protections to fireflies. …

“For now, firefly aficionados are trying to inspire the next generation. Nearly 30,000 people flock to the Great Smoky Mountains each year to watch the park’s fireflies light up in sync. In Arizona, Cicero stages similar nightwatch parties for the few synchronous fireflies that remain there.”

More at the Post, here.

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New Needs, New Home Design

October 20, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Ann Nisbet Studio designed the house above to make it dementia- and age-friendly. In the kitchen, “there are large letterbox-type slots in the drawers and cupboards to allow someone with dementia to see that there are cups, plates, cutlery and food inside,” Homes and Interiors Scotland reports.

When I was at the Fed, I attended a couple Harvard conferences on housing for the aging. I learned about something called “universal design” and thought how sensible it would be if architects would always ensure that housing features worked for people at any stage of life. Why go to the expense and disruption of putting in wider doorways, higher toilet seats, shower grab bars, ramps, and the like down the road?

In today’s article, architects considered these issues, even taking into account the possibility of someone developing dementia.

Caroline Ednie  writes at Homes and Interiors Scotland, “ ‘We lost all our belongings in the fire and were left homeless,’ recalls Kathy Li, an architect who teaches at Glasgow School of Art. ‘It was pretty traumatic. But after the initial shock wore off, we realized that what was important to us wasn’t necessarily the house itself but its location. It’s close to a beautiful reservoir where you can swim or fish, and forests that are perfect for mountain biking or road cycling.’ …

“So Kathy and her partner Richie Elliot decided to stay on the site, initially in a tiny caravan and then in a larger one-bedroom static caravan. ‘It took five years to resolve with the insurance company and we lived in the caravan the entire time,’ recalls Kathy. …

“Eventually, with the situation settled in their favor, she and Richie could begin to think about replacing their home on the site. …

“ ‘We knew we didn’t want lots of little rooms. There are fantastic views right down the valley, and we wanted to take advantage of these and of the woodland at the front. There is a southerly aspect too, which then got us thinking about a low-energy building. It was time to start again. We had this chance to create a house for life.’

“She approached architect Ann Nisbet. …The brief was essentially for an energy-efficient one-bedroom house, flexible enough to suit both living and working, to be constructed using ‘harmless’ materials.

“An unusual but crucial part of the brief was that the house should be dementia- and age-friendly. Kathy’s mother and stepfather both had dementia, and she was keen to explore and incorporate design features that would make it easier for sufferers to live in the house.

In response, Ann Nisbet attended a dementia design course at Stirling University – one of the world’s leading centers for research into the syndrome.

“ ‘We were keen to take this information, which mostly looked at care homes and hospitals, and apply it to a domestic house in a design-led, non-institutional manner,’ the architect explains.

“ ‘Research shows that you read your surroundings differently if you have dementia – for example, two materials of similar monotonal color when read together will be viewed as the same object. We used this knowledge to try to create a navigation system throughout the building, while still keeping the material palette modern and minimal.’

“As a result, the door and window frames, floors, skirtings and walls are all tonally different. As for circulation, all the key areas of the building are visible from the connection lobby, which helps you navigate the floor plan and prevents confusion.

“Thought was given to the kitchen units too: there are large letterbox-type slots in the drawers and cupboards to allow someone with dementia to see that there are cups, plates, cutlery and food inside.

“ ‘Many people have experienced a close friend or family member being diagnosed with dementia, and as we live longer, the number of sufferers is increasing,’ says Fay Goodwin, project architect at Ann Nisbet Studio.

“ ‘This house demonstrates that buildings can and should be designed to enable people with the condition to live longer in their own home and to help them overcome the day-to-day challenges they face.’ “

More at Homes and Interiors Scotland, here. Check out the close-up of the ktichen cabinets with the see-through slots. No paywall.

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Baroque Music for Chickens

October 19, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Bostock Brothers via the Guardian.
A live orchestral performance at the Bostock Brothers’ farm in Hawke’s Bay New Zealand. 

The media really knows how to have fun with a story that is susceptible to wordplay: “New Zealand Symphony Gives World Premiere for Hen-tastic Audience”; “Beethov-hen’s first symphony”; “NZ Symphony Orchestra members perform for thousands”; “im-peck-able.”

Mitchell Hageman at the New Zealand Herald wrote one of several delightful reports you can find online.

“Do chickens like classical music?” Hageman asks. “A Friday morning stunt in Hawke’s Bay proved they most certainly do.Members of the esteemed New Zealand Symphony Orchestra have performed for the likes of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa [and Sir Howard Morrison] but on Friday they faced some of their toughest critics yet: a hungry flock of thousands of Ross chickens.

“It was all part of a collaboration between Bostock Brothers Farm and the NZSO to promote ethical farming.

While slightly hesitant at first, the concert-going [chickens] eventually crowded around the clearly delighted musicians as they performed the world premiere of Chook Symphony No 1, created by composer and sound designer Hamish Oliver.

“ ‘Never could we have imagined producing a composition especially for a flock of chooks, let alone performing for them, but the opportunity was too good to pass up,’ NZSO chief executive Peter Biggs said. ‘The NZSO, like Bostock, is about being world-class and about wellbeing, so the two organizations have combined to create something very different and very new, and we hope it catches on.’

“The orchestra did some research and found instances where chickens responded particularly well to baroque music, which became the basis for the roughly two-minute symphony.

” ‘That’s strings, oboe, bassoon and harpsichord,’ Biggs said.

“After the composition was created, a sound recording was sent so it could be tested on the chickens. ‘They loved it,’ Biggs said. …

“For Bostock Brothers free-range chicken owners Ben and George Bostock, the collaboration was also a way to showcase the organic nature of chicken farming.

