2005.05.17 18:38
Sexual Architecture??
Paul Rudolph may indeed be the progenitor of sado-masochistic architecture.
2005.05.17 18:51
hotrod architecture
I never thought of appositional architecture as a reenactment of 'hotrodding' before, but, if the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten.
2005.05.19 15:36
why don't architects know how to work the media?
Maybe some of the problem stems from the (educated?) notion that architecture is some sort of homogeneous product (like milk or beef), where, in reality, architecture is extremely diverse in its many manifestations. Maybe what the public really needs is to see how many architectures are really available to them.
2005.05.23 15:41
nice urban housing in philadelphia
Perhaps Philadelphia's vast housing stock has always been quotidian bricolage.
bricolage: something made or put together using whatever materials happen to be available
quotidian: everyday; commonplace
2005.06.02 13:15
Kubrick, 2001 & 9-11
So the Lunar Monolith reenacts a Miesian slab and God as well?
I wonder how differently humanity would be thinking about architecture these days if the Great Pyramid was still like brand new. Blinded by the light, maybe?
2005.06.08 16:09
any art history majors/undergrads?
You know, it might actually be that art lags behind architecture. I'm not in a position to get into any specifics right now, but let me at least make the suggestion that it is most likely easier for an architect to pick up art history to some depth than it is for an artist to pick up architecture history to some depth.
Like I say, I'm just making a suggestion.
2005.06.08 21:10
An Observation of Contradiction
Good architecture does not come into being without good architectural designers. Same goes for "theory"--good architectural theory does not come into being without good architectural theory designers.
This doesn't mean, however, that a good architectural designer is automatically also a good architectural theory designer, and vice versa.
Similarly, there are good visionaries and there are bad visionaries, and either type of visionary is relatively rare, as in adopting a visionary view does not make one a visionary as well.
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2005.06.16 18:40
didja feel that???
un-science fiction
2005.06.23 11:22
original content
I think original content scares people. I think it especially scares people that want to be original themselves. For example, originality in design makes other designers feel inadequate, although mimesis is guaranteed to follow. There is also the guarantee that some will immediately steal the original content and then quickly try to somehow pass it off as their own.
2005.06.25 13:07
Dear Abra
What is "design in perspective?" Is it a building? Is it an interior design? Are there any historical examples?
If "design in perspective is design in non-Euclidean space," then does that mean it is indeed possible for something man-made to be non-Euclidean and at the same time exist in the overall near-Euclidean space that is our world to begin with? Or could/should the statement read "design in perspective is design OF non-Euclidean space?"
Could it be that human perception of space may be non-Euclidean, but that human imagination has evolved (so far) in a very Euclidean manner?
2005.07.19 17:42
biomimicry and architecture
I see mimicry here all right, but it isn't biology.
2005.08.06 12:21
Dubai: the city of the 21st century!
I heard the Vatican is thinking about buying all the Dubai island reenactments and then build churches on them. It's the only way that they can think of to make the Middle East more Catholic again.
2005.08.23 13:28
Tiring architects VS Real Architects
The late period of artists is often under-rated. Picasso's Late Period was mostly disliked while he was alive--seen as repetitious and unimportant. Yet, with Picasso dead, the late works are not so unimportant anymore, in fact they manifest one of Picasso's most creative periods.
Frank Gehry may be in a wonderful position if he continues to do architecture for another decade or so, because, when he isn't around anymore, his late works might just manifest his most creative period.
I like to look at and study the late periods of artists because of all the facile-ness and confidence and even (if you're lucky) the "I don't give a damn" found there.
Philip Johnson produced an interesting late period, and he did change 'styles' with every new project, yet his overall style has always been reenactionary architecturism.
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2005.08.23 16:30
AMO asks for your response
Can you say why publicity cannot be a foundation of architecture?
2005.09.08 10:54
are the origins common ? can we prove it ?
Do a thesis on the commonality of brainwashing within architectural education within say the last two to three decades. Brainwashing in the sense of becoming blind to what is otherwise self evident. For example, is the Villa Savoye really a house? Yes, it's design intention was for it to be a house, but that's not what it really turned out to be, is it?
2005.09.09 12:08
AMO asks for your response
NOLA, the new Low Country, the new Nether Lands?
AMO as Dutch Treat?
SuperNOLA is next?
Yes, but what if the earth's water level will rise due to the greenhouse effect? What is the real future of the low countries?
2005.09.13 12:27
"design" vs. "styling"
It's probably true that fashion has always been more about style than design. The design of most clothes really hasn't changed all that much over the last century or so, but the style certainly has. Style is basically ephemeral.
Design gets bad when it also becomes ephemeral because that mostly also means that the real underlying design is then planned obsolescence.
