2007.05.18 14:57
lost endings
What I see in LOST is the same type of convoluted (complicated; intricately involved) storyline filled with clandestine, sort of encyclopedic clues. What seems somewhat unique to LOST though is its way of character development via real time portrayal and flashback. This operation manifests (at least) a double theater, which is a very fecund, indeed baroque, story-telling vehicle that is not often used.
2007.06.24
Quondam as some strange un-scientific fiction architectur(al novel?)
2007.06.25 10:36
For the pleasure of sharing ideas, through the poetry of the printed word
What I'd like to do more of is 'fictitious historical dialogue'.
As of yesterday, reading Duboy (again) along with ongoing Montesquieu and spotty Foucault--bricolage plus letters plus Las Meninas etc. Mix that with 'fictitious historical dialogue' and you have my next book project.
It's a book about all kinds of style. The working title is über œuvred e suicidal. Piranesi hires a Quaker lawyer to fix historical inaccuracies while the Quaker lawyer hires Piranesi to design an historically accurate house. Neither knew of the other's true propensity--playful double-meaning meets good-natured honesty--yet they discover themselves to be a formidable team. You'll think you're laughing and you'll laugh about thinking.
2007.06.25
various inspirations
...been reading Duboy's Lequeu again to pick up on the bricolage. ...today wrote about Piranesi and Miers Fisher (a Quaker lawyer).
The Quaestio Abstrusa backgrounds should become a renewed inspiration. ...start combining past drawings as well as past models.
2007.06.26 11:55
For the pleasure of sharing ideas, through the poetry of the printed word
I love being inspired, thus the new working title of my next book project is The Faux Failing Memory.
The interesting thing about the written word is that you can almost always tell when the author isn't being completely honest. At least I can.
2007.06.26 13:33
For the pleasure of sharing ideas, through the poetry of the printed word
Perhaps at first it's instinctual, and then, as one learns to trust one's instincts, it becomes a skill. That's at least the reader's part. The writer gives off clues within their style. Citing "failing memory" is often such a clue.
Quilian, you're not suggesting that people at archinect aren't always being completely honest are you?!? Such a prick would surely burst the (hot air?) balloon.
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2007.06.26 14:29
For the pleasure of sharing ideas, through the poetry of the printed word
A plain old lie is for sure less honest than memory. Memories are mental reenactments, and, for sure, a reenactment can never be the original. Those are givens.
Yes, one can certainly tell an unwitting falsehood, and that's usually due to not knowing all pertinent information, or some such circumstance. Whereas to actually tell a lie means that indeed the liar does know the honest truth, but chooses not to express it. In which case the memory is indeed truthful, although the expression of the memory isn't truthful.
How exactly does one write selfishly? Is that like writing notes to oneself?
2007.06.26 21:28
For the pleasure of sharing ideas, through the poetry of the printed word
....since this thread is about architectural writing, it is worthwhile noting that Piranesi, within the Ichnographia Campi Martii, utilized plans, plan positionings and Latin labels to create a readable text. This is rare, if not unique, within the realm of architectural writing. You can read the full 'love and war' story here.
You may not have slept through roman architecture class. Perhaps your memory fails you more than you know.
2007.06.26
the working title musuem
... write an architectural novel entitled "the working title museum". ...all the titles and something about them. ...there could be images/plans too.
2007.07.31 17:55
Necessary architecture books
Not just reading other things, how about writing other things too? Architectural literature could be so much more creative.
2007.09.06
next use of Quondam
...utilize the model (and drawing) collection, and Quondam... ...a reflection of all that. The "story" could be Unthinking an Architecture.
The main theme is the virtual place that Quondam is capable of being--a place and an exhibit and a book all at once. Does that add up to some kind of strange new architecture? It might. And there is the notion of connecting all the aspects of Quondam('s collection) together. It might just be the unusual and/or unexpected combination of material that manifests an avant-garde impact.
...may become much more poetry than prose
2007.10.02
innovative program
Figure out a way to make the new arrivals famous for 15 minutes. Perhaps ongoing guest spots on a perpetual reality NYC/TV show with lots of sink or swim competitions and flash-in-the-pan stuff. Fleeting fame really is the new normality.
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2007.10.08
strange architecture idea
I have this vague idea of how to generate virtual architecture via Quondam, and it has to do with "creating" buildings that relate to my letters and notes. It's sort of a mnemonic devise, but also a form of design inspiration as if the various texts were the programs of the buildings. I have no idea of how this approach would be implemented, but I see it as a means to create an environment where all my material connects together.
