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Date: Fri, 13 Jan 1995 18:52:18 CST
Sender: "Basic and applied design (Art and Architecture)"
<DESIGN-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
Subject: Transmission Towers-- book
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TRANSMISSION TOWERS on the Long Island Expressway Michele Bertomen
}{_____________________________________________}{ Princeton Arch Press
/\ ~A~Study~Of~The~Language~Of~Form /\ copyright 1991
____________________________________________________________________________
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I. Introduction: The Medium - The Artifact 4
II. Summary: Form-As-Idea, The Language of Form 7
III. The Emerging Public Realm, Essay & Photographs by Judith Sheene 11
IV. Making A Tower 19
V. Twenty Transmission Towers, On the Long Island Expressway 20
VI. Towers of Babel 50
VII. Bertomen Map of Long Island 68
VIII. Comments on Formal Structure, Interview with Klaus Herdeg 70
____________________________________________________________________________
THE MEDIUM - THE ARTIFACT
" Transmission towers and their antennae are visible marks of the
comprehensive restructuring the world has undergone through electro-
communications since the Second World War. Telephone, television,
computer, and radio transmissions now immerse us in dense "soup" of
electromagnetic radiation. The electromagnetic waves create a medium
thick with modulated signals that permeate each other as well as all
organic and inorganic matter. Yet the contents of this soup differ from
the indistinguishable ingredients to be found in the kitchen pot in an
important respect; using the simple device of radio, any individual can
distinguish one set of frequencies, one distinct communication, from all
others.^1
The shape of this electromagnetic medium at any given moment is a function
of those who are operating within it. Its outline and boundary is inter-
locked with wire and fibre-borne transmissions, and is made even more
complex by mobile transmitting and receiving units. Consider the case of
the cellular telephone in which signals from a car phone are automatic-
ally switched from the transmission-reception limits, the cell, of one
antennae to the next that comes within range. As the driver talks, as the
car moves, the system instantaneously discovers and rediscovers the best
path for the signal, perhaps converting microwave signals into the
oscillating electrical current of a telephone line before a final
destination is reached. The conceivable venue for these transmissions
becomes ever more complex as one can now be sketching on a beach and
simultaneously be sending the image to someone in an airplane flying
above. Creating a flexibility of communication never before possible,
the medium affects the way we understand seemingly tactile experiences
such as space and place. The medium is something through which one sees,
it conditions the way one understands. We get into our cars, travel
thousands of miles within this medium, and all the while we can converse
with others or ever see others doing the same.
For architects who deal with physical structures and habitable space, this
transformation is particularly jarring. For while the visible, man-made
environment is recognizably an evolution of that which had already existed
one or even two centuries ago, the manner in which it is now apprehended
and added to has been irrevocably affected by this new, invisible world of
ultracommunication and mobility. The living room of every home now has the
additional window of the television through which one can look at distant
lands or into other people's living rooms as casually as one would look in
the backyard. This raises the question of whether a place is defined by a
floor, roof, and walls or by the point at which one enters the electro-
communication system, in front of the television, at the computer, tele-
phone, or fax machine.
The very outline of the world in which we live, the shape of our time as
the historian George Kubler calls it, has been impressed by this medium
that affects the way the mind discerns forms amongst the essential organ-
izations of our culture.^2 The monuments that comprise the man-made
environment, the forms and spaces analyzed by architects as the fodder for
their creative work, have now become overlaid and interpenetrated by the
artifacts of the transportation and communication <+energy> systems. The
constantly changing, nonhierarchical organization of this network, forever
accommodating itself to those who wish to use it, is incomprehensible in
the traditional manner in which architects have studied form.^3
Transmission towers and other, allied artifacts are the tangible marks of
a system that affects, in hidden but powerful ways, the rhythms of daily
live. They are the direct products of an economic organization that,
through a developed communication and transportation system, facilitates
the premanufacture of technologically manufactureable elements for
assembly in the field. Their accreted, changeable shape is a reflection of
this system and of the underlying structure of society itself. Moreover,
the experience of these artifacts from the highway at the periphery of
one's attention, in fragmented glances through the windshield or rear view
mirror, is symptomatic of contemporary experience that demands changing
modes of apprehension.
The manner in which architects make things is inextricably related to
aesthetics, the faculty used for judgement and the apprehension of beauty.
Transmission towers are of great interest not only for the technological
and economic considerations that determine them, but also for the role
they play in producing the conditions of our experience. A study of trans-
mission towers helps us to reconsider the nature of aesthetics in the
light of artifacts that are, in both compostition and function, central to
the formal function and experience of contemporary life.
<signed> Michele Bertomen
February 1990
"
pp. 3/4/5/6 footnotes to follow..
<...>
____________________________________________________________________________
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THE MEDIUM - THE ARTIFACT
/IMAGE 1" X 6" image in black and white, horizontal. Looking like several\
\ types of black-inked fingerprints overlapping within the picturing./
" Computer modeling of electromagnetic patterns of a Bogner antennae.
