1996.08.07
about the Virtual Museum of Architecture
The VMA's core collection consists of x 3-dimensional computer models of unbuilt architectural designs (projects) primarily from the 20th Century. The are, additionally, some 3-dimensional computer models of unbuilt architectural designs from the 18th and 19th Century, including one model of an 18th Century building that no longer exists. The collection also contains a 3-dimensional computer model of Center City Philadelphia.
1996.08.15
about the Virtual Museum of Architecture
The notion of a virtual museum of architecture is a true product of our time. Computer Aided Design (CAD) modeling, the cutting edge technology of Virtual Reality, and the accessibility of the Internet make it now possibly to study, analyse and eventually even "visit" those buildings that have never been built as well as those buildings that no longer exist. (William J. Mitchell, City of Bites: space, place, and the infobahn (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995, p. 59.)
Non Ici (latin for "not there") is a new virtual museum of architecture--perhaps the first--and is based on a core collection of CAD models, construction of which began in 1987. As of 1996, Non Ici's digital collection consists of over thirty individual models of priliminary 20th century unbuilt buildings, a massing model of Center City Philadelphia, a substantial portion of Piranesi's plan of the Campo Marzio , and hundreds of digital drawing files (plans, elevations, axonometrics, perspectives) derived from the core data.
The following is a list of projects already on the museum's aganda:
1. Piranesi's Campo Marzio
2. Le Corbusier's Palais des Congres
3. Stirling's art of interpretation
4. Giurgola and geometry
5. Religious buildings of Kahn
6. Venturi and Rauch's Canton, Ohio
7. Houses under a common roof
8. The architectural promenade
9. Seroux redux
10. Scale and Architecture
11. unbuilt Chandigarh
12. Schinkel's Berlin
13. The Danteum
14. Kahn's Governmental complex for West Pakistan
15.unique and unbuilt domestic architecture
16. VSBA's Frankfurt museum
17. unbuilt Arquitectonica
18. late Corbu
19. any unbuilt Kahn
20. any unbuilt Stirling
21. any unbuilt Corbu
22. any unbuilt Venturi, Scott Brown
1996.09.18
utilizing the old cad system
I thought that I could create some kind of plan for the virtual museum just using what is in the old machine now. I'm not sure where this is headed, but it does hinge on the fact that the old machine will from now on only be used for play, i.e., no new architectural data will be input, so, therefore, the data is now just going to be metabolized. I think what I just said is exactly what the old machine is going to be used for--a metabolization of my existing data.
I can metabolize data in a number of ways:
1. rescale plans and models at odd scales and rotations.
2. mix up all types of databases and drawings
3. zany perspectives
4. wireframe perspectives
5. generate perspectives of 2D data
6. create new building models by combining just pieces of the models I already have
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1996.09.20
large book on architecture
I have thought of doing a large book on architecture that would incorporate all my different ideas and graphics. A loose format would make it easy and I want to experiment with formats as well. I want the vehicle that will allow me to communicate all the ideas that I have. There won't be a specific line of thought, but more a collection of illustrated essays, and just leave it at that. This would be much more work than I am used to doing, but maybe the best way to approach this work is one topic at a time and not worry if one essay is not related to the next I just need to get these essays done for a start.
This book is not the building documentation, although it may incorporate same documentations. In fact, this is making me think that I should keep the model documentation just that, strict documentation without worrying about any kind of analysis.
I will also be able to write about my own projects as well as my ideas of how to manipulate CAD data with the many capabilities of CAD. There are a number of topics that I could address and some are lengthy and some are going to be short. My ideas go all the way back to the very beginning, e.g., patterning, architectural elements, kits of parts, etc. Presently, I want to start manipulating plans and then record the new the new type of collage plans that I want to create. (I wonder if the new data that I generate will be totally original in terms of copyrights?) Anyway, I do have to take this a step further and start to make a more in depth list of what projects I want to do and how I am going to do them, i.e., what work I have to do to get the stuff done. Sometime soon I have to sit down and make a thorough list of what projects I have already started and where I want them to go.
