2007.03.10 20:42
...and speaking of random tangents
"In the summer of 1800, when the architect was away on his wedding trip, [John] Barber absconded, taking with him a considerable sum of money and all the most valuable office and personal papers."
--Hamlin
And the John Barber Award for Architectural Deviance goes too...
2007.04.23 17:08
Featured Discussion: Volume
Firminy church by Le Corbusier
Hurva synagogue by Kahn
composition 1a : the act or action of composing : the formation of a whole especially by different things being put together
To confuse or not to confuse, that is de-territorialization?
The church/synagogue composition came as a result of seeing how the plan of the church fit almost perfectly within the sanctuary(?) of the synagogue. And, since I had a model of both buildings, I just wanted to see the superimposition in 3D. And upon seeing that I thought, "Gosh, that kinda looks like a mosque." Trust me, de-territorialized thinking isn't necessarily brilliant, although for the most part uninhibited.
Anyway, back to Volume....The reporter on the radio just said, "Heavy volume on Passyunk Aveune..." Hey, traffic would make a great theme for a heavy issue. Trafficking in Architecture--I wanna write about stolen goods.
I think Passyunk is an old 'Indian trail'. Wow, Philadelphia's Indian trails, talk about de-territorialization.
2007.04.25 10:24
Featured Discussion: Volume
"...a 'hard copy' tool that brings in more architectural clients..." -- Was Le Corbusier subliminally advertising? Did the publication of SMLXL coinciding with an exhibit at MoMA bring Koolhaas/OMA more clients? I'll say probably and probably.
(I assume) clients look for someone they can trust, and they probably do that by seeing what architects are already trusted.
But your answer is viable, nonetheless. Just also be aware that the architectural field is repleat with (subliminal) copy-cats.
The client asks:
Are you an architectural brand or are you an architectural knockoff?
The architect responds:
That depends, are you a brand client or are you a knockoff client?
How many clients do you think I'd attract with "hardcopy" entitled Volume and Congestion?
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.
| |
2007.06.26 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.
2007.07.30 19:16
Necessary architecture books
worth holding your breath for....
Towards a Squeezed-Out Architecture
Heavy Volume Everywhere
The Architect Came Twice (in foreign tongue)
One Size Fits All
2007.07.30 22:20
Necessary architecture books
a must for all clients:
Does Your Architect Wear Boxers or Blobs?
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.
2007.08.08 12:03
spreading like a virus...(discuss)
[googled "redesigning newness" and received no results]
Redesigning Newness: Architecture's Search for an Answer to Sprawl
2007.10.17 18:18
The Vanity Press
The Journal of Artificial Parameters constantly asks for my work, and I keep telling them I prefer the work remain virtual.
2008.01.15 17:25
The Best of Rita Novel Anytime
The novel I'm reading now is a non-theory Western--Bling, Blang and Blog.
2008.03.19 12:39
Eisenman vs Zumthor theoretical approach
Wow, Kejduh's "The Imagination of Embryonic Development" flies better than time!
Yeah, that and Le Deuzzy's "Shoaling".
| |
2008.04.05 10:32
READING LIST
Page 68 of Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media is loaded, and the dyslexical error therein provides a spark capable of igniting an explosion. More truth may in fact lie with the notion that the attributes of memory and remembrance are indeed interchangably fluid rather than strictly opposed. Le Corbusier's 'doctoring' of photography (as discussed in the chapter after page 68) even seems to be a perfect example of the interchangable fluidity of memory and remembrance.
--Balloon and Prick: Modern Reading as Virtual Architecture, (forthcoming).
2008.04.15 18:10
Floor Plans
Institute of Indigestion
You R what U eat Department
2008.05.19 20:47
The Official Paradigm Shift thread
After reading "Shifting Paradigm Part I" and "Shifting Paradigm Part II" (which really didn't impress me), Koolhaas's "Typical Plan" text came to mind. I'll read it again more carefully. I feel there might be some connection to 'generic-ness' and the decorated shed. Maybe not.
some great quotes though:
Typical Plan provides the multiple platforms of 20th-century democracy.
Typical Plan is minimalism for the masses.
Typical Plan knows what European architecture will never learn.
...it is architecture as mantra.
I'm secretly working on Plan Atypical.
| |
2008.05.20 09:45
The Official Paradigm Shift thread
Seven Typical Plans of Ambiguity or Plan Atypical
The first typical plan of ambiguity arises when a detail is effective in several ways at once.
In the second typical plan of ambiguity two or more alternative meanings are fully resolved into one.