“ ‘Chicken farming is incredibly complex and organic farming even more so, and we’re constantly looking for ways to better our practices, ensuring our chickens are happy, healthy and organic,’ Ben Bostock said. ‘[We] know investing in a quality environment for our birds will only further yield quality results.’ …

“[George] said the response so far from the chickens had been great, and they would continue to play classical music in the sheds in future. ‘There’s lots of science that says classical music is really good for animal welfare and the response from our chickens has been really, really good.’ “

More at the Herald, here, at the Guardian, here, and at Symphony.org (the League of American Orchestras), here. No firewalls.

(And speaking of chickens, the Washington Post, here, reports that in Maine, chickens are now permitted as emotional support animals. Not that you asked.)

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An Artist’s Healing Practices

October 18, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Christian Tunge via Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Museum in Norway.
Art by Guadalupe Maravilla: “Embroideries” (2019).

Today’s post is about the artist Guadalupe Maravilla, who has found his own way of using art-making as a healing practice. He is interviewed by Jareh Das at Ocula magazine.

“At the age of eight in 1984, Maravilla fled civil war in El Salvador and arrived in the U.S. undocumented. As an adult, he overcame colon cancer, which led him to learn about global healing practices from cultures as far-reaching as Mayan and Tibetan, alongside standard medical treatments like radiation and chemotherapy.

“Accordingly, his practice brings together often separate knowledge systems, from Western Cartesianism, which sees the mind and the body as separate entities, to non-Western and non-hierarchical approaches that look to nature and natural remedies for healing and tend to view humans as part of a wider cosmological system of equal parts.

“For Maravilla’s first exhibition in Europe, and most comprehensive to date, Sound Botánica at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (18 March–7 August 2022), over 30 works comprising monumental sculptures, drawings, a large-scale mural, and instances of activated sound baths fill the institute, including four major bodies of work: ‘Tripa Chuca’ (2016–2020), ‘Embroideries’ (2019), ‘Disease Throwers’ (2019–ongoing), and ‘Retablos’ (2021), which are devotional [votive] paintings.

“Speaking to the ethics of artistic creation, both the retablos and embroideries were made with collaborators specialized in such forms, co-authored, and fairly compensated — all of which are important to Maravilla and his wider way of working.

“Sound Botánica unfolds over two main gallery spaces with the most captivating and monumental works on view being Disease Thrower #4, #6, #7, #8, #9 (all 2019)—totem-like sculptures that each incorporate a sound gong, assembled from plaster of Paris made by microwaving tissues and plastic that hold together objects collected during the artist’s travels.

“The most recent Disease Thrower #13 (2021) is an astounding work measuring over two meters high made from cast aluminum, moulding vegetation and nature into a constellation of organic forms, some related to the healing and nutrition during Maravilla’s cancer treatment, with notable vegetable forms like squash placed besides real squash at the base of the sculpture.

“In the conversation that follows, Maravilla speaks about forced migration, how trauma manifests in the body and the collective, and disrupting boundaries between art and life, with a practice led by a personal commitment to create a more equal and equitable world.

“Jareh Das: Some of your artworks, such as the series of monumental sculptures ‘Disease Throwers’, are activated through performative gestures. I notice they are made of materials like luffa sponges, anatomical models, gongs, glass bottles, and the invented plaster you create by melting tissues and plastic in a microwave.

“These are hybrid, totem-like sculptures that draw from your experience as a child who migrated undocumented to the U.S. They also bridge Indigenous cultures with ritual, and speak to your cancer treatments, which have included modern medical techniques alongside healing practices.

“How did you bring together these intersecting knowledge systems and develop an art practice centered on collective healing experiences, as the exhibition Sound Botánica at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter demonstrates?

“Guadalupe Maravilla: I am interested in collective healing and the intersections between the Indigenous and the medical, and dismantling systems. My daily experiences are the core of my work. People often wonder how I can be so open about having cancer, being undocumented, and being a child of war.

“I escaped the civil war in the south of El Salvador in 1984 and migrated to the United States, which separated me from my family; this is very common with migration. Somehow, I made it to the United States — I feel very blessed to be in this position, as an artist now exhibiting all over the world.

“I have a teaching position as a professor and all these great things, so I think of how lucky I am, but I also think back to the kids who did not make it, particularly those who crossed with me. On the other hand, because I’m a cancer survivor too, I can make a direct connection between the trauma of the civil war and seeing violence as a kid and the illness that came to inhabit my body.”

More at Ocula, here. No paywall. You can also listen to an interview at PRI’s the World, here.

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The Cougar and the Tribes

October 17, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Mark Elbroch.
Since 2018, the collaborative Olympic Cougar Project has tagged 111 individual pumas, including Charlotte, above.

How many names do you know for the animal in the picture above? I learned four from today’s article.

Stephen Humphries writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “If Kim Sager-Fradkin didn’t have to write a grant proposal, she’d be spending her afternoon on the trail of a killer. 

“The biologist leads a team that’s researching cougars in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. (The big cat is also referred to as a puma or a mountain lion. Not to mention wild cat, or panthera.]) Today, the team is tracking a cougar named James. It suspects he recently hunted an animal in a nearby forest. 

“ ‘Visiting cougar kill sites is really fun and like being sort of a forensic scientist,’ says Ms. Sager-Fradkin … wildlife program manager for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. She’s overseeing the Olympic Cougar Project in partnership with Panthera … and five other Native American tribes. They’ve pooled their talents and resources to help an apex predator that has become effectively imprisoned in the westernmost part of Washington. 