There is just so much that I can do and who knows if I am ever going to get any of this stuff done.
(10.12.96 Most of the above note now relates to the first issue of Not There, which will be dedicated to giving the entire history and evolution of the ideas behind the virtual museum of architecture as I propose to establish it.)
1996.09.23
a book entitled Not There
I have just remembered an idea I had concerning the personal use of my architectural CAD data--a book entitled Not There--the phenomenonology of a virtual museum of architecture. This could be the vehicle that allows me to exploit all the models I have in totally experimental manners purely for the intention of demonstrating what kind of experimentation can actually be done. This could supplant the book idea I wrote about in the previous note.
I don't know, at this point, what the scheme of Not There is, but perhaps I just have to follow the course of action also outlined in the previous note. I know that I am asking much more of myself than I am currently prepared to deal with. I will, however, try to consolidate all my architectural projects and then proceed to sort out ideas from that list. One option is to think of displaying each topic as an individual "exhibit" of the museum. This is going to be a tough project to get rolling because it is always going to be very loose unless I come up with an overriding theme and/or approach that will assist in having the projects/topics fall into place
If I think about it, the whole scale and architecture issue, and the promenade architecturale issue, and the Stirling issues are all part of the museum's agenda, but there is all the building collage and scale manipulation that I also want to be part of what the phenomenology is about.
phenomenology d Husserlian philosophy : a discipline endeavoring to lay foundations for all sciences by describing the formal structures of phenomenon or of both actual and possible material essences that are given through a suspension of the natural attitude in pure acts of intuition.
Right now I am not certain whether the book should just be about the manipulative possibilities without including the essays mentioned above. Well the scale issue is certainly part of the museum's phenomenology. There is much more work that has to be done than is already done, which means I may never get around to doing any of the work because I won't know where to start. Perhaps I do have to start out with some kind of architectural plan and proceed from there or maybe the notion of 3D models is the way to start. (I just have to start with a list of projects that already exist.)
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1996.09.30
CM - documentation
I thought of a great set of drawings (8.5x11 or 11x17) I could do with regard to the Campo Marzio. I will take each individual plan and write down all the info and analysis that I know or think about a particular plan now. The drawing(s) will include a plan at large scale by itself, the plan with its immediate context, facts or interpretations of the plan's formation, typological comparisons, the plan's fit within the overall Campo Marzio scheme, relation to existing (Nolli) conditions, essentially all the facts and analyses I have collected and thought of so far.
Each plan already holds a story for me, and that is the data I want to get down on paper. These drawings very much have the potential to be very Piranesian in their own layout. It may turn out that my analysis of the Campo Marzio is actually going to be a collection of these drawings accompanied by some general text.
1996.10.02
Quondam web site, etc.
Concerning Quondam, it may well work out that I start the website myself and focus the goal of the site as an education to all of what exactly a virtual museum could be and, furthermore, what obsticles there may be in the way of having the museum move forward. I cannot here get into specifics of how the webpages will look and what items they will display, but I can make note of the magazine--Not There--that Quondam will attempt to publish.
Not There will be a periodical directed at clarifying the multivalent potentials of a Virtual Museum of Architecture. It's aim will be to educate all interested parties to the capabilities of CAD once a collection of 3D models become part of a set of usable databases. This is great for me because it is the perfect vehicle for me to experiment like crazy, plus I can include anything that is "not there." An ongonig series of Not There publications may become the elusive book on architecture that has always been my goal. (The periodical will be distinct from the "documents" that Quondam also plans to publish.)
