4 March

1820 birth of John Woody Papworth

Campo Marzio database log
1997.03.04     5397

reenactionary urbanism
2000.03.04     5031 5300

more reenactment than I thought
2001.03.04     5037 8210d

The last imperial artifact of ancient Rome
2001.03.04     e2917 e2967 e2985

A Synopsis of Architecture
2001.03.04     4552

Re: Versailles, sigh
2005.03.04 12:01     3711 5052
2005.03.04 12:12     2141 36ni20b 3786j
2005.03.04 14:53     3727d

Re: base maps
2005.03.04 15:54     3702c 3715

Iconography, or the problem of representation
2006.03.04 12:18     3705l 3730h 3765d 3766 3770n

Anything Muppets: a new method
2011.03.04 11:12     3331r

3 March
2014.03.04 19:45     3702k 3715c

2 March
2015.03.04 09:45     3310i
2015.03.04 11:41     3310i

Vienna plan world's tallest wooden skyscraper
2015.03.04 09:58     3310i

Rahms & Scherenberg   De Artis Musicae   Heidelberg

OMA   PXP Pershing Square   Paris



030304a Axis of Life/B.F. Parkway plans   2110i52
030304b Axis of Life/B.F. Parkway plans   2110i53


040304a Axis of Life/B.F. Parkway plans   2093i11

2005.03.04 12:01
Re: Versailles, sigh
Suburbobliviopolis is how "Here a Versailles, There a Versailles, Everywhere a Versailles, Sigh" ends. The point of this virtual conference paper mostly about 'reenactionary architecturism' inversely culminates with an oblivion engendered via erasure (damnatio memoriae) with ultimate palimpsest. As with any good conference paper, you want to see/receive impressions and constructive reactions. ...the study evokes a new kind of archaeology--digging through strata of data in cyberspace, no less!


2005.03.04 12:12
Re: Versailles, sigh
In the panic after Pearl Harbor, German planes were reported nearing the coast; the Boston Museum rushed its treasures out of sight. The National Gallery in Washington very intelligently secured the vast empty Vanderbilt chateau of Biltmore in the North Carolina mountains, to shelter the chief masterpieces of the Mellon Collection. The Metropolitan first thought, on the example of the National Gallery in London, of an abandoned mine or quarry, and was on the point of taking one up the Hudson. Fortunately, the prolonged drought during which they inspected it came to an end, and water began to seep in just before they were to occupy it. Various empty country houses were offered them. Soon they announced they had taken a country place, "a hundred miles inland." It was Whitemarsh Hall. Priorities on materials were somehow secured; steel racks for paintings were put up in the salon, steel shutters at the windows. Packing cases were piled in the billiard and other rooms.
Other institutions sent their treasures there also, so that if a single bomb had landed it would have destroyed them all. The hysterical rush to put things in Whitemarsh Hall inspired Hardinge Scholle of the Museum of the City of New York, who had at first participated in the movement, to call the house a "monument hystérique."
--George and Mary Roberts, Triumph on Fairmount: Fiske Kimball and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1959).

2005.03.04 14:53
Re: Versailles, sigh
From the air, yes the suburban street layout is "ugly", but the homes from the first wave of developments (1950s and 1960s) are for the most part 'ok' and some are even stylistically intersting, especially those that look to be from the 1950s. And, in general, the old estate is a very nice place to live, even desirable. The group of homes built after the mansion was razed 1980, are the worst though.
If you read through the guestbook at http://www.serianni.com/wh.htm you'll see that for those that grew up near or knowing about the place, the derelict palace was something beyond enchanting. My older brother first took me there in 1970 when he got his driver's license. I was a freshman in high school then, and it was like my first architectural wet dream come true. My goal became to get into every room of the place, and I almost succeeded. Now it's like Learning from Whitemarsh Hall.
Abracadabra's archaeological evocation is great. Very Piranesian. There's reenactment, damnatio memoriae (erasure of memory) and ultimately palimpsest. The landscape telling a story via strata of data.

2006.03.04 12:18
Iconography, or the problem of representation
The surface examples I listed are within the context of electronic screens on buildings, and not meant to imply that iconography cannot have depth as well. Nonetheless, an architecture of just camouflage seems to be an interesting typology.
The main reason for the post, however, was to address the notion of architecture as delivery of content, which was (subsequent to quondam) also addressed by Willem-Jan Neutelings in Icon magazine (January 2006).
Architecture as delivery of content seems to be the opposite of architecture of just camouflage, doesn't it?

11030401 Temple of Poseidon elevation with Arch of Constantine Santa Maria Novella Porta Pia within MAV   2065i01
11030402 Temple of Poseidon columns Arch of Constantine Santa Maria Novella Porta Pia within MAV plan   2065i02


15030401 Wallraf-Richartz Museum @ GAUA model color corrected 1 layer   2227i17   b
15030402 Wallraf-Richartz Museum @ GAUA working model color corrected 2227i18
15030403 Wallraf-Richartz Museum Breslauer Platz @ GAUA original model   2227i19


16030401 Levy Memorial Playground plan site plan 2200x1100 NNTC IQ61   218ai04
16030402 Goldenberg House plan site plan 2200x1100 NNTC IQ64   2179i07
16030403 Trenton Jewish Community Center Day Camp plan site plan 2200x1100 NNTC IQ61   217gi04
16030404 Governor's Palace plan site plan 2200x1100 Chandigarh NNTC IQ59   2177i36
16030405 Danteum plan site plan 2200x1100 Pantheon Paradigm IQ15   2165i13
16030406 Plan Obus site plan image IQ32   2162i01   b


16030401   Rahms & Scherenberg   De Artis Musicae   Heidelberg
16030402   OMA   PXP Pershing Square Building   Paris


17030401 Working Title Museum 005 @ Pantheon Paradigm model work   2379i11


20030401   House II opaque to wireframe work   2211i08


21030401   Sendai Mediatheque structural funnels model opaque   229oi03



2005.03.04 15:54
Re: base maps


Note some of the street names. Stotesbury and Trumbauer, obviously. Cromwell was Eva's first husband (before Ned Stotesbury). Eva's daughter (from the first marriage) married Douglas MacArthur. (Eva's son, James(?) Cromwell, married Doris Duke.) Duveen, the aesthete and fine art dealer told Eva she should build a palace (with a good chunk of Ned's money going into Duveen's pockets). And the Wideners had Trumbauer build Lynnewood Hall which is stylistically the older sister of Whitemarsh Hall.