“The region’s cougars are penned inside a geographical island roughly shaped like a square. Three sides are bordered by the ocean and bays. To the south there’s the expansive Columbia River as well as Interstate 5. The barriers on all four sides collectively form a de facto fence. Unable to easily connect with other big cats in the Pacific Northwest, cougars in the Olympic Peninsula are inbreeding. The lack of genetic diversity poses health challenges for them, scientists say. By collecting data on the big cats, the Olympic Cougar Project is bolstering the case for constructing a wildlife overpass over I-5 so that the species is less confined.

“ ‘Humans love wildlife stories, and humans love wildlife movements,’ says biologist Jim Williams, author of Path of the Puma: The Remarkable Resilience of the Mountain Lion. ‘What’s really neat about this project is it’s going to create information that will be translated through story that will keep humans excited and caring about the species.’ …

“When Ms. Sager-Fradkin began working for the tribe in 2007, her primary role was to plan sustainable subsistence hunting and fishing for current and future generations. A year later, she initiated a small-scale study of cougars in the region. She called in cougar expert Mark Elbroch. In 2018, they expanded the scope and scale, incorporating the five other tribes in the region and adopting the Olympic Cougar Project name. 

“ ‘The tribes on the peninsula aren’t always working together on a lot of things,’ says Ms. Sager-Fradkin, adding that there are sometimes disagreements over issues such as hunting jurisdictions. ‘So it’s really amazing that we’ve all come together and are working on a big project like this.’  To get all the partners on board, she had to get them to see the big picture. …

“The cougars are considered an ‘umbrella species’ because so many other creatures in the ecosystem depend on them. ‘Where there are frequent kills, the grass is literally more nutrient rich,’ explains Ms. Sager-Fradkin. …

“It was this fact that helped her persuade the region’s tribes that it was in their common interest to study the feline carnivore. 

“For his part, Dr. Elbroch, director of the puma program at Panthera, adds that Ms. Sager-Fradkin used her natural skill of engaging with people. …

“Working in concert, the Skokomish, Makah, Quinault, Jamestown S’Klallam, and Lower Elwha Klallam tribes have created a grid consisting of 550 cameras. Artificial intelligence catalogs animals photographed in the peninsula – including bobcats, bears, coyotes, deer, and elk – and helps estimate their populations. Research technicians, such as Lower Elwha Klallam tribe member Vanessa Castle, analyze the patterns of 127 individual cougars. There’s also the less glamorous task of analyzing animal scat. 

“ ‘A lot of our ancestral knowledge was lost,’ says Ms. Castle, who praises how Ms. Sager-Fradkin has mentored her and other employees in the project. ‘So we’re having to relearn those things. Like how wildlife all is intertwined with each other. … I had no idea the role that mountain lions played in the system as a whole.’ …

“ ‘The first thing that is needed is to protect the habitat on either side, because you can’t spend all the money on a wildlife bridge and then end up with a Walmart parking lot right on one side,’ says Ms. Sager-Fradkin. 

“The Olympic Cougar Project is not just liberating the big cats, she adds, but also creating a sustainable ecosystem for the tribes for the next seven generations.”

More at the Monitor, here. No paywall. Subscriptions encouraged.

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A Word on Puffins

October 16, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Robert F. Bukaty/ Associated Press.
An Atlantic puffin feeding its chick in a burrow under rocks on Eastern Egg Rock, a small island off mid-coast Maine on Aug. 5.

I learned a few years ago that that adorable seabird called the puffin might be in trouble. Because warming oceans were killing off their food, puffins were producing fewer successful offspring. This year, scientists who monitor the puffins say 2023 was the second consecutive rebound year for fledgling chicks. But it sounds like only a brief reprieve.

Patrick Whittle reports for the Associated Press (AP), “On remote islands off the Maine coast, a unique bird held its own this year in the face of climate change.

“Atlantic puffins — clownish seabirds with colorful bills and waddling gaits — had their second consecutive rebound year for fledgling chicks after suffering a catastrophic 2021, said scientists who monitor the birds. The news flies in the face of environmental trends, as scientists have said warming waters off New England jeopardize the birds because that reduces the kind of fish they need to feed their chicks.

“One fish, though — the sand lance — has remained in abundance this year, allowing puffins to thrive, said Don Lyons, director of conservation science at National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute in Bremen, Maine. He said it’s a sign the impact of climate change on ecosystems is not always as tidy as we think.

“The encouraging news comes as the Audubon Society is celebrating its 50th anniversary of tending to Maine’s puffin colonies, which it restored from just a few dozen pairs. There are now as many as 3,000 birds, and the population is stable, Lyons said. …

“The puffins — also known as ‘clowns of the sea’ or ‘sea parrots’ — nest in burrows and feed their chicks small fish such as herring. Two years ago, the colonies suffered one of their worst years for reproduction in decades due to a lack of those fish. Only about a quarter of the birds were able to raise chicks that summer.

“Audubon and other conservation groups have tied the fish shortage to warming ocean temperatures.

The Gulf of Maine, which has puffin colonies on its islands, is warming faster than most of the world’s oceans. …

“The puffins’ ability to reproduce despite environmental changes speaks to the resiliency of seabirds, said Bill Sydeman, president and chief scientist of the Farallon Institute, a marine preservation organization based in California. However, the long-term dangers posed by climate change — such as fatal heat waves, loss of food, loss of islands to sea level rise, and inability to breed — remain existential threats. …

“ ‘The problem with climate change is these breeding failures and low breeding productivity years are now becoming chronic,’ Sydeman said. ‘There will be fewer young birds in the population that are able to recruit into the breeding population.’