Conceptually, the magazine is wide open to all kinds of flights of fancy. It may just be the perfect vehicle and full of hundreds of drawings. I will here attempt to make a decent start at a list of all topics that will iltimately be presented:
promenade architecturale
Body, Imagination, and Architecture
Quondam man
House in Laguna
Wacko House
Mayor's House
drawing collection
Parkway Interpolation
Philadelphia model - plus
domestic architecture
Scale and Architecture
group elevations
group plans
Seroux d'Agincourt
Krier Speer Durand museum
Campo Marzio - contiguous elements
Campo Marzio 3D model of base
Campo Marzio - typologies
Encyclopedia Ichnographica
Rotunda / Goldenberg - circle/square
library of elements
design of the virtual museum itself - 3D
Stirling / Schinkel - museum
Stirling / Le Corbusier - Olivetti
Houses under a Common Roof
Building collages
building scale manipulation
turning models into skyscrapers
Campo Marzio - scale comparisons
Savoye / Weber comparison
extra elevations of all models
Weber w/Bye
Weber w/Hurva
large fantastic architectural plan
Bye & Absecon collage
Weber / Savoye analysis - inside out
Le Corbusier architecture in the collection
worm's eye views of all the models
Bye House without the wall
Analogous Building
Analogous City / Collage City
Strasbourg documentation
personal Campo Marzio document
zany perspectives
There are indeed already many topics to be addressed and it does seem strange for them all to come from me, but really who else could they come from. I'm just going to do it and that's that. I don't know exactly where I'm going to start, perhaps the best thing to do is to prepare about a dozen of the projects into a next level of working position. Begin by collecting drawings and existing notes and start new texts that explain what the project is about.
One way to look at an "article" is to pick out a specific part of a larger documentation and just treat that aspect as completely as possible. For example, the symbolism of the stage set at Strasbourg, or the Breslauer Platz building at Stirling's Cologne. Topics that are compact and complete in and of themselves; no need for long articles--the documents will do that.
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1996.10.02
my purpose
For Not There I will work on the:
Strasbourg stage set
Campo Marzio contiguous elements
Seroux, Vidler, arch. museum idea, etc.
Corbu collection
Rotonda/Goldenberg/Man
playful skyscrapers
This is quite a list but these are all projects that have been started or projects that can be done by just using data I already have.
I am also going to start the series of Campo Marzio drawings that will focus an individual buildings or complexes; designing drawings full of both graphic and textual data. This may turn out to be like an encyclopedia of the Campo Marzio. This will be a great project and a great document, it will also provide the exact type of preparation I need to perform in perparation of the Campo Marzio document.
In general, I hope that my objectives are all coming together so that practically anything I do will have a further prupose. For example, all my CAD experimentation is now to be compiled into the periodical Not There, beginning with an illustrated essay of what a virtual museum is about.
(10.6.96) The magazine Not There has developed into a totally electronic magazine. ...explaining and documenting the base/core collection...
1996.12.20
Quondam
More than the exhibit, I am thinking about adding much more to the collection, and also beginning the archives. I want to fill as much of the collection as possible with only one to five drawings per model. This will be followed up by the archives under each model. I want to establish the precedents for how each the collection and archives are going to continue to be filled.
First, I am going to have to make additions to The Collection. There will have to be more text and the introduction of subdivisions. There will be opening text explaning how The Collection consists of not only 3D models of unbuilt designs, but also 2D drawings (primarily derived from the models, and a 3D model of Center City Philadelphia as well 2D drawings (base maps) of Center City Philadelphia.
Second, I will have to explain how the images displayed in The Collection are only a sampling of what is possible to be done with the models. The Collection is also not to be confused with exhibits which will have a theme and usually involved more than one model from the collection.
Third, I have to explain the new department of the archives. The archives will be broken down almost exactly the same as the collection. The major difference being that the archive will be more of a list of all the drawings and databases associated with a certain project. There will be some drawings displayed in the archive, but they will generally be smaller (like the back of exhibit catalogues). I'm not sure if any of the lists will be hypertext linked to images in the background. I think I'd rather not and keep the text plain. I will date drawings if I can, and I will explain why a certain building was chosen to be in the collection.
I also want to create Quondam's library where there will be many specific links to architects and buildings in the collection.
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