Remember when we wrote about place names. I was looking for cedar trees in what used to be Cedar Grove, and you noted the birthplace of Oakland "without an oak tree in sight."

Is this all indicative of how 'modern oblivion' operates?

2014.03.04 19:40
3 March

Letters from the space-time continuum obviously have many layers, but, nevertheless, all the passages come from specific calendrical positions along the Earth orbit relative to the Sun. It's all coincidences, but never necessarily consequential. Anyway, an 'aphaca' search pulled up the following:

Holy Thursday three years ago (1 April 1999) is when I first learned of St. Helena and what seemed to be her so far unacknowledged role in architectural/design history. This 'news' was shared with D-L as posts on Good Friday 1999 demonstrate. I had no idea then how much the life and times of Flavia Julia Helena Augusta would become a part of my life, but become a part of my life they certainly did, and a powerfully inspiring part at that.

Holy Thursday yesterday (28 March 2002) is when I went out my front door to pick up the weekly Olney Times off the path to my house. I quickly noticed that a picture of St. Helena's Church, Olney is on the front page, and then the headline:

"At St. Helena's, Cardinal addresses parishioners amid scandal
On eve of Holy Week, stunned congregation learns their pastor is assused of sexual abuse"

It has taken me almost all of the three years research and thinking on St. Helena to come to grips with the whole "silence" in the histories regarding Helena's finding of the True Cross, and the conclusion I came to is that a law of silence regarding Helena and the Cross was indeed issued by Emperor Constantine (Helena's son). Furthermore, it became clear (to me) that within St. Ambrose's obituary of Emperor Theodosius the silence of Helena and the Cross had finally been broken--and this is documented within EPICENTRAL's "Theatrics Times Two".

As the recent event's within the Roman Catholic Church in the USA sadly make clear, 'laws of silence' still exist in our time, however, breaking the silence, like the Boston Globe did in January (was it the 18th of January 2002, which is the date of Theodosius' death in 395 and the date of the first King of Prussia in 1701?), is exactly what has to be done.

As the fighting in the Holy Land now escalates to a new level, it becomes a little difficult for me to take "old news" too seriously, but, nonetheless, you might find the results of a web search on 'constantine' and 'aphaca' interesting.

I'm enjoying Nancy Spector's long essay within The Cremaster Cycle book. Talked on the phone yesterday with an artist/friend that read the New Yorker article, and he said the article was good and informative as well.

The irony (for me) of the current 'crisis' within the US Roman Catholic Church is that Constantine, especially after the death of Helena (ref. Eusebius Vita Constantini Book III) went particularly after those pagan sects where the priesthoods were predominantly homosexual in their 'practices'. Apparently, the Temple of Aphaca (pronounced a-f$ck-a?) was a real hot bed. I wonder if there was also an Aphaca U. (football team).

Read the passages within Eusebius' Life of Constantine, Book III, Chapters 54-58, demolition of the shrine at Aphaca in particular. These demolitions of pagan temples are recorded immediately following the chapters about the Christian church building projects in the Holy Land and other locations in the East. I find the (historical) juxtaposition of Constantine's creative and destructive religious activities interesting--while Christianity was beginning to be 'built', paganism was starting to be 'demolished', and seemingly starting with the more homosexually oriented cults.

"The emperor's next care was to kindle, as it were, a brilliant torch, by the light of which he directed his imperial gaze around, to see if any hidden vestiges of error might still exist. And as the keen-sighted eagle in its heavenward flight is able to descry from its lofty height the most distant objects on the earth, so did he, while residing in the imperial palace of his own fair city, discover as from a watch-tower a hidden and fatal snare of souls in the province of Phoenicia. This was a grove and temple, not situated in the midst of any city, nor in any public place, as for splendor of effect is generally the case, but apart from the beaten and frequented road, at Aphaca, on part of the summit of Mount Lebanon, and dedicated to the foul demon known by the name of Venus. It was a school of wickedness for all the votaries of impurity, and such as destroyed their bodies with effeminacy. Here men undeserving of the name forgot the dignity of their sex, and propitiated the demon by their effeminate conduct; here too unlawful commerce of women and adulterous intercourse, with other horrible and infamous practices, were perpetrated in this temple as in a place beyond the scope and restraint of law. Meantime these evils remained unchecked by the presence of any observer, since no one of fair character ventured to visit such scenes. These proceedings, however, could not escape the vigilance of our august emperor, who, having himself inspected them with characteristic forethought, and judging that such a temple was unfit for the light of heaven, gave orders that the building with its offerings should be utterly destroyed. Accordingly, in obedience to the imperial command, these engines of an impure superstition were immediately abolished, and the hand of military force was made instrumental in purging the place. And now those who had heretofore lived without restraint learned self-control through the emperor's threat of punishment, as likewise those superstitious Gentiles wise in their own conceit, who now obtained experimental proof of their own folly."



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