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Museum of Architecture 3120r
A (pre) Virtual Museum of Architecture 3123m
1992-1996
/usr/museum
early Acropolis Q cad databases
1996.04.22
Scale and Architecture
...another book on architecture: Scale and Architecture.
...add Krier's work pertaining to Speer to the Durand chapter.
...man as the measure of all things, Canon of Polyclitus, and then perhaps go to the other extreme of largeness, i.e., things beyond man's measure.
1996.04.22
Promenade Architecturale
The idea of a doumentation of the Promenade Architecturale...
1996.06.02
paint-chip plan at usr/museum
There is a paint-chip plan in one of the quadrants of the incomplete third series that I want to input into the computer and also incorporate into the /usr/museum group.
Concerning the /usr/museum group, I want to finally establish a base model and a site plan in general. The base model will be its own database but it will be registered with all the house data. The site plan will also be part of the base model database.
1996.06.03
priorities/scheduling
Concerning architecture work, it will be a continuation of the same projects I have always been doing. Essentially it will be the generation of more and more data related to all kinds of different specific projects. Campo Marzio, Schinkel's Berlin, the "Houses" in usr/museum, scale, promenade, models - they are all part of the ongoing process and I see now how it is going to remain that way from now on. I forgot to mention the Parkway project on the list. All this work will eventually amount to something more, but first I must always record the data as soon as possible. The architecture work, perhaps more than the art work, is directly tied to the record project.. 3123o
1996.06.04
documentations
Within architecture, however, there are many topics to document: Parkway Interpolation, the museum of architecture project, the architectural promenade, and just the documentation of each of the unbuilt buildings computer models.
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1996.06.07
combined building documentations
...always wanted to compare Le Corbusier's Maison l'Homme with Plecnik's Houses Under a Common Roof.
...could easily combine the Maison l'Homme with the Villa Savoye or Wall House 2 or even Hurva Synagogue.
Concerning a Villa Savoye/Maison de l'Homme comparison, imagined the lower story of the Villa Savoye two stories high; the idea being that the elevated box of the Villa Savoye would be like the independent roof of the Maison l'Homme.
1996.06.08
large, fantastic architectural plan
...creating a large, fantastic architectural plan, perhaps like the Ichnographia Campus Martius. ...an urban context, or one emormous building, or perhaps some strange campus of buildings. Projects like Hadrian's Villa and the Villas of Pliny come to mind... ...also find inspiration in other Piranesi projects like the Collagia.
(1996.06.27) ...Parkway Interpolation is already a fantastic plan...
...manipulate any and all of the existing plan data...
1996.06.08
building model combinations
...a combination of Wall House 2 and the Gooding House.
...compose the domestic plans into some kind of made-up context.
1996.06.14
Villa Savoye/Maison l'Homme combination
...a set of perspectives where the Maison de l'Homme is collaged with the Villa Savoye, and the results, while they portray an unusual architecture, nonetheless clearly illustrate the comparable scale of each building.
1996.06.15
Seroux d'Agincourt--museum of architecture
After looking through Seroux d'Agincourt's book... ...scan the plans and the elevations therein, and then compose the data all at the same scale.
...read some of Vidler's The Writing of the Walls... The notion of a "museum" of architecture in the form of a book is exactly what I have been doing with the computer and CAD models. The historical background provided by Vidler brings the issue of "museum" to the fore...
1996.06.18
record of Le Corbusier's architecture, etc. 3132
...been giving some more thought to the notion of a virtual museum of architecture; the idea is extremely fertile and could, indeed does, permeate through everything that I am doing... ...it could be the motif that ties my work together... ...the data as a museum of which I am both creator and curator. ...designing, organizing, manageing... ...the collection, the archives, exhibits and catalogues... ...a Virtual Museum of Architecture.
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1996.06.21
another museum of architecture reference
...some reading in Rossi's The Architecture of the City. ...in the introduction to the 2nd Italian edition, Rossi makes reference to the Canaletto painting Capriccio.
"After I wrote this book and from the concepts I postulated in it, I outlined the hypothesis of the analogous city, in which I attempted to deal with theoretical questions concerning design in architecture. In particular I elaborated a compositional procedure that is based on certain fundamental artifacts in the urban reality around which other artifacts are constituted within the framework of an analogous system. To illustrate this concept I gave the example of Canaletto's fantasy view of Venice, a capriccio in which Palladio's project for the Ponti di Rialto, the Basilica of Vicenza, and the Palazzo Chiericate are set next to each other and described as if the painter were rendering an urban scene he had actually observed. These three Palladian monuments, none of which are actually in Venice (one is a project; the other two are in Vicenza), nevertheless constitute an analogous Venice formed of specific elements associated with the history of both architecture and the city. The geographic transposition of the monuments within the painting constitutes a city that we recognize, even though it is a place of purely architectural reference. This example enables me to demonstrate how a logical-formal operation could be translated into a design method and then into a hypothesis for a theory of architectural design in which the elements were preestablished and formally defined, but where the significance that sprung forth at the end of the operation was the authentic, unforeseen, and original meaning of the work."
...the Strasbourg, Düsseldorf, Hurva composite building immediately came to mind... ...an analogous building. Furthermore, Rossi's point provides great fuel for future manipulation of the model [collection], and Canaletto's painting in particular provides inspiration and a grounding in terms of a "plan" for the "virtual museum" itself.
Overall, I see the analogous city concept working in tandem with the "virtual museum of architecture" idea, and I am at this point also interested in adding the collage city idea/methodology to the "museum" idea.