The condition for the third typical plan of ambiguity is that two apparently unconnected meanings are given simultaneously.
In the fourth typical plan of ambiguity the alternative meanings combine to make clear a complicated mind in the architect.
The fifth typical plan of ambiguity is a fortunate confusion...
In the sixth typical plan of ambiguity what is designed is contradictory or irrelevant and the user is forced to invent interpretations.
The seventh typical plan of ambiguity is that full of contradiction, marking a division in the architect's mind.
5, 6 and 7 are my favorites.
2008.07.29 08:40
I smell a Vorläufer
Ven Izsent, Architecture Exaggerated (Hypopolis: Universe of Overstate Press, +/- the future).
"It's like architecture as gaseous giant. And Izsent is a prick."
--The New Diminishing Globe
2008.07.31 16:32
It rocked Eisenman on his chair...
It wasn't enough that Maria remained a virgin consort to a 14 year-old Emperor, she then had to witness the only English Pope take her sarcophagus for himself. She's now writing The Plays of Nicholas Breakspear.
2008.08.02 09:22
I smell a Vorläufer
There's no argument as to the existence of architectural precedents, rather that the precedents themselves manifest a nimiety of diversity.
more from Oresko...
"But probably the most important and wide-reaching effect Piranesi had upon his friend was the transmission of his notion of artistic licence. The concept of abstracting the elements of classical culture and then rearranging them into a pattern of one's own was developed and expounded largely by Piranesi. As with Inigo Jones, it is obvious that Robert Adam cast his intellectual net widely and borrowed from a staggeringly rich variety of classical, Renaissance, Baroque and contemporary sources. But, again with Jones, his scholarly tabulation of a seemingly inexhaustible number of architectural details and the concomitant reliance upon earlier modes for inspiration did not result in Adam's being a mere copyist or pasticheur. Elaborating upon Piranesi's doctrine of artistic licence and relying upon what he saw as the authentically classical approvel of the individual artist's genius, Adam blended his elements, what ever their source, into his own personal manner, and the compound which resulted was always pure Adam."
Is Unarrested Architecture written by otherness?
"Rather is it a matter of destabilizing the current assumptions by admitting otherness in a way that disturbs the very concept of architecture and the architect. It is time for expanded architects to publicly explore the enigmas and destabilizing elements of all buildings rather than repress them, allowing the mystery or instability of the built object that attracted them in the first place to come to the surface, and admitting mystery into their own stories."
--Wigley, 2006.
You know, Wigley actually told me it was indeed fate that I was there (in Brussels, 1999), because I had already manifest what was the point of the closing address he was to deliver the next day. I guess he smelled a Vorläufer.
| |
2008.08.07 08:44
I smell a Vorläufer
"The errors that Robert Adam detected in Palladio's drawings for the reconstruction of the 'Baths', published in 1730 as Fabbriche antiche disegate da Andrea Palladio, encouraged a dismissive attitude to Palladio and led him to question the accuracy of the renaissance as a reliable recorder of classical architecture. It became easy for the brothers to delude themselves into thinking that they alone possessed a deep insight into the antique and had the knowledge necessary to correct the errors of renaissance draughtsmen. But such an arrogant stance was more a public one, which did not stand in the way of their serious study of the renaissance or their need to borrow directly from it, from time to time. The enormous variety found there appealed to them as much as the inventive classicism of the antique."
Tait
Just as an aside, Fabbriche antiche disegate da Andrea Palladio was used in the formation of Roma Interrotta Sector VI.
Authorship Architects: A Work in Progress
1. Piranesi
2. Piranesi
3. Piranesi
4. Adam & Adam
5. Durand
6. Durand
7. Seroux d'Agincourt
8. Schinkel
9. Schinkel
Coda: Hejduk
2008.09.03
ideas
1. working title: All Within Hadrian's Limits. A narrative non-fiction story of Piranesi's Ichnographia Campus Martius. The idea is to start writing with all the Hadrian related material: mother/son, Antoninus, Bustum, etc.
2. cut & paste museum: create a model of all the complete models; a "riff" off Gehry's so far unpublished (PMA) design.
3. create a Hejduk House 15 model using the pieces of Wall House 2.
2008.09.05 08:43
MVRDV masterplan in Tirana
It's not geo-mimicry, it's jury-mimicry!
"Hey, let's design a reenactment of this painting."
"Yeah, we'll do it like abstractly, and when other architects see the scheme they'll start reenacting a design jury."
"Brilliant!"
--excerpt from "Scalping Double Theater Tickets" in The Further Adventures of the Broke Baroque Style.
|