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For factories to thrive at inner-city densities, they need to function vertically
Exhibition/ Vertical Urban Factory
Until 26 June, Skyscraper Museum, New York
www.verticalurban factory.org
In the days following the financial crash, a British Second World War poster bearing the comforting advice 'Keep Calm and Carry On' became the ubiquitous survival slogan for the developing crisis. Almost immediately, it spawned a dozen imitators, not least a cheery green version with the British crown drawn from nuts and spanners and the message: 'Get Excited and Make Things'. The recession has awakened a passion for making, seen in the proliferation of hacker spaces and domestic 3D printers, in DIY conventions and books on how to 'make do and mend'. And not least in calls for manufacturing - long exiled to soulless suburban industrial parks and sweat shops in the Far East - to retake its place at the heart of our cities.
This agenda underpins a new exhibition at the Skyscraper Museum in New York City. Vertical Urban Factory, curated by architectural historian Nina Rappaport, celebrates the factory in the city. Not the single-storey, windowless sheds confined to out-of-sight, zoned ghettos. But innovative, multi-storey buildings, existing alongside the places where we live, work and play.
The modernists had great fun with the factory, and...