From: Stephen Lauf
To: design-l@lists.psu.edu
Subject: Re: Quondam's agenda
Date: 1999.01.09
Brian states:
The schizo-architecture, then, arises for me in comparison with virtual architecture, and the creation and destruction of buildings in this realm. This is most directly related to Steve Lauf's work at Quondam, a Virtual Museum of Architecture, as it has to address issues such as these in the present and future--
Steve replies:
1. I never played a video-game in my life, and therefore would/could not venture to address the issue of video-game architecture. The children of some of my closest friends play video-games all the time, and watching them do it is the closest I've ever come to the games. Personally, they never appealed to me, but that is not to say that the 3D design therein are not worthy of analysis and even appreciation. I'm just not qualified to do that type of thing.
2. schizophrenia + architectures is about the constructive/destructive nature of two brothers, which potentially extends to a constructive/destructive relationship between schizophrenia and architecture. The most common symptom of schizophrenia is the hearing of voices, and not so much split or multiple personalities. In the schizophrenic's case, it was(is) the voices that told/tells him he was/is someone other than himself, and it was/is the voices that told/tells him that the people around him are other than who they are. Beyond that, the schizophrenic here is an extremely rare case (perhaps a true one of a kind) in that he is a limited functional post-lobotomy schizophrenic--he is literally "not all there". Is the real mission of schizophrenia + architectures then to unfold and disclose a "limited functional post-(traumatic)lobotomy architecture"? We shall have to wait and see.
3. Rather than look at the potential virtues of video-game architecture, I believe the more significant challenge within the realm of architecture is the acceptance and design of "real" virtual buildings. For example, is Quondam "real" virtual architecture?
4. Quondam began because of a substantial collection of computer models of significant architectural designs that were never built. Quondam is thus primarily a museum that is "not there" about architecture that is "not there", and the key to its "existence" is precisely the internet/world wide web. Quondam is well aware of the technological and electronic medium within which it builds and designs, and, almost ironically, chooses to remain fairly "low-tech" in its web page designs for the very reason of sustainability. Simply put, Quondam is concerned with uncovering those natures of architecture that already exist but are nonetheless mostly unseen.
5. Regarding archeology and archeological reconstructions, Quondam is already doing the architectural community a huge service in presenting the first full scale analysis of Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii, a plan that unfortunately most of the architectural and art historical world today believes to be, because of the writings and teaching of Tafuri, a fragmentary cacophony of architectural meaninglessness. It turns out that Tafuri was, as far as the Campo Marzio is concerned, almost entirely wrong, and therefore much of his polemic, which fuels a large portion of today's architectural theory and higher education, is seriously questionable.
Quondam's agenda is already very full, but it still only addresses a fraction of architecture's multitudinous issues. There should be many, many other virtual museums of architecture.
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