“Maine’s puffins are the only breeding Atlantic puffins in the US Worldwide. The species lives in the North Atlantic from Maine and Canada to Europe. …

“The Maine puffin population once dwindled to only about 70 pairs on tiny Matinicus Rock. Hunters who pursued the birds for their meat and feathers had nearly wiped them out by the early 1900s. Stephen Kress, an Audubon ornithologist, sought to grow puffin colonies starting in the 1970s by relocating chicks from Canada to Eastern Egg Rock, another tiny island. …

“The effects of climate change on seabirds have been a focus of scientific inquiry in recent years. Interest in the subject has accelerated because of die-offs of some of the puffin’s auk family relatives, such as common murres and Cassin’s auklets off the West Coast.

“The challenges faced by seabirds make successful breeding seasons especially important, said P. Dee Boersma, a University of Washington professor of biology and director of the university’s Center for Ecosystem Sentinels.”

My husband saw puffins in Iceland. Have you ever seen them? I think I may have encountered them in a zoo, but unfortunately, that’s it.

More at the Globe, here.

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Ancient Salt-Making Art

October 15, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Oscar Espinosa.
“Jordy Navarra, chef at Toyo Eatery in Manila, Philippines, delicately grates a bit of ‘asin tibuok salt on top of flan de leche ice cream, one of his restaurant’s signature desserts,” reports the Monitor.

When Fuji Xerox brought the Kinoshita family over to Rochester years ago, I spent a lot of time with Yuriko. She had lots of questions about the US but spoke great English and soon was advising other Fuji Xeros families, even making a guide book for the women.

One day Yuriko asked me why Morton Salt said “with iodine” on the label. I told her Americans didn’t get enough of that essential ingredient in their typical diets. But it got me interested in salt.

Oscar Espinosa and Laura Fornell have a report at the Christian Science Monitor on a particularly unusual salt.

“Smoke escapes from a hut in front of the mangroves of Alburquerque, on the Philippine island of Bohol. The pleasant smell of wood, coconut, and salt burning over a slow fire signals that the making of artisanal salt has begun. 

“The process, which had been passed down for generations, results in a product known as asin tibuok. It’s an oval piece of salt compacted into a clay mold that has been partially broken by the intense heat of the fire. Asin tibuok is only produced in this small coastal town of about 11,000 inhabitants. 

“ ‘For the next few days, we’ll be taking turns so that we can watch the fire 24 hours a day,’ says Nestor Manongas, who keeps his eyes on the pile of smoldering wood in the center of the hut. ‘We will have to be pouring seawater [in] to prevent the flame from igniting so that the coconut shells are slowly consumed,’ he says. ‘We can’t get distracted because the process could be ruined.’

“This controlled combustion will result in gasang, a highly salt-concentrated ash, which is then placed in a funnel-shaped tank made of bamboo, where the salt is filtered out of the ash by pouring in more seawater. The resulting brine, called tasik, will be used to cook the asin tibuok pieces.

“Mr. Manongas is one of the last remaining makers of this salt. But thanks to the determination of his family, this old trade, which had fallen into oblivion, has been revived.

“ ‘Against all odds, we kept going because we were determined to give it a new life,’ says Crisologo Manongas, Nestor’s brother. He recalls how, little by little, asin tibuok became known, with university students making it the subject of their research, chefs from Manila discovering it, documentaries being made, and in 2017 a Filipino American entrepreneur based in California deciding to import the product to the United States.” Fascinating pictures at the Monitor, here. No paywall.

For more on the production of salt, particularly the production of sea salt, I turned to Malden Salt, here. Of course, it’s self-promoting, but I think you may learn a few things, as I did. Those of you who are cooking bloggers might be especially interested.

The website says, “Salt production is one of the oldest practices dating as far back to 6,000 BC. Used for various trading and religious offerings, empires such as the ancient Romans actually used salt as a means of commerce, with Rome deriving the word ‘salary’ from salt. … Not only does it enhance flavors within dishes and allows you to season to perfection, it is an element in which the human body can’t live without – sodium. …

“Sea salt is made by seawater from the ocean entering into shallow ground or a ‘salt works’ (man-made salt water pools) where by time the sun will begin to evaporate the water, leaving behind sea salt crystals – this is called solar evaporation.

“Now this is is the easiest and preferred method for warmer climates with a low rainfall and high evaporation rate. But what about the other climates like the UK that aren’t graced with regular hot weather? This is where countries like ourselves get creative with sea salt production.

“[It’s] a naturally occurring element, containing less iodine than table salt and obtains traces of minerals/nutrients including magnesium and potassium. …

“Although it’s safe to say Maldon is sea salt’s biggest fan – there are other salts. Table salt [is] mined from natural salt deposits (older bodies of seawater which have dried long ago) the salt is then processed and manufactured into smaller crystals. Unlike sea salt, which is produced through natural methods, table salt production involves chemicals after being mined. It’s purified and striped of minerals and infused with anti-caking substances.

“Mineral salt [is] similar to table salt, but this type of salt is specifically mined from areas such as Pakistan, near the Himalayas. Did you know it’s colors are influenced from the additional minerals, such as calcium, potassium, and magnesium. You may know this as ‘Rock Salt.’ Here at Maldon we stock Tidman’s Natural Rock Salt. [Unlike] other salts, Tidman’s is also additive free. …

“Since 1882, our world-famous salt flakes have been made with the same traditional artisan methods from the coastal town of Maldon, Essex. Our salt works are run by the fourth generation Osborne family, currently in the hands of Steve Osborn, following his father’s footsteps Clive, grandfather Cyril and great grandfather James.

