2010.10.09 22:07
Le Corbusier a Nazi simpathizer?
"...all buildings constructed after 1950 contain an expiration date, the death of architecture equals, potentially, the rebirth of the city."
--who said that?
The same goes for academic babble control?
Dmitri Chechulin did eventually manage to realize the design of the Aeroflot Building in another incarnation--the RSFSR House of the Soviets (the Russian Parliament, colloquially known as the White House), completed in 1981.
Architects under Stalin, let's hear it for them!
just e.g.
Alexei Dushkin, N. Knyazev, Autozavodskaya metro station, Moscow, 1943.
and all that other triumphalism.
2010.10.13 11:23
Le Corbusier a Nazi simpathizer?
"Art fears neither dictators nor repression; nor yet conservatism and cliché. If required, art can be narrowly religious or crudely statist; it can strip itself of all individuality and still retain its greatness. Art is flexible enough to fit into every Procrustean bed proffered by history . . ."
Andrei Sinyavsky
Start talking about the art [architecture] involved and see what happens.
Anyone here remember damnatio memoriae?
Or is it "how soon they forget" to forget?
What's next?
Actually, there is no "law of silence" subject heading within wikipedia. Perhaps someone should fix that. Perhaps even someone who has personal experience with...
"Hey, shut up! Or else!"
"And as for you all, You must stop listening to that!"
2010.10.15 15:39
Can Someone Explain the Meaning of Projective Practice?
"To understand what exactly is meant by these terms hermeneutic and material practice it is perhaps more interesting if we compare them with a third term 'projective practice' which aims at a very similar redefinition of practice and places these 'redefinitions' in the context of the current debate described earlier. The term 'projective' is put forward in the article 'Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism' by Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting. When Somol & Whiting introduce the term 'projective'. They also address the problem of the theory-practice distinction but in a far more indirect way, in their argument these are still very much intertwined. The article starts off with the heading "from critical to projective". This needs some further explanation. . ."
Edwin Gardner, 2010.10.12
Lots of similar articles all over the web.
I remember enjoying Aureli and Orazi's "The Solitude of the Project" and maybe this time I'll again finish Tafuri's "The Historical 'Project'".
As to definitions, this is my favorite:
projective 1 b : not metrical : not involving size and measurment but only relative position, incidences, and coincidences
especially the coincidences.
Like I've already said, all the world's a next stage.
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2010.10.15 15:57
Le Corbusier a Nazi simpathizer?
Start talking about the art [architecture] involved and see what happens
Or is this just a projective coincidence?
2010.10.27
does abstruse architecture theory work like this?
from Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, p. 204:
"In commenting on his creation, which he acknowledged to be a modest and slightly silly contribution to the fledging field of natural-language processing, Weizenbaum observed how easy it is for computer programmers to make machines "behave in wondrous way, often sufficient to dazzle even the most experienced observer." But as soon as a program's "inner workings are explained in language sufficiently plain to induce understanding," he continued, "its magic crumbles away; it stands revealed as a mere collection of procedures, each quite comprehensible. The observer says to himself 'I could have written that.'" The program goes "from the shelf marked "intelligent" to that reserved for curios."*
*Weizenbaum, "ELIZA."
With regard to "I could write (do) that," is this what happens when architecture theory is written in plain language? And, conversely, is some architecture theory abstruse so others think (implicitly) "I couldn't do that"?
2010.11.13 11:41
I'm apologizing in advance.
Perhaps the days of worthwhile-content-given-freely is steadily on the downswing (perhaps especially when given freely to an otherwise profitting site).
If worthwhile content received remuneration, there'd be lots of discourse.
2010.11.14 18:00
Verisimilitude
All architecture is artificial, even to the point where you can say that architecture is the most artificial thing on this planet. And if architecture is to be truthful, it can really only be truthful to its artificiality. Moreover, it is that architecture that most pushes its artificiality to the extreme/edge that becomes the best architecture.