2005.09.13 13:16
"design" vs. "styling"
ephemeral (adj)
1. Lasting for a markedly brief time.
2. Living or lasting only for a day, as certain plants or insects do.
ephemeral (noun)
1. A markedly short-lived thing
2005.09.13 13:34
"design" vs. "styling"
It is not that something ephemeral cannot also be design, it is more that "Design gets bad when it also becomes ephemeral because that mostly also means that the real underlying design is then planned obsolescence."
The main reason I see ephemeral designs as not good designs is because the ephemeral things don't just disappear, but become trash. What is most commercial packaging, for example, if not ultimately highly designed trash. Plus that pavilion thingy recently/currently(?) at PS1--it didn't take very long at all for that to get trashy.
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2005.09.13 13:39
"design" vs. "styling"
The muddy water clears up real quick for me as soon as I add 'ephemerality' to the mix.
It even helps in these muddy waters.
2005.09.13 17:05
"design" vs. "styling"
I'm more interested in the self evidence of it all. For example, I like the design of MVRDV's Dutch Pavilion, especially as presented in drawings and within the continuum of their oeuvre. I didn't so much like the Pavilion as built (at least from the images I've seen). And now there is no denying that the Dutch Pavilion is leftover trash, architecture that might be saved or that might be demolished. Overall (so far), the good reality of the design is outweighed by the bad reality of the design.
Is the Dutch Pavilion also stylized? It seems to be so in that a lot of it was also high-maintenance.
Will the design of the Dutch Pavilion ever be a true paradigm for future architecture? I'll say definitely maybe.
2005.09.14 13:40
"design" vs. "styling"
Style now-a-days is largely egalitarian. Almost everything produced today harbors some degree of style. Price (which is supposed to reflect quality) is really the only thing that differentiates styles.
Overall, Modern or contemporary architecture is not a very popular style for living in.
Big Boxes are very efficient designs with little or no style?
The more style added to architecture the higher the maintenance?
My personal style anymore defaults to "no class" offset by an enormous aversion to falsehood. It makes for an easier life due mostly to low maintenance requirements.
The design of my life, however, is very complicated because art is its ongoing goal.
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2005.09.15 13:52
Mat buildings
Given that mat buildings have a strong precedent with Le Corbusier's design for a hospital of Venice, the notion of using similar mat buildings as part of the solution to New Orlean's architectural future isn't all that off the mark.
2005.10.01 12:29
HATE
Modern art always "projects itself into a twilight zone where no values are fixed, he [Leo Steinberg] said. "It is always born in anxiety." Not only that, he said, it is the function of really valuable new Modern art to "transmit this anxiety to the spectator," so that when he looks at it, he is thrown into "a genuine existential predicament." This is basically Greenberg's line, of course--"all profoundly original art looks ugly at first"--but Steinberg made the feeling seem deeper (and a bit more refined). The clincher was Steinberg's own confession of how he had first disliked [Jasper] Johns's work. He had resisted it. He had fought to cling to his old values--and then realized he was wrong. This filtered down as a kind of Trubulence Theorem. If a work of art or a new style disturbed you, it was probably good work. If you hated it--it was probably great.
Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word.
2005.10.11 11:50
Jimmy Venturi's new website...
Perhaps the latest chapter of Learning from Lacunae is "What a lot of architects pretend is not there."
2005.10.12 17:46
Jimmy Venturi's new website...
...like, is it all conscious or sub-conscious, or osmotic even. I like it too because the 'artifacts', the designs, speak for themselves within a much larger architectural continuum.
...and seeing No. 9 again here made me think of the early Gehry three-in-a-row houses in Santa Monica(?), and then a lot of the "glass/wall boxy" houses designed now. And a couple of weeks ago the "pitched roof house" thread and seeing the Vanna Venturi House among the contemporary stuff also brought a perception to my eyes that wasn't there before.
I'll go for the continuum idea as to where architecture is really at.
2005.11.14 09:11
favorite book on Arch[itecture]
Le Corbusier 1957-1965
Volume 7 of the Oeuvre Complète
Virtually all the architecture in this book proved to be well ahead of it's time.
2005.12.02 11:35
Consumerism and Monumentality
I agree that there is a kind of hegemony operating within architecture today (and definitely since the Modern Movement/International Style), but architecture wasn't always that way. Most of architectures' histories are like languages' histories in that they were all tied/related to specific places on the planet and reflected the culture of those places.
Reflecting on what presently constitutes architectural "history," perhaps architecture is now a world trade commodity more than anything else.
Is the next big thing to mix up the fashion brands? Wear your Foster pants with Woods belt over Eisenman panties?
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