“Seawater from the the Blackwater Estuary in Maldon is carefully harvested on the spring tide, where there is an appreciated art to the temperature and timing, which is a family secret. Master of salt makers have been hand harvesting the naturally formed pyramid-shaped crystals that have since became Maldon’s signature.

“Maldon Salt is created through an evaporation process. Brine is evaporated in our salt pans over flames to form the unique salt crystals. [Our] salt makers use the same time-honored techniques with skilled hands poised over every batch. You can find out more where Maldon Sea Salt comes from by heading over to our YouTube channel.” Read more here.

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Inuits Take Charge

October 14, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Eldred Allen.
Martin Shiwak, an Inuit, with his hunting rifle in his boat, on Lake Melville, near Rigolet in Nunatsiavut, Canada.

Can you handle another story about how we are finally learning that indigenous ways are better for everyone in a changing climate? I don’t mean we all need to hunt and fish. I’m talking about protecting land and water from resource exploitation.

Ossie Michelin writes at the Guardian that “the environment Inuit have lived in for millennia is changing fast. Canada’s government once ignored Indigenous knowledge of it but now they are jointly creating the Nunatsiavut conservation area. …

“Martin Shiwak accelerates his boat to grab the seal he has shot before the animal sinks out of sight. Shiwak has hunted for years in the waters of Lake Melville, by the Inuit community of Rigolet in Nunatsiavut.

“As he hauls the ringed seal into the vessel, he says he counts himself lucky to have found one so quickly. ‘Sometimes you have to drive around here in the boat nearly all day to find a seal,’ Shiwak says. ‘Nowadays you can’t even afford to – C$60 only gets you five gallons of gas.’

“Nunatsiavut – one of four Inuit homelands in Canada – is where the subarctic becomes the Arctic. An autonomous region of Labrador-Newfoundland province, it is located at the extreme north-east corner of North America.

“Winter temperatures here can average -30C (-22F) with the windchill, as the Labrador current brings Arctic ice floes down along the coast, and a host of marine life from, plankton to polar bears. From November to June, shipping is impossible because sea ice covers the entire 9,320-mile (15,000km) coastline, so all food and supplies must be flown in. In Rigolet, a frozen 1.5kg (3.3lb) chicken will set you back C$25 (£15). Hunting is not just a tradition but a necessity. …

“As a young boy, he learned to hunt and fish with his father and grandfather, who in turn had learned these vital skills from their elders. It is also how Shiwak learned the core Inuit values of taking only what is needed, sharing, sustainability and respect for nature – values he is passing down to his own children. …

“But while traditional knowledge has allowed Inuit to survive in this harsh environment for so long, the climatic conditions they rely on are changing quickly. Since 1950, Nunatsiavut has lost 40 days of ground snow a year. Its sea ice is vanishing faster than anywhere in the Canadian Arctic. …

“There is very little local people can do about that: although the region is roughly the size of the Republic of Ireland, Nunatsiavut’s population is less than 3,000, spread among five small towns. What they can do, however, is work to protect what they have. That’s why Nunatsiavut is partnering with the Canadian government to co-develop the world’s first Inuit Protected Area of this type.

“While there are other Inuit-led marine conservation programs in Canada, this will be the first to bear the title of Inuit Protected Area. … Built on Inuit values and culture, this type of conservation area would allow Indigenous people to continue traditional practices of hunting and fishing.

“That was not always the case. Past conservation policies saw Inuit at best only consulted and at worst completely ignored. Many Inuit hunters and fishers faced fines, had their equipment confiscated and their catches from hunting and fishing taken.

“Despite being granted the power to self-govern in 2005 (after 30 years of negotiations with the Canadian government), Nunatsiavut still lacked the final say over conservation in its waters. Final decisions defaulted to federal or provincial ministers.

“Now, at last, Nunatsiavut can jointly create and co-manage the protected area, based on Inuit priorities, as an equal authority. This will allow Inuit to practice traditional hunting and fishing in the area, while protecting the waters from industry and development.

“ ‘Just because we’re small doesn’t mean we can’t do something,’ says James Goudie, deputy minister of lands and natural resources in the Nunatsiavut government. ‘We can show the world that a small region can protect a massive amount of biodiversity.’

“The Inuit Protected Area would only cover about a third of Nunatsiavut’s nearly 50,000 sq km of offshore waters, but the region is home to important populations of fish such as salmon and Arctic char, the breeding grounds for many migratory birds, and the habitat of Arctic marine mammals including polar bears, beluga whales and seals.

“Establishing a protected area is also a pre-emptive strike against resource exploitation. Significant natural gas deposits have been found offshore along the Labrador shelf, but it has remained largely unexplored because of the ice. As the climate warms, however, the region is becoming more accessible – the Inuit Protected Area would prevent such resource exploration. …

“The borders of the new area have not been finalized, with the feasibility report expected in 2024 or 2025. But [Rodd Laing, Nunatsiavut’s environment director] notes: ‘You don’t need lines on a map to recognize the great work that happened already with Inuit relative to conservation and the management of ecological resources.’

“After all, he says, for countless generations of Inuit, conservation was not an option that could be ignored: it was a way to ensure there would be enough to eat, and enough next time as well.”

More at the Guardian, here. Nice photos. No firewall.

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Reading

October 13, 2023 by suzannesmom

Art: Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Portrait of Jean and Geneviève Caillebotte.

I love it when kids get into the magic of books on their own, whether through pictures (note the dreamy look on the face of Renoir’s little girl, above) or through being read to.

