Quondamopolis

The Plays of Nicholas Breakspear


16 November

2013.11.16 10:40

It was yesterday [15 years ago] that I ultimately gave final formation to the idea that Franklin Court is the first virtual house of the 20th century.

After an extended independent analysis of the Ichnographia Campus Martius, it becomes evident that Tafuri misreads Piranesi's large plan in most cases. Tafuri's text indicates no research of the plan beyond simply looking at it and subsequently offering a description of what Tafuri thinks he sees. (In fact, a careful reading of both Tafuri's texts and the text of Fasolo from 1956, clearly shows that Fasolo's text greatly influenced Tafuri's observations.) For example, in calling out the various axes of the Campo Marzio, Tafuri notes the axis running through Hadrian's Tomb, but he fails to recognize it's symbolic function as the Axis of Death; nor does he identify the Axis of Life that runs perpendicular to the Axis of Death. Moreover, Tafuri marginally notes the semblance of an axis within the northeast sector of the plan, yet he never mentions that Piranesi labeled this axis the Equiria, place of the annual horse races instituted by Romulus in honor of Mars.

These are just two examples which plainly demonstrate that Piranesi's plan holds significant and coherent symbolic content, however, recognition of Piranesi's "carved in stone" symbolism necessarily negates Tafuri's primary thesis that the Ichnographia Campus Martius is utterly fragmented and devoid of "language." Ironically, had Tafuri not discounted the presence of language and instead actually translated the hundreds of Latin labels Piranesi applies throughout the plan, he would have concluded with a more accurate, if not also a more honest reading.

It is truly unfortunate that the subsequent 20th century Campo Marzio analyses of Allen, Bloomer, and Eisenman, build upon Tafuri's mistakes rather than correct them.

...the space station fits precisely within the realm of extremity architecture. No question the space station is essentially as extreme as architecure can be today.



           



I was surprised at how much I learned from this 3 hour program. It was like "Learning from the City of Antithesis" -- very "if it's no where else, it's here."

Sin City and Bust! Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

Do you think above-ground nuclear bomb testing will ever be revived for it's tourist attraction fall-out?

Did that veteran showgirl really say that Vegas during the disco era was the best?!? Gosh, you learn something new everyday.

I never really knew how Las Vegas was like the exact opposite of all other American cities in that what was illegal everywhere else (including citizens) were, like magic almost, legal in Las Vegas. It's like "who was kidding who?" As if all other American cities were bastions of morality, even.



"The ability of the computer to locate every point on a carved surface does away with the need for rational comprehension on the part of the designer in conceiving, or the observer in perceiving, a building. Thanks to the computer, pure empiricism has no longer any practical need for the mediating grasp of the intellect. The maximum of an empirical nominalism coexists with the maximum of abstraction. The space between nominalism and abstraction is left void. The mind no longer needs to understand itself. After a long evolutionary detour, human thought returns to its primitive instinctual roots." Colquhoun (2005)

"...I was entranced by the work of James Gamble Rogers, the architect who designed most of Yale's Gothic and Georgian architecture in the 1920s and 1930s. Roger's determinedly nonideological stance, his avoidance of theory in favor of what can only be called intuitive design, was liberating. It was alright for architecture to be about feeling good, I suddenly realized; stage sets were not immoral. It was the perfect epiphany for a twenty-year-old who was just beginning to learn about empirical experience and only starting to trust his eye." Goldberger (2009)

Jargon aside, it is now progressively easier for intuitive design intentions to become reality.





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