1996.07.01
specific building documents
The documents will be billed as documents (archives?) of the (first) Virtual Museum of Architecture. My overall goal is to compile an ongoing series of documents. This is all an effort to concretize many ideas and many drawings.
The preliminary list of documents is as follows:
1. Strasbourg (inclusive)
3. Düsseldorf (inclusive)
4. Zürich (inclusive of Plecnik and Krier)
5. Seroux same scale
6. Piranesi contiguous
7. Piranesi typology
8. Piranesi Campo Marzio - Nolli Map same scale comparison
9. Same scale building plan, elevation, and axonometric comparison 1:500
10. Same scale building plan, elevation, and axonometric comparison 1:1000
This is the same work that I have been thinking about all along but it is now organized into a project.
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1996.07.06
Palais des Congrès documentation
The Strasbourg documentation is in full swing... The contents will be broken up into a few parts, e.g., one part will be about the site and the building itself. The second part will be about the promenade architecturale formula. The third part will be about the Hejduk comparisons. And the fourth part will be straight forward scale comparative analysis.
It is in the fourth part that I will be most adventurous. I see plan comparisons with other Le Corbusier buildings, all the other building plans, and even with Philadelphia and the Campo Marzio. The Philadelphia Center City comparison will particularly make light of the similarity between the Strasbourg ramps and the Vine Street Expressway ramps connecting to I-95. This comparison will be demonstrated in plan and 3D. Besides the plan comparisons, there will also be elevation comparisons, and what it may turn out to be is a series of split elevations. I'm not sure at this point if I will incorporate any Seroux or Durand scanned images within the scale comparisons. Most of the fourth part is yet to be generated, so it is still in a fluid state and the final output is still to evolve.
An additional part of the document will be a collection of the notes already available. ...it looks like the document will take on encyclopedic characteristics, and I can do it now for Strasbourg, but I'm not sure if I can do the same for the other buildings.
Now that I see the Strastboug document coming together, I am more and more thinking about pushing the document towards publication as the first part of an ongoing series from the Virtual Museum of Architecture.
1996.07.28
Palais des Congrès documentation
Since the Strasbourg document is the first document of the Virtual Museum of Architecture, an explanation of the museum itself will be appropriate. In broad overview, the introduction will begin with my thoughts on architectural drawings as "texts" of architects the same way that musical scores are the "texts" written and read by musicians. This idea will lead to how 3d CAD modeling allows unbuilt architecture to be "played" the way an orchestra performs a symphony. (Reference here will first be made to how a finished design--an actual building--is like the performance of a symphony, and here Geothe's idea of architecture as "frozen music" also comes into play--the constructed building as a symphony frozen in a specific slice of time.) And in turn, I will explain how 3d modeling allows an investigation, a "visit," to the Palais des Congrès. This is where 'virtuality' is then elaborated upon (virtual construction and then virtual existence) and then specific things learned by visiting Strasbourg virtually will be presented. Finally the concept of a virtual museum will blossom when the full potential of 3d modeling is taken advantage of by placing a variety of buildings at the same scale into a virtual context, a virtual museum.
The above is only a pre-outline, but the thesis does follow through. Along with my idea of drawings as text, I now also have historical precedent in Vitruvius who, (as I read in Chora, volume one) also called for architects to write.
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1996.08.03
ideas
...the set of Stirling interpretations (the Schinkel, Le Corbusier, Stirling circle of inspiration), the Kahn, Stirling, Guirgola circle, the Virtual Museum of Architecture taking over the scale project--like the scale project becoming the Virtual Museum of Architecture project... ...list of the planned (potential) Virtual Museum of Architecture documents
1996.08.03
Virtual Museum of Architecture documents
A working list of Virtual Museum of Architecture documents are:
1. The Palais des Congrès
2. Piranesi's Campo Marzio
3. Stirling's Interpretations 5713 5714
4. (broadly) The Philadelphia School
5. The Promenade Architecturale
6. Houses Under a Common Roof
7. Seroux redux
8. Scale and Architecture
9. Poem to the World Record Holders of the World's Tallest Building -- an illustrated poem
1996.08.03
Stirling interpretations
I have decided on a document centering on James Stirling's three masterful interpretations: the Stirling/Corbu Olivetti projects, the Düsseldorf / Altes Museum connection, and the Cologne [Wallraf-Richartz Museum] promenade architecturale. This will be a very full document featuring four virtual buildings (Düsseldorf, Cologne, Stirling Olivetti, Corbu Olivetti). Schinkel's Altes Museum and the Corbu architectural promenade buildings will be featured but not documented.
The secondary point of the document is to exhibit a largely undisclosed circle of design influence and intentions between Schinkel, Le Corbusier, and Stirling. I have already thought out the specific connections between Stirling and Corbu and Stirling and Schinkel, but I will also be introducing a possible Corbu-Schinkel connection in the "architectural promenade" of the Altes Museum. Although this circle of three architects is important, the main point will be to demonstrate the methodology of Stirling's art of architectural interpretation.
The three discussions of the three Stirling projects bring up Stirling's submission to Roma Interrotta and I will be using that "design" as an other example of a Virtual Museum of Architecture and as yet another example of Stirling's fine art of interpretation and reinterpretation.
The document will end with a discussion of how the circulation sequence of the Altes Museum is very similar to the Corbusian architectural promenade formula... I also have to mention how Boullée inspired the Altes Museum, and this then brings up the French/German crossover -- cross fertilization. [...and there is more in the notes.]
1996.08.04
Virtual Museum co-curatorships
...decide what will go on the Homepage before the position of Homepage curator can be defined. The first step is to get the Homepage and the name secured. I probably have to file for another fictitious name as well.
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