I have heard of people reading to a baby in the womb. We didn’t start that early, but we did start when our kids were babies, and they did the same when they grew up and had children of their own. John still reads to the family even though no one is little now: it’s just a great activity.

My father read to us kids, but his tastes leaned toward the literary. Which often meant depressing stories by Hans Christian Andersen. There was only one of those we liked. It was something about dogs, one of which had “eyes as big as saucers.” He got tired of reading that one. “Don’t you want to try a different one?” he’d ask. But we knew we didn’t like depressing. We did enjoy Kipling’s Just So Stories, which he read with a wonderful variety of dramatic voices. I have a cassette tape of him reading “The Elephant’s Child.”

Now all four grandchildren are good readers, having perhaps picked up the joy their parents and grandparents feel when reading. I don’t like hearing that the 8-year-old’s Spy School book features pills that will explode you if you’re in a situation where you might otherwise be tortured, but she got me to admit I’d probably like reading that book if I were a kid. It hooks you in fast, she reports.

Enjoy the cool work of an artist who is a serious book lover, below.

Photo: Tutt’ Art.
Jonathan Wolstenholme is an British painter and illustrator best known for art inspired by love of old books.

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WordPress Fail

October 13, 2023 by suzannesmom

Dear friends, today I tried to publish from the JetPack app that WordPress is pushing, and the post disappeared from both the phone and the laptop. If I can’t find it, I will post something else after dinner.

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A Photo Roundup

October 12, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photos: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
Above, early fall morning on the Sudbury River.

Leaves are falling like gold coins in New England and it’s getting cool enough for a wool scarf on early morning walks. When I wrap mine tightly around my neck, I think of my friend Pam, who died in April after a bad fall. So many things remind me of her, but the scarf reminds me how she said that if her neck is warm on cold days, she’s OK. I’m the same.

Where I live now, I have a nice view of the Sudbury River from the fitness center treadmill. The photo above cuts out the buildings that I normally see in the view. Isn’t it beautiful?

I take my usual walk past the local golf course, seen in the next picture. Golf makes me think of another friend, one who golfs almost every day in Florida. I sent her a picture, too.

I’m seeing lots of pretty fungi and mushrooms and expect that before long there will be new and interesting ones emerging from the stump left behind by the monster tree below. I can’t help wondering why such a nice, big tree was cut down. I’m sure it didn’t want to be.

I don’t see fungi in the little garden plots where I take my compost offerings every few days. Just rich soil, flowers, tomatoes, and curious artifacts like the decorative tea cup in the photo.

The big echinacea at the house we are selling took me completely by surprise. I don’t remember when I planted it, and I know it never bloomed before. It strikes me as something dropped in from outer space. And as my kids know, that is likely to remind me of the 1978 version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Because so many things do remind me of that movie.

My next shot notes the 150th celebration of the local library, for which a beautiful day came through, as ordered. (Costume parade, Anyone? Speeches by Ralph Waldo Emerson?)

Next, there’s a photo of a typical sight near Boston’s North Station, where I went to have coffee with my friend Lillian one day. A number of tour businesses use Segways to get people from one historic site to another. Remember when Dean Kamen’s invention was going to revolutionize transportation? So far, it seems to have revolutionized only tourism.

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New but Ancient Building Material

October 11, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: José Hevia.
The Guardian reports on “affordable housing near Palma, Mallorca, built by Balearic social housing institute Ibavi, constructed from load‑bearing stone quarried locally.” 

The materials we use these days for constructing new buildings are generally harmful to the environment, at least in their creation. Now some architects are advocating for the old ways, the more sustainable and beautiful old ways.

Rowan Moore writes at the the Guardian, “Imagine a building material that is beautiful, strong, plentiful, durable and fireproof, whose use requires low levels of energy and low emissions of greenhouse gases. It is one of the most ancient known to humanity, the stuff of dolmens and temples and cathedrals and Cotswolds cottages, but also one whose sustainability makes it well-suited to the future. Such a material, according to a growing body of opinion in the world of construction, is among us. It’s called stone.

“Last week I sat in the roof garden of a hefty pile of masonry in central London, talking to three advocates of this magnificent substance: engineer Steve Webb, Pierre Bidaud of the Rutland-based Stonemasonry Company and architect Amin Taha. … The building on top of which we met is their joint creation: the six-storey, five-year-old Clerkenwell block where Taha has his office and his home.

“Their point is that stone has been supplanted in the industrial era by steel, concrete and mass-produced bricks, and is used (if at all) mostly as a thin cosmetic facing, while the hard work of holding up a building is done by the upstart alternatives. They argue that solid stone can once again form the walls and structure of building, with benefits for the environment and for the beauty of architecture. Any form of the material – limestone, sandstone, basalt, granite – can, depending on its properties, be used.

“Webb explains how the strength of stone compares well with steel and concrete, yet its environmental impact is far lower. The latter require several different energy-consuming activities, including extraction, smelting, transport, processing and installation. Stone only needs to be cut out from a quarry, taken to a site and put in place. Where the many ingredients of steel and concrete require multiple holes to be dug in the ground, not to mention such things as blast furnaces and rolling mills, the stonework for a given project only needs one.

“The planet, as Taha points out, is made mostly of stone. … We are in no danger of running out. For the same reason, stone should almost always be locally available, which keeps the environmental costs of transport down. The material is long-lasting and recyclable. ‘Any stone building is a quarry,’ says Bidaud. ‘It can be dismantled.’

“At the same time, 21st-century engineering allows stone to be used more effectively than ever before. The material is naturally strong in compression – that is, when loads are pushed down on it – which means it is good for walls, columns and arches, but less so if it is stretched or bent, as in beams or floor slabs.

