Incidentally, every instance of Le Corbusier's Museum for Unlimited Growth is listed within Colomina's "The Endless Museum: Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe" (Log 15) except for the last instance, which is within the International Planning Competition for Berlin.
| |
Computers are not competing with thinking.
Chronosomatic architecture: circle/square juncture plans, Washington DC 1981, chronosomatic imaginations; could be the next chapters, including architecture of the body and architecture of the theory itself; architecture of the continuum; of course, go through all the notes including BIA. "Architecture of the imagination" as in "there is an architecture to the imagination."
Maybe like a month later, she dominated the conversation at the small dinner. There was lots of architecture talk. She or someone she knew was collecting all the latest in architectural jargon. "So what are some of the words?" She wouldn't (or couldn't) say. And then there was talk of the Italian Rationalists. "Don't forget Sartoris." "Oh! Sartoris! You know he's still alive!?" Towards the end, her husband said he'd like to do an in-depth study of VSBA's domestic architecture. "How about the Brant House Addition?" "Wow, now there's an obscure project."
Design some new double basilicas; write the history; ask today's architects what the new double basilicas might be? Arab-Israeli? Catholic-Protestant? Again Latin-Greek?
Lavin now calls it Kissing Architecture, Quondam has been calling it Appositions.
| |
Most recently, it's too bad Vidler doesn't include Le Corbusier's International Planning Competition for Berlin in his analysis of Stirling's Roma Interrotta.
For the sake of the argument here, computers greatly augment/assist instinctive/intuitive design thinking. Designing instinctually/intuitively (for example, Villa Savoye derivatives) doesn't mean you're designing without thinking.
Architecture is the most 'project' based of the arts. Is there such an established category as "project art"?
I've been writing all day, actually. I have to finish up a paper I'll be presenting in Brussels, Belgium next week (Thanksgiving Day, which, in case you don't know, comes after Ax Wednesday). The paper is on Piranesi's Campo Marzio, and today I've been writing the section entitled "love and war." Here's my favorite paragraph:
Atop the bluffs along the south bank of the Petronia Amnis, Piranesi situates a series garden villas among a scattering of other building types. The planning of the villas individually is orderly, if not also symmetrical, yet, in relation to one another, the grouping of the villas appears completely disorganized. Once the names of the various buildings is understood, however, a distinctive pattern develops. The first and largest villa is the Horti Lucullani, the Gardens of L. Licinius Lucullus, which, in 46 AD "belonged to Valerius Asiaticus, but were coveted by Messalina, who compelled the owner to commit suicide." Messalena was the nymphomaniac wife of the emperor Claudius. Next to the Horti Lucullani is the plain and simple Horti Narcissi; Narcissus was the name of the freedman of Claudius by whose orders Messalena was put to death. Next to the Horti Narcissi is the triangular Horti Anteri. There was no real garden of Anteri in ancient Rome, but there was such a thing as an anteros, which is an avenger of slighted love, or, in this case, love triangles. Then there is a bath complex in honor of Venus, the love goddess herself, and then a nympheum named for Tiberius, an emperor known for his fondness of pornography. And, at the edge of the Ichnographia, there is the Viridarium Lucii Cornificii, a pleasure garden with two building extensions clearly phallic in plan. Finally, among these structures of love and lust are two Turres expugnandae, military defense towers whose plans no doubt represent substantial erections.
I too go to Temple's campus quite often, and thus I am also aware of what types of student's works are produced there. In fact, I was at the architecture building today, using the library. There is an exhibit there now, which, when I first walked in, I thought was a student exhibit. Then I soon enough found out the exhibit was of recent work by Morphosis. It wasn't that the work was unprofessional and thus looked like student work, rather more that many students today are doing projects that emulate Morphosis. Anyway, I'm going to go back to the exhibit to take lots of digital images. Then I'm going to put together an online version of the exhibit.
What's the problem?
Aggressive, stark and awkward were the only words I needed!
Villa Savoye did look precise though.
|