15 January

532 Church of Aya Sophia in Constantinople burned down

1621 birth of Antoine Lepautre


Horace Trumbauer, Whitemarsh Hall (Wyndmoor, PA: under construction, 1917.01.15).

new insights - material from Sue Dixon
1997.01.15     e2655 5397

Triumphal Way - new ideas
1997.01.15     e2557 e3037 e3078 5397

places of Nero
1998.01.15     e2588 e2822 e3012 e3082 5398b

pretty [scarry] hybrid?
2000.01.15 10:15     3770 3775b 3811e

Really Good Architecture
2001.01.15     e2501b 3120z 3730d 3775d

Quondam as hypermuseum
2001.01.15     2279 2306 2323 2428 3142b 3254 3704b 3705g 3770d 3777c 3778 3789b 5901

[virtual] museum
2001.01.15     3775d

denial
2001.01.15     3142b 3751c 3789b

ideas
2001.01.15     3730e 3770e 3773c 3777c

bibliography continued
2002.01.15     e2584

Minimalism in Architecture
2007.01.15 20:42     3336l
2007.01.15 22:22     3336k 3770o

The Best of Rita Novel Anytime
2008.01.15 17:25     3334b 3794c

The quest for Architectural Theory
2013.01.15 12:38     3749w 3771f

15 January
2014.01.15 19:51     3307m 3792h


David Chipperfield   James Simon Galerie



2000.01.15 10:15
pretty [scarry] hybrid?
The following is an anecdote relative to the (new) notion of beauty (and aesthetics), etc.:
While still an architecture student, I spent the summer of 1978 working for the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) stationed in Perry, Missouri, a very small town (pop. 931) 30 miles west of Hannibal (of Mark Twain fame). It was then that the city of St. Louis (120 miles south) became the 'big city' destination on several weekends. What struck me the most in St. Louis was Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch--not only is it an incredible site from a distance, but even more amazing when perceived while walking around its base, (and I won't elaborate here about the "otherness" of its elevator ride up to the top observation room inside, which I believe I heard is something you can't do anymore).
On what was my third visit to St. Louis, I was with several of the other student architects I lived and worked with--it was their first trip. We were all around the same age and education level, i.e., early twenties and full of youthful over-confidence. I distinctly remember being asked by Mike, "So, what do you think of the arch?" (Mike and I were room mates, and we often 'discussed' architecture). I said, "I think the arch is very pretty." Well, Mike quickly told me that one just DOES NOT use the word 'pretty' when referring to architecture!--(apparently) pretty has such lowly connotations. I briefly argued that I thought 'pretty' was the best word to describe how I saw the arch, largely because I see its 'prettiness' as pretty much undeniable. I was confident I used the right word to describe how I felt about the arch.
Today, just two weeks into the 21st century, I looked up pretty in Webster's Third International Dictionary:
pretty 1 a : marked by or calling for skillful dexterity or artful care and ingenuity, esp. in coping with some difficult or complicated matter.
I am thus (finally) completely convinced I saw the arch for what it is, and then also described how I saw the arch in a most fitting manner.
Now being somewhat older (and hopefully somewhat wiser), if I were today asked what I thought of the arch, I'd say, "The St. Louis Arch is very likely the prettiest architecture-sculpture hybrid I will have ever perceived."

2001.01.15
Really Good Architecture
One of the new architectures that exists today, and, moreover, an architecture not designed by an architects and not even buildings, are those 'places' in cyberspace that do much more than actual buildings of their type could ever do. I'm referring particularly to amazon.com and ebay.com as architectures that far surpass what a physical book store or auction house can do. These are new architectures not in that they replace the existing architectural paradigms, rather they provide whole new means of buying and auctioning that a physical building could never provide.
I believe that if an architect today says that places in cyberspace can never be considered architecture, all he or she is really doing is manifesting a huge denial, and, moreover, just one more denial added to the continual history of things that architect's have tried to deny.
I use amazon and eBay frequently. I have both bought and sold items (mostly books, even rare volumes). In fact, just this morning the postman delivered a Piranesi print, a print which I successfully bid on last weekend at eBay. It was the architecture of eBay that brought me Piranesi's engraving of ancient Rome's last Imperial artifact. I was confident in bidding on the print online via a written description and two digital images because of the Piranesi research that I have done and continue to do at home, online, and at university libraries. [By the way, Piranesi is a great proto-virtual-place architect.] This print of the sarcophagus of Maria, wife of the Emperor Honorius, was originally published within Piranesi's Il Campo Marzio (1762), specifically at the head of the dedicatory letter to Robert Adam. In true inversionary fashion, Piranesi cleverly placed an image of ancient Rome's last Imperial artifact at the beginning of the Il Campo Marzio publication. This print is the latest acquisition of Quondam - A Virtual Museum of Architecture.
Architecture is a medium, a facilitator, and a container, and all reality is relative to the vastness of its container.