It is now possible to combine stone with a (sparing) use of steel such that it can perform like reinforced concrete. …

“Next year, a 10-storey residential tower is due for completion on Finchley Road in north London (by Taha’s practice Groupwork and Webb’s firm Webb Yates Engineers), whose load-bearing stone structure will make it one of the most remarkable buildings in modern Britain. The three are collaborating on a grand new private house whose masonry vaults look almost medieval in their craftsmanship.

“They also cite works by others, such as an eight-storey, all-stone social housing building in Geneva by local architects Atelier Archiplein, and the Salvador Espriu project on the edge of Palma, Mallorca, whose graceful stone ceilings belie the fact that these are affordable homes built by a government housing institute called Ibavi. …

“Webb, Bidaud and Taha argue that stone doesn’t have to be costly. Taha, for example, has demonstrated that you can cut stone into bricks at the same cost or cheaper than the more usual fired-clay kind, with less than one fortieth of the carbon emissions, which has led to 10 quarries offering them as a commercial product. The problem is rather ‘forces of habit in the building industry.’ …

“Meanwhile, [2 billion] bricks of the traditional, energy-hungry, carbon-intensive kind are bought in this country every year. Steel and concrete remain the standard options for a wide range of building tasks. Webb is scathing about professional inertia on the subject, about architects ‘who protest about climate emergency, cycle to work and eat locally grown tomatoes’ but don’t examine their own decisions about construction techniques.

“You can get a glimpse of the highly appealing alternatives in a display at the Design Museum in London, How to Build a Low-Carbon Home, where the work of Taha, Webb and Bidaud is on show (until March 2024) alongside structures in wood and straw. …

“Who could look at the solid stone structure of, for example, the Mallorcan social housing, where the forces of nature and the work of humans is evident in the fabric, and prefer the processed surfaces and plasticized finishes of their British equivalents? And the great thing about stone is that, having been used for millennia, it’s well tested.” More at the Guardian, here.

Construction in the UK is often shoddy. Consider the tragic Grenfell Tower fire, here, and the completely avoidable death toll. “The fire was started by an electrical fault in a refrigerator on the fourth floor. This spread rapidly up the building’s exterior, bringing flames and smoke to all residential floors, accelerated by dangerously combustible aluminum composite cladding and external insulation, with an air gap between them enabling the stack effect.”

My husband has been following that story and says more has been spent on lawyers than on fixing the materials in buildings or adding sprinklers.

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A Floating Wetland

October 10, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Alexandra Ionescu/Rhode Island Collective.
This floating wetland, an artificial island hosting a human-made ecosystem, was scheduled to remain in Ice Pond in Southborough, Mass., until Sept. 17.

Here’s a new thing under the sun: a floating wetland. Art and science join forces, and Frank Carini at ecoRI News has the story.

“Floating in a circle around a pond in Massachusetts is a mini-wetland built by six Rhode Islanders. Earlier this summer, the mostly natural creation was chosen as the winning installation in the seventh annual Art on the Trails outdoor art and poetry program.

“But the freshwater wetland, built by a group of Ocean State artists, designers, and a botanist, wasn’t commissioned to win an award. It was designed to raise awareness about the importance of wetlands and show how they work. Mission accomplished.

“Art juror Sarah Alexander, who chose ‘Below and Above: A Floating Wetland Supports Life” by the Rhode Island Collective as the best installation, said, ‘The amount of careful research and thoughtful response to the space, along with the combined efforts of its dedicated creators, blew me away.’ …

“The wetland has been floating in Ice Pond in Southborough since June 11. It was created by sourcing native plants, and experiments with natural cordage. It shows how pollutants could be sucked from stressed waterbodies with a little help from human hands. A single anchor line keeps the wetland floating in a 15-foot circle, and not all over the popular skating pond.

“Members of the Rhode Island Collective include Holly Ewald (visual artist), Maxwell Fertik (interdisciplinary artist), Alexandra Ionescu (ecological artist), Hope Leeson (botanist), and August Lehrecke and Matthew Muller (co-founders of an inflatable architecture studio), who led the project’s construction. …

“ ‘The floating wetland ecosystem creates a habitat for the more-than-human world below and above the water line through the growth of native macrophytes. Through the plants’ life cycles, they regenerate the food web, amplifying the natural processes between sunlight, water, and microorganisms,’ according to the Collective. …

“Their structure was built using dried Japanese knotweed, broadleaf cattails, and bamboo for buoyancy, as alternatives to petroleum-based materials such as plastic and foam typically used to construct floating wetlands. A small amount of stainless steel wire mesh and cable holds the craft together.

“The knotweed used to create the floating wetland was harvested in late winter as dry stems from Mashapaug Pond and Gano Park in Providence. Fertik said repurposing invasive species for the project’s pontoons removed some of their biomass from the environment and transformed the nonnative plants into a vessel to improve water quality and promote biodiversity. (The dead stalks weren’t capable of spreading.) …

“The craft is home to 18 native wetland plant species: American bur-reed; bayonet rush; brown fruited rush; Canada rush; common cattail; Alleghany monkey-flower; blue flag iris; boneset; cardinal flower; flat-topped goldenrod; Joe-Pye weed; New York ironweed; northern water horehound; pickerelweed; swamp milkweed; buttonbush; silky dogwood; and steeplebush. …

“Suspended in water, the plant roots provide a home for diverse communities of algae, bacteria, fungi, and protozoans, known as periphyton. As the plants upcycle nutrients from the water into their roots, stems, leaves, and flowers, the periphyton provide nutrient uptake, filtration, oxygenation, and toxin removal.