Part of this idea is also to just start using Quondam as an art/experiment project (as opposed to the archive that it now is). Plus I want the cad graphics to become completely integrated.
OMA Apraksin Dvor St. Petersburg
2008.01.20 13:06
I want to write about architecture....How?
2000.01.20:
"I better stop before I start writing a reenactment novel here."
2008.01.20:
I read Remainder this past Friday; the episodes between Ludwig II and Josef Kainz came to mind--truth is stranger than fiction. Ludwig, too, was a very, very wealthy young man.
"Hey, did you hear the one about another Colonial Williamsburg in Arabia?"
"Gosh, that'd be like reenactment cubed."
"I know, and then they'll start slipping into the fourth dimension."
"Here a Versailles, There a Versailles, Everywhere a Versailles, sigh."
2008.10.29 11:05
books on design strategy
and for ultimate fiction, autoarchiography!
2008.11.13 11:19
I Love Architecture
coincidentally read last night...
"Novelists and philosophers are both obsessed with language, and make themselves up out of concepts. Both, in a way, create worlds. World? But the worlds of the novelist, I hear you say, do not exist. As for that--they exist more often than the philosophers'. Then, too--how seldom does it seem to matter. Who honestly cares? They are divine games. Both play at gods..."
2009.03.08
journal
Started the process of coordinating the Philadelphia model with IQ. Right now the priority is to bring each section up to the level of completeness a la the data existing thus far. This seems to be the right way to go for Quondam because all the various model data of the entire collection will have a three dimensional place. No doubt this will all be a lot of (drone) work, and I hope it will be worth it, as in something worthwhile architecturally will be gained.
But what is this all really about? It does have to do with "using" the museum, and also using history, specifically architectural history.
Other things going on are:
1. reading A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake and seeing how it actually does relate to the ICM, (at least to my interpretation of the ICM). I may ultimately have to read all of Bloomer's Architecture and the Text to make sure I just didn't get her point back them just because I just didn't know any better (about Finnegans Wake).
The other interest in Finnegans Wake is because of the labyrinthine "design" and how I now want to understand and manipulate Quondam as a labyrinthine design. My feeling is that Quondam already is a labyrinth and now I just want to understand and design it better.
2. I want to also employ Quondam as an outlet for architectural fiction, and, right now, the theme of Quondam's architecture fiction is Quondam itself and the buildings in its collection are the novel characters. For what it's worth, I just thought of the Houses for Otto as "ancient" ruins where there are foundational remains but nothing else--we don't even really know if they are/were even houses. (And now I'm seeing how this is very much how Piranesi operated within the ICM and the earlier plans.) In any case, the narrative at Quondam derives from the stories that each building or buildings present.
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2009.03.16 11:28
Venturi's Lieb (No. 9) House to be moved (or demolished)
Historical analysis within a space-time continuum is more ongoing productivity and less end-product.
"architectures in the space-time continuum"
architectural history in the space-time continuum
Pergamon, wo bist du?
I'm beginning to wonder which is more immovable, a building or an opinion.
"[This museum should be regarded as a kind of reliquary containing various mementoes symbolizing not only the eternal brother-conflict, but also the military and diplomatic encounters, exchanges and betrayals of recorded history.] An old woman conducts a party through the museum, pointing out relics from the battle career of her hero Wellington, the Iron Duke. There are exhibits under glass and pictures on the walls. A flag, a bullet, a military hat; Duke Wellington on his big white horse; three soldiers crouching in a ditch; a pair of Naopeon's jinnies, making believe to read a book of strategy; and a sex-caliber telescope through which the Duke trains on the flanks of the jinnies."
JC&HMR
2009.09.01 17:53
fashion tip (of the iceberg)
arbitration and arbitrariness blurred
reality being relative to the vastness of its container
arbitration and arbitrariness come into focus as instinct
realms juxtaposed
"the time it takes to do this" as continuum
i.e., "...to compose this novel in a real/virtual manner. Do you assume this intention needs support from the living?"
background music: ...sounds a blur (in a good way) between Saussure and the debunked Blavatsky, but to no surprise as I have heard the two in the same breathe before.
2009.09.21
what's going on
Ongoing work on the "museum of architects"--once all the texts are formatted add all the date data to the calendar and start to compile a new chronological list of events. The alphabetical list will also be completely linked to the decade lists (via the 'name' tag).
...the history of Quondam; ...early sketch of the morph from Court Gardener's House to Museum of Architecture...
... hints about writing/compiling a "novel" text composed of the earlier archin posts--all of them and somehow filling them out.
