2007.06.03 23:54
Archinect @ Postopolis!
I'd say a de-territorialized critic is even more dangerous.
2007.06.04 00:08
Archinect @ Postopolis!
Not so much outside, rather, more beyond inside. Very much in the territory, but not within the normal restraints of the territory.
If you're in the fourth dimension, does that mean you can have your cake and eat it too?
2007.06.19
Eikonic precursors
2005.12.08
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2007.06.22 15:03
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
Haven't you heard, Zeitgeist is so yesterday!
2007.06.23 11:33
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
There is a lot of structural and spatial and design innovation going on that makes 'signature buildings' more than only a commercial backdrop. Many 'signature buildings' actually make significant contributions to architectural history. Perhaps a more real issue it that the distinction betweeen hype and history is completely ignored to the point where the hype is what becomes a much distorted history.
2007.06.23 12:56
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
So, within the 'star system' who then are the "stars" and what form-buildings got the press? As large as the realm of architecture is, it's still a finite set, so we can actually be specific rather that general. Gehry, Koolhaas, Eisenman, Hadid--are these at least on the list of 'who is a starchitect'?
How buildings get press is what should be much more studied. For example, having "Guggenheim" attached to any building design will get lots of press because the Guggenheim already has a whole staff department devoted to generating press, besides the fact that the major mission of the institution itself is to exhibit. Ironically, the "Virtual Guggenheim" by Asymptote was pretty much literally just press.
If starchitects are really just pseudo celebrities, is that then already a sign of just how relative starchitect status is?
Is "a style" really such a bad thing? I actually see a lot of diversity from architect to architect, and even with a specific architect's oeuvre there is often diversity at least via nuance, if not actually just plain diversity. I thus question the full validity of "same bag of (increasingly superficial) formal tricks."
One could also argue that there is now-a-days a whole lot more critical architectural criticism going on, but it all right away falls into various camps--New Urbanism, Bilbao effect, anti-starchitect, etc.(?)
Most people I know know absolute nothing about architectural style. I'd go so far as to say that even most architects don't know all that is really going on design-wise now-a-days.
"Lesser known architects follow the public's new tastes."--that sounds very subjective to me.
"Architecture" loses yet another battle." --Is an imaginary battle really a battle? Can an imaginary battle really be lost?
I'll leave it at that, but I think the second set of points of regarding Archigram and backlash casts much too large a net, with big holes. Somewhat insular itself even.
parting shot:
Architects can well design buildings, put I don't think they'll ever be able to design clients.
2007.06.24 14:10
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
Funny how the lion's share of great architecture was created before there even was a camera with film.
My favorite line from Mann's Joseph and His Brothers comes almost at the very end--"They used their own lenses."
Maybe I'm rare, but the top of the list of my preferred architectural representation has always been the ichnographia, the plan view, and the photographic image almost always at the bottom of the list, except when it's fucked by context--site of street shooting a day or two after the theaters here were opened.
Has the preferred photographic architectural image really only blinded "us" to the actual relativity of it all.
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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
the working title musuem
I could write an architectural novel entitled "the working title museum". It could be all the titles and something about them. I suppose there could be images/plans too. It sounds like a lot of work now. It will probably never happen, except I could make it a part of Quondam
2007.07.11 16:45
Verb: Featured Discussion
Is it all still pretty operative criticism?
Perhaps architectural criticism needs to begin operating differently where:
some criticisms are extreme™
some criticisms are fertile™
some criticisms are pregnant™
some criticisms are assimilating™
some criticisms are metabolic™
some criticisms are osmotic™
some criticisms are electro-magnetic™
some criticisms are total frequency™
But maybe that will only happen when (we begin to realize that):
some architectures are extreme™
some architectures are fertile™
some architectures are pregnant™
some architectures are assimilating™
some architectures are metabolic™
some architectures are osmotic™
some architectures are electro-magnetic™
some architectures are total frequency™
2007.07.11 17:52
Verb: Featured Discussion
C(riticism) = m(ainstream)Ad(vertising)²
2007.07.12 09:29
Sarcastic Architecture
Is sarcasm more of a dark comedy? (I always thought so.)