“Southern New England’s freshwater lakes and ponds, especially the shallow ones, are being stressed by development, wastewater overflows, old and failing septic systems, antiquated cesspools, and stormwater runoff carrying nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous from fertilizers and roadway pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. …

“The Collective’s 48-page PowerPoint presentation noted Indigenous communities built floating islands for hundreds of years by harvesting natural materials found in their surroundings. ‘By incorporating native plants from freshwater marsh and pond ecosystems, we are supporting a variety of other life forms,’ they said.

“Ice Pond, part of the 58.5-acre Elaine and Philip Beals Preserve, is a healthy ecosystem in little need of a floating wetland to pull pollutants out of the water, but it did give the Collective an opportunity to learn how floating wetlands create a habitat, observe the decay of the natural materials used to build the craft, and document the growth of the native wetland plants. … The Providence Stormwater Innovation Center has requested the craft’s presence for the ponds at Roger Williams Park. …

“Art on the Trails is an annual site-specific ecological sculpture park exhibition. To watch a video about the project, click here.”

More at ecoRI News, here.

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Another Look at Finland

October 9, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Julius Jansson via Unsplash.
Aerial view of the centre of Helsinki, which is still a low-rise city.

I like learning how different countries make their cities more livable. Finland is known for being a trendsetter in many areas, including funny contests, housing, education, eldercare, basic income — and urban living.

Gillian Darley at Apollo magazine wrote recently about design in Finland.

“The Helsinki skyline is startlingly low for a capital city, its further horizons determined by water and scattered wooded islands. In the centre, urban civility and a clear-headed planning regime have established a height limit of around eight stories, punctuated by occasional eminences. The standout is the heroic central station, designed in the early 1900s by Eliel Saarinen. …

“Otherwise, only a few spires and the lofty white Lutheran cathedral, the jazz-style tower of the Hotel Torni and pencil-thin chimneys from redundant power stations cut into the ordained pattern. One of the power stations, Hanasaari, which closed down this March, is currently preoccupying the city authorities. They have turned to Buro Happold for advice, in the hope that the firm’s experience with Battersea Power Station may help rescue the 1970s brick shell.

“A little further east, overlooking the harbor, a gaggle of multi-story blocks has recently loomed – as if testing the water. Otherwise, only a few spires and the lofty white Lutheran cathedral, the jazz-style tower of the Hotel Torni and pencil-thin chimneys from redundant power stations cut into the ordained pattern. …

“Another factor is starting to determine the physiognomy of the city centre: some of it is, and more will be, sited below ground. There is no single clear reason for this, though factors include the exigent climate, respect for that polite skyline, and the key part that open space plays as amenity, in the city as in the overwhelmingly forested country.

“The use of subterranean space and the creation of a new realm overhead are becoming a speciality of Helsinki-based architectural practice JKMM. The Amos Rex art museum (named for the Finnish publisher and patron Amos Anderson) sits beneath a swooping pedestrian square – formerly a bus terminal, now an unorthodox playground of sculptural skylights and domes at the foot of a cheerful art-deco clock tower.

“The galleries below are reached via the handsome glazed entrance of the Lasipalatsi (‘Glass Palace’), part of a restored modernist complex together with the Bio Rex cinema (1936) next door. Elegant stairs sweep into a lobby and the sequence of soaring new galleries. …

“[Another] subterranean structure is due to open in 2027: this is an ambitious underground annex for the National Museum of Finland in central Helsinki. The spectacular new space is flagged by a circular cantilevered entrance, a concrete vortex from which visitors will descend on a series of stairs to the galleries and facilities below. Above, a public garden will be open all year round.

“For decades, visitors to Finland had been drawn by Alvar Aalto’s questing version of modernism, seen as closely aligned with Nordic social democratic aspirations and sustained by a tight group of followers, at home and abroad. Inevitably, his work has been challenged by the passing of time and changing usage. In Helsinki, the shrouded hunk of the white Carrara marble-clad Finlandia Hall, dating from 1971, is in the middle of a recladding expected to take five years; the crisp Academic Book Store of the 1960s – a smart street-front clad in beautifully detailed copper, with dramatic angular roof lights bursting into life within – is compromised by chipped and stained marble facings on the entry columns.

“West of central Helsinki is another post-war landmark: the ‘garden city’ of Tapiola, which has been highly influential in European town planning. It shares its roots with British first-generation New Towns and, patched and amended though it is, it still offers compelling evidence of an urbane landscape, the antithesis of the formless out-of-town development. …

“When considering a future for the best works by Aalto and his circle, there is often a clash between function and feasible preservation, but in Tapiola there is also a town of 9,000 people to consider. The building materials of the early 1950s, especially in schools and sports buildings, have not stood the test of time; the hazards of asbestos are ubiquitous. The swimming hall, already restored once, is wrapped in sheeting and plywood, its fate uncertain.

“Yet the best of the flats and housing are highly sought after: the terraced houses, with perky monopitch roofs and skinny clerestory windows on to the roadside, benefit from back gardens and immediate access to a natural landscape of rock and pinewoods.  The little cinema has been restored and is highly valued, the lake remains centre stage and expanses of open parkland stretch out on every side.

“The societal hopes that brought Tapiola into being in 1953, according to the ideas of a visionary lawyer, Heikki von Hertzen, may have faded. Established according to principles of social enterprise, Tapiola has been outstripped by Espoo, the municipality of which it is a part, and which is a product of modern broad-brush urban development. But Tapiola is more than just a name in the history of town planning – it richly deserves a second look and, even, another close look at those founding principles.

More at Apollo, here. No paywall.

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