I'm speaking here mostly of real architecture, designs that are built. Virtual architecture (designs that could be built but aren't) and post-real virtual architecture (architecture that was built but no longer exists) express their truthfulness in other ways.
2010.11.15 10:12
Verisimilitude
Technological consumption is a crafted reality.
2010.12.07 16:06
"On Criticism" an aggregate thread
For me, criticism has always been an un-strictly-written phenomenon. The intended results come much quicker that way.
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2010.12.08 11:07
"On Criticism" an aggregate thread
Exactly five years ago today I successfully suggested what Koolhaas's 2006 Serpentine Pavilion would look like. Did Rem even know [what it would look like] at the time?
2010.12.08
Stirling's Roma Interrotta and Le Corbusier's Berlin 1958
The clear precedent for Stirling's Roma Interrotta scheme is Le Corbusier's International Planning Competition for Berlin 1958. In the Corbu scheme we find several prior projects distributed throughout the plan.
2010.12.22 17:14
Predict the new "-ism" for 2011.
Esqueism
as in ism is out and esque is in
Romanesqueesque
Industrialesque
Modernesque
Post-Modernesque
Deconstructionistesque
Boxesque
Blobesque
Furnessesque
LouisIKahnesque
Stirlingesque
Hejdukesque
ScottBrownesque
Eisenmanesque
OMAesque
HdMesque
MVRDVesque
Zahaesque
Whiteesque
Grayesque
Greenesque
2011.01.01 11:29
Gehry @ Sydney
Anyone else remember Eisenman's proposal for development around Ground Zero from 2002?
I can't tell if the genetic pool is shrinking or expanding.
Q: Which came first, repetition or difference?
A: A reenactment of a reenactment turned sideways.
The "teen" years = wise-ass architecture.
2011.01.08 11:00
"On Criticism" an aggregate thread
...a virtual museum of architecture
collecting
a project
curation
critique
institutional critique, even (perhaps a virtual museum is what a real museum cannot be)
voices
continually reshaped
agendas
globally readable
cado coda
architecture as the delivery of content
In the future, 15 years of hypercritique will be famous.
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2011.01.12 17:03
"On Criticism" an aggregate thread
If a building design is built and finished, what's the real use of being critical of it? It's doubtful that any criticism will change a building once it's already built. If the criticism is positive, does that mean the design should thereafter be emulated? Or, conversely, if the criticism is negative, does that mean the design should thereafter be completely avoided? Does it really just boil down to approval or rejection?
Personally, I'm more comfortable being critical of design process, which involves how a building design (built or not) arrives at its finished state. The object of such criticism is to illuminate how the creative mind operates.
2011.01.12 21:03
"On Criticism" an aggregate thread
Criticism is not a post-rationalization of the processes.
Criticism requires research, investigation, thorough observation and even some analysis of the material at hand. There may be some explaining, but there is likely more a fair dose of qualified interpretation.
There are a nimiety of buildings of good (or bad) design, and that's about all that's worth saying about them. It's the building designs that elicit deeper thought that are worth critiquing.
2011.01.13 15:23
minimalism, dead at 38
maximum partisan rhetoric
minimal tolerance
2011.01.14 12:02
7 Wonders (and a half) of POSTMODERN architecture?
Charles Holland at Fantastic Journal:
b-sides
I'm currently involved in writing a book re-appraising architectural Post Modernism. It's top secret, hush-hush. Part of it contains a top ten of Po-Mo moments, which I realise makes it sound like a rather ugly box of chocolates. Anyway, now that the final mix has been agreed I thought I'd share a few of the ones that didn't make the final cut.
Anyway, here's a selection of 'id' moments:
Gooding House aka Weight-Watchers House
Ur-Ottopia House
Good-bye House
Gooding Trice House
Gooding Trice Villa
Psycho-Suburban Poché
Alas, travels in Hyper Reality
the proverbial "are we there yet?"
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