Is seminal post-modern pastiche also sarcastic? I suppose it did taunt establishment Modernism keenly (and perhaps even somewhat bitterly?). Although one could say establishment Modernism became much more embittered because of it.
The D+S example above intrigues me the most. It is indeed taunting and you can almost taste the bitterness. (Not exactly architecture though.)
Perhaps Rossi haunts more than taunts.
Does any sarcastic architecture wound feelings? The Eisenman West Avenue proposal (next to Ground Zero) seems to have that potential.
Has Koolhaas (subliminally?) made a whole career out of taunting and bitterness?
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2007.07.12 22:33
Sarcastic Architecture
MVRDV have an interesting way of taking things/concepts to an extreme. Have they maybe learned from "Exodux, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture"? I like their imagination nonetheless. A breed of Dutch sarcasm utilized when most useful?
"Holy Stations of the Cross, Batman!"
2007.07.18 08:35
on aesthetics
The fractured standard is just that, fractured. There is no universal, and indeed there never really was. Just look at what was going on (somewhat globally) in the early 1730s. There is no real universal standard, rather standards were then (and still are?) relative to place.
2007.07.18 09:37
on aesthetics
I'm not exactly sure how "any definition of place is going to be arbitrary."
There is a somewhat unquestioned methodology to architectural history, which categorizes types of architectures by period (time) and location (place). And this is mostly a Western European standard. Yet architectural history is rarely written where it demonstrates how types of architectures actually overlap when architecture is culled from all over the globe at any given time.
If you're not arbitary about place and simply say the globe, and then look to see what types of architecture were being done (on the globe) at any given time, you'll see just how diverse architecture always was. Interestingly, this is how we judge the present (and conclude that standards are fractured), but it's not how the past is/has been judged.
I agree that architecture for the most part is arbitrary in the sense that most architecture reflects a set of specific decisions (arbitration), but only a small percentage of architecture is outright whimsical. Personally, it's refreshing to see just how diverse architecture has always been.
Otherwise, the real modus operandi of aesthetics is "what is the cash value?"
2007.07.23 09:54
Selling Out: Architects and their Archives
commodify the artifact
virtualize and open source the archive
2007.07.31 11:36
Learning from Las Vegas + SMLXL = Dubai
flip up
flip down
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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.
2007.08.04 14:41
Koolhaas & Eisenman Discuss "Urgency" at the CCA
About 180 more years of an architecture dominated by the combined assimilating and metabolic imaginations, and then roughly 500 years of an architecture dominated by a pure metabolic imagination. All the while the profane osmotic imagination remains in the background. So much for the physiology, morphologically a bi-polar structural network will continue to branch and grow (till completion c. 3091).
2007.08.04 17:32
Koolhaas & Eisenman Discuss "Urgency" at the CCA
I thought the point was Archaeologies of the Future.
'Opaque' perhaps, but never without clues. The way I see it Koolhaas's architecture becomes him while Eisenman becomes his architecture. [Vanbrugh is at the top of the list if that helps.]
"Pejorativity" is an important chapter in The Irrelevancy Style of Architecture.
My tendencies are more coincidental than anything else.
2007.08.06 09:02
not looking forward to
I never went to grad school and all I do is "explore and expand upon my most deeply-felt interests."
2007.08.08 12:11
spreading like a virus...(discuss)
I wouldn't confuse the issue by right away associating 'newness' with 'stuff'. Concentrate on the newness factor, whether it's a brand new home or a renewed central business district, and start to imagine how newness can be somehow packaged differently.
2007.08.20 18:03
thesis... phenomenology
Is there any proof that "we can't inhabit it--outlandish, novel architecture--in a meaningful way"?
2007.08.20 21:27
thesis... phenomenology
Where is the proof "that architects write theories then build buildings in relation to the text, and then act as if the building is a proof of their ideas"?
2007.08.21 11:27
"...a shift into spontaneous mode,
Instinct is not the same thing as reason. To start with, instinct is much quicker.
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