These were graphically superimposed to produce an image of electro-
magnetic waves that comprise the "soup." Computer modeling by
Dr. Paul Koch.
^1. I am grateful to Dr. Ward Deutchman, Chairman, Telecommmunications
Management Degree, NYIT for his metaphor of the "soup." He likens
the effect of microwaves radiating from many antennae to the action
of drops of dye placed seperately in an irregular bathtub filled
with water. Currents, water temperature, the edges of the tub, and
the approximately spherical dispersion of the molecules of dye could
be considered roughly analogious to the atmospheric conditions, the
earth's topography, and the strength of the transmitted electro-
magnetic waves.
^2. The proposition here is to understand communication systems as huge,
extended artifacts by which our culture will be known, and whose
forms and shapes should be studied as important in a history of
things. "From all these things a shape in time emerges. A visible
portrait of the collective identity, whether of the tribe, class, or
nation, comes into being. This self-image reflected in things is a
guide and a point of reference to the group for the future, and it
eventually becomes the protrait given to posterity." George Kubler,
~The~Shape~of~Time,~Remarks~on~the~History~of~Things (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1962), p. 9.
^3. "Form" is distinguished from "shape" here following the distinction
made by Jonathan Friedman in - ~Creation~in~Space (Dubuque: Kendall
and Hunt, 1989), pp. 5, 176.
"
pp.4/5/6
<...>
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 13:04:37 CST
Reply-To: "Basic and applied design (Art and Architecture)"
<DESIGN-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
Sender: "Basic and applied design (Art and Architecture)"
<DESIGN-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
From: "carr0023@gold.tc.umn.edu" <carr0023@GOLD.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Civic Transmission Tower
| Jericho \ oMelville| / 231 |
____ |---/------oPLAINVIEW |-/-\----/|
| | / \ HICKSVILLE \110/ \ / |
Z | | | /EASTo | /BETHPAGEo\/ Wyan-| |
O | | |/ MEADOW|/ oLEVITOWN\ danch 2 |
- | | |_______\/____\____|___\__/____\|
_| | | | |
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| | |
| | |
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|\|\___ ______||||--/ _ H_/_\
|\H \ |\ /| //___|||-o-|||
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|_|\ /|/\\_/ /|\_|___|___|_|
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_ __\_/ |\\//| \___|___/
\/_\ \ | || |\---------/\
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|/ \__/|| | || | |/\____|/| /
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\\ | || X || X || | /\|/
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|__||__|__|__||__| | | X| | || || |\/| |
|__||__|__|__||__| _X_X_X_X_ |\|_X|_|_||__||_|/\|_/|
detail | | X|----------|||| \|
of capital |/____________________|
photograph of the base
" _Height_: 300 feet.
_Location_: A high plateau off exit 46.
_Owner_: AT&T.
_Specifications_: Designed by Rose, Chuckoff, and Rose, Westchester, New
York and built in 1981. It is one of three standing types the utility
employs, and serves as a midpoint station for telephone transmissions to
eastern Long Island. The highly directional "horn" antennae transmit and
receive signals carrying hundreds of phone messages simultaneously from
other line-of-sight towers. These are connected to central relay and
processing stations that convert wire borne telephone signals into
electromagnetic transmissions. The square plan of the tower allows
guides to be run through its center, thus permitting positioning devices
to precisely orient the horn antennae towards its corresponding trans-
mitting antennae. _Transmitters_: AT&T
Drawn and researched by Bruce Bowman.
"_____________________________________________________________________p.20__
+300 feet |
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| /|\|/|\ |
+200 feet | ||/|\|| |
| |/_|_\| |
| |\_|_/| |
\_||\|/||_/
|\/|\/|
|/\|/\|
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+150 feet |/|_|_|\|
/|__|__|\
||\/|\/||
|=/=|=\=|
||/_|_\||
|/__|__\|
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______ |/\/|\/\| ______
+100 feet \---|| | / | \ | \---||
__\__/|_|/__|__\|__\__/|_
|_|_/_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_\_|_|
\\|\ | /|\ | /|//
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__|\_||HH_|__\||_/|__
|_|_||| /|\ |||_|_|
| | \/_|_\/ | |
+ 50 feet | |_/__|__\_| |
| |/ | \| |
| ||____|____|| |
/-|\ /|H|\ /|-\
|_\/_|_|_\/_|
| / | \ |
/|/____|____\|\
______________________________|/___________\|_______________________________
+ 0 feet
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
TRANSMISSION TOWERS on the Long Island Expressway Michele Bertomen
}{_____________________________________________}{ Princeton Arch Press
/\ ~A~Study~Of~The~Language~Of~Form /\ copyright 1991
____________________________________________________________________________
|<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>|
chapter: Making a Tower. Ink and Paper Draftings
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