2001.01.15
[virtual] museum
Does anyone know where the paintings of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art were kept during W.W.II?
Answer
It's all gone now, but it really was spectacular. My brother first took me there in the early 1970s, just after he got his driver's license. I have a few pieces of the place in my dining room, basement and garage--trophy's of teenage vandalism. One of the pieces is a 4'x1.5' flat slab of marble that in turn became the support for one of my 1984 (metabolic) artworks: Anonymous Saint In Bikini While Jesus Is Walking On Water.

2001.01.15
denial
The point is that today not all architectures are buildings. This is not to deny the real world, rather to recognize the notion that architecture, by architects, now has further options of being designed without the usual physical means.
I repeat, the new architecture of cyberspace does not replace real world architecture. If the implication is not clear, I then add that the new architecture of cyberspace does not deny real world architecture either.
In the several times I have brought up this issue within various venues, there is always the counter argument of an "either-or" attitude. Is it really that difficult to grasp that cyberspace offers a new, addition realm within which architects can design places? [I use the notion of 'place' because the notion of a virtual building is only one type of cyber place.]
I can well remember back in 1983 when I first learned and professionally utilized CAD, specifically the many, many professional colleagues (both in offices and academia) that saw no place within the field of architecture for computers and cad. That's the type of denial I'm referring to.


2001.01.15
ideas
Quondam as a hypermuseum -- turning Quondam into a place that takes the notion of (architectural) museum a step beyond. The possibility to use Quondam in the generation of something other, i.e., not just a virtual museum that reenacts the museum typology, rather a museum that generates its own unique (original) collection, and indeed its own existence.
This idea then quickly turned into the exhibit idea: "What to do with museums." ...taking advantage of Quondam's own museum model collection. The possibility of not only using the various museums as "actual" sites for exhibits.
...collecting, displaying, exhibiting, curating, but also creating "museumpieces" that are altogether new.

2007.01.15 22:22
Minimalism in Architecture
"less walls is more windows"
or
"less windows is more walls"


09011501 IQ Philadelphia street grid   2392i78
09011502 IQ Philadelphia street grid in place   2177i15
09011503 ICM base map for scans at true scale   2419i05


13011501.db Danteum Basilica of Maxentius/Constantine Colosseum Temple of Venus and Rome site plan   206di04


2013.01.15 12:38
The quest for Architectural Theory
Hint (of recent architectural theory/practice): less (homogeneity) is more (diversity).


15011501 Houses Under a Common Roof site plan 1100x550 District Q/NNTC   2170i00


16011501   Philadelphia DTM Tiber IQ grid plans   2392i114


18011501   IQ63s16 Quondam Neighborhood plans surface models   2454i01   b
18011502   IQ63s16 Quondam Neighborhood plans   2454i02
18011503   IQ63s16 Quondam Neighborhood plans Surface Building 001 model   2454i03   b


18011501   David Chipperfield   James Simon Galerie



2014.01.15 19:51
15 January
...Tafuri teaches nonlinear history, its irreducibility into overly simplistic explanations--in whose name the universe of architectural discourse pretends to provide a presumed disciplinary autonomy; he teaches "knowing through signs and conjectures . . . not bases and certitudes." He teaches the intrisic contradictoriness of history, or rather, the coexistence of a multiplicity of tensions within it; but he also shows how such a system of contradictions--even the historian's procedure itself--far from dissolving into an infinite series of centerless motifs and discourses, are rooted in certain values. ...
Research and unease turn out to be one and the same, then, for those who manage to make their own the innate risk within a history that is really a construction--a project--rather than a simple reconstruction of events exactly as they happened.
Marco Biraghi, Project of Crisis: Manfredo Tafuri and Contemporary Architecture (2013), pp. 172-3, 175.

19011501 GAUA18192223 plans Capital Park West CCTV NNTCWTC models   2429i382   b
19011502 CCTV plan model @ GAUA   2332i25
19011503 Capital Park West plan model @ GAUA   2250i08
19011504 New Not There City World Trade Center plan model @ GAUA   2427i05


20011501   15 Wall 2 House plan elevation   2487i01


21011501   domicile 1963 Fredensborg Houses Sea Ranch Condominiums 1 Maison de l'Homme plans elevation section   218bi01
21011502   Villa dall'Ava model   2276i22



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