2010.09.12
Bufalini--Nolli--Piranesi 02
Piranesi's resultant redrawn plans suggest a methodology whereby the fragmentary plans of Bufalini were used as kernels of ancient fact that, in turn, galvanized newly interpreted redrawings of what once was.
2011.02.09 11:03
7 Wonders (and a half) of POSTMODERN architecture?
Everybody knows Sebastiano Serlio's figurative trilogy: Scena Tragica, Scena Comica, and Scena Satirica.
And yet there seems to be a 'missing scene' from Serlio: the stage set befitting plays for actors. I mean that stage set which does not simply transfigure the real world into fiction but which makes of fiction palimpsest texts.
Demetri Porphyrios
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2011.08.05 18:19
Quondam's Fifteenth Anniversary
Oh, and what do you suppose the difference is between Culture and Random Tangents? Could it possibly be that one is actually inferior to the other? Now that I think about it though, culture today is nothing but random tangents.
2011.09.12 19:00
What would happen if you mix two master architects with opposing styles?
comparative scale :: stylistic contrasts :: programmatic comparisons :: exploring architectural potentials/exercising architectural virtuality :: recombinant architectures :: an other architectural history
2012.01.19 11:47
CONTOURS: The Divisions that Bind Us
...essentially putting ideas into people's mind via fiction.
2012.01.30 14:44
Narrative in architecture / landscape?
Ah yes, Rita Novel. What an apt name for such a paramount figure within the contemporary realm of narrative in architecture.
Regarding the Danteum, see how it fits within the overall sequential/narrative formula of the promenade architecturale: xxxx through to xxxx.
And there's Piranesi's Ichnographia Campus Martius--"While representing a reenacted plan of ancient Rome's Field of Mars, Piranesi ingeniously delineates two narratives--that of pagan Rome and that of Christian Rome--and at the same time offers an unprecedented lesson in urban design.
Within the Ichnographia Campus Martius there is the "Pagan - Christian Triumphal Way," which also fits within the sequential/narrative formula of the promenade architecturale noted above, and there is "Eros et Thanatos," starting at xxxx and going through to xxxx.
I'd also consider looking at John Hejduk's Adjusting Foundations--a somewhat more inscrutible narrative, but almost ceaselessly compelling nonetheless. It's a book I've yet to tire of "reading," although I rarely pay any attention to the words.
2012.05.11 11:51
10 Buildings that Changed America
"When [Bishop] Athanasius sought to overcome resistance from monastic establishments, he chose a more effective strategy than accusing their most respected leaders of demonic possession. Instead he effectively co-opted the most famous of them--Anthony--by writing an admiring biography picturing Anthony as his own greatest supporter. Since Anthony had died, Athanasius had a somewhat free hand, and his biography turned Anthony into a model monk--a model, that is, of what the bishop wanted monks to be. For in his famous Life of Anthony, the sophisticated and fiercely independent teacher known from his letters disappears, and Athanasius replaces him with his own vision of an ideal monk--an illiterate and simple man. So while Anthony's letters show him to be educated in philosophy and theology, Athanasius pictures him as someone who despises educated teachers as arrogant men who are ignorant of God. And although in his letters Anthony never mentions bishops, clergy, or church rules, Athanasius pictures him instead as a humble monk who willingly subordinates himself to the clergy and "the canon of the church." Athanasius also depicts Anthony as one who hates Christian dissidents as much as he did--and who, like the bishop himself, calls them not only heretics but "forerunners of Antichrist." Far from acting as an independent spiritual mentor, Athanasius' Anthony pleads with the bishop to not allow anyone to revere him, especially after his death. As the biography ends, Athanasius pictures Anthony bequeathing all that he has--his sheepskin cloak and his outer garment--to Athanasius and the bishop's trusted ally, Bishop Serapion of Thumis, to show that Anthony regarded them as his spiritual heirs and trusted them to guard his memory."
Elaine Pagels, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, & Politics in the Book of Revelation (2012).
Thus I'd now like to (step back) and address what might just be your real intent, that being to elevate the value of architecture within general culture. My advise to you (specifically as a writer) is to fictionalize this world where you see architectural value elevated. It could be short stories, a novel, or even a series of novels. The point being to create something that "the public" can relate to, consume, and hopefully even be inspired by--essentially putting ideas into people's mind via fiction. Also, forcing yourself to really imagine this world and how it manifests itself might just also deliver solutions to what you see as today's real problems.
Stephen Lauf, in "CONTOURS: The Divisions that Bind Us" (2012.01.19).
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