2009
Villa Savoye Shadowed 2407
Villa Savoye
Tower of Shadows
Savoye Shadows Annexation 2408
Villa Savoye
Tower of Shadows
Villa + 15 2409
Villa Savoye
House 15
09010801 Villa Savoye and derivatives plans
3392oi01
2009.01.12
"A post about empty spaces - or lack of - feels like a suitable place to put Quondam, Stephen Lauf's epically impenetrable 'online collage', a real labyrinth of a website. Here, for example, you'll find information on the First Virtual House of the 20th Century, Robert Venturi's Franklin Court. Not just an empty room, but an empty house."
2009.01.14
'megalomaniac frustrated architect'
from James Stirling, "Revisions to the Nolli Plan of Rome (The MFA Solution) and notes towards the demise of the post war planning profession" (1977):
Megalomania is the privilege of a chosen few. Piranesi who made his plan in 1762 was surely a megalomaniac frustrated architect (MFA), as also Boullée, Vanbrugh, Soane, Sant'Elia, Le Corbusier, etc., and it is in this distinguished company as an MFA architect that we make our proposal.1 The megalomaniac architect is most frustrated with regard to projects designed but not built, so the initial decision was to revise Nolli's plan incorporating all our unbuilt works. Soon we were trying to incorporate the entire oeuvre. ...
... Expediency and commercialism corrupt the possibility of quality in urban design and irrational procedures and reverse priorities seem the 'stock in trade' of the planning profession. Thus cities have lost their identity and towns people are numbed with problems of memory and their children grew up in kitschplace and junkland.
1. 'Architects used to need kings and dictators to liberate their megalomania, but now they do a better job themselves. They think that they are given large sums of money to play games with, just as a child or a Rembrandt for that matter is given a cheap box of paints. So Gropius flees Hitler and inflicts the Pan Am building on New York. Stirling inflicts the glasshouse on Cambridge. Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are notorious hell to live in. Even Saarinen foists his protégé's unbuildable Opera House on Sydney. The common factor is a complete disdain for the people who have to live with it. (God help me, I'm going to have to live with the glasshouse!) All this is in the authentic tradition of Vanbrugh and Gilbert Scott. Nothing matters to these men but their reputation in the art-histories. They are not so much undemocratic as antidemocratic: structural fascists. The astonishing thing is that Hitler was a failed painter. Stalin a failed divine. Had they been failed architects, they would have shed blood, not in rivers, but in oceans.' Hugh Brogan, The Cambridge Review, October 1968. (Such is the hysteria of some Oxbridge Dons when confronted with modern architecture. This was an early effort in the now-fashionable tirade against architects in the UK).
09011502 IQ1 with Philadelphia street grid
2177i15
2009.01.19
museum musings
The impossibility of using has its emblematic place in the Museum. The muse[um]ification of the world is today an accomplished fact. One by one, the spiritual potentialities that defined the people's lives--art, religion, philosophy the idea of nature, even politics--have docilely withdrawn into the Museum. "Museum" here is not a given physical space or place but the separate dimension to which what was once--but is no longer--felt as true and decisive has moved. In this sense, the Museum can coincide with an entire city (such as Evora and Venice, which were declared World Heritage Sites), a region (when it is declared a park or natural preserve), and even a group of individuals (in so far as they represent a form of life that has disappeared). But more generally, everything today can become a Museum, because this term simply designates the exhibition of an impossibility of using, of dwelling, of experiencing.
Thus in the Museum, the analogy between capitalism and religion becomes clear. The Museum occupies exactly the space and function once reserved for the Temple as the place of sacrifice. To the faithful in the Temple--the pilgrims who would travel across the earth from temple to temple, from sanctuary to sanctuary--correspond today the tourists who restlessly travel in a world that has been abstracted into a Museum.
--Giorgio Agamben, "In Praise of Profanation" (2007).
The above links [to The Recombinant Reenactment] ridiculously abuse Corb and Hejduk.
I was referring to the Hejduk Bye House Corb Tower of Shadows hybrid in the above link. Just because it is play does not make it good, intelligent, conceptual, valuable, interesting, helpful, informative, hitsorically [sic] clarifying, operative, critical or worthwhile.
--fku2 (2008)
...garage sale as museum...
joke from the early 1980s:
A: What comes after museum?
Q: pre-shrine
--[dis]content .20
Museum as future-shock, sort of. Pick your destiny.
--Positive notes
Use your museums, especially if they're not there to begin with.
--2009.01.19
2009.01.29
Lost's ending
I now suspect, after seeing the third episode of Lost season 5 last night, that Lost will end with all of its original cast alive and together. This is how I see the current time traveling coming to a conclusion. It will be like Finnegans Wake and like Il Campo Marzio. Too bad Bloomer didn't make this vital connection.
So now it's exploration of the possibilities of the space-time continuum. Like Proust was a neuroscientist, was Piranesi, with the Ichnographia Campus Martius, a scientist of the fourth dimension? (Here is where I have to review Dixon's "Ichnographia as Uchronia".) IS IQ also a study / experiment of architecture (and urbanism) in the fourth dimension? For IQ the time continuum connection is the Axis of Life/Parkway connection, which comes after Piranesi's own Porticus Neronianus/St. Peters connection.
Are the recombinant, appositional buildings of Quondam studies / experiments of architecture in the space/time continuum? Is that what they always have been? (Here is perhaps where I reread Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension.)
And what of The Odds of Ottopia? Did it all have a sense that even I did not fully understand? Bilocation was a significant part of the story. A step beyond Theatrics Times Two? What is Bilocation2 or Bilocation3, etc.--the studies of further powers within 2 = odd.
Quondam and Museumpeace as bilocation theaters? And all my posting activity over the last 12 years as writing / existing within the continuum as opposed to just within reality itself. Just looking now at the Virtual Domain collages I again see an architecture within the space-time continuum--the theme is widely present throughout my work, and I can now see on what foundation my further work rests. Is Quondam (and Museumpeace getting there) impenetrable because of its space-time existence? its slippages in and out of various time frames? (Do I write a comment at things.net?)
This is a great note because a breakthrough into understanding my (design) work is abundantly more clear. There is much here for me to elaborate on further, and I could formerly write about what Quondam is all about and indeed explain my work as a further approach to architecture. Does this also explain my further approach to art?
And now, before I go to read Dixon's text (Uchronia), I'll end by mentioning that I now have to think about the relationship of reenactionary architecturism to traveling in the space-time continuum.
2392
e2567a
e2582
e2583a
e2586
e2655c
e2743c
e2886a
e2917b
2009.01.30 17:01
Venturi's Lieb (No. 9) House to be moved (or demolished)
Apparently, Vanna Venturi sitting in front of her house is an updated Annunciation painting, and the "Immaculate Conception" [sic] is happening.
I call Somol's criticism superficial because all he really talks about is pictures and not the architecture itself.
09020102 Palace of Versailles Horti Lucilliani Medica Minerva St. Agnes Basilica Santa Costanza Pantheon Courthouse Plus Ultra Whitemarsh Hall Mikveh PMP St. Pierre Altes Museum Basilica Sessoriana plans
206ii03
09020201 IQ Palace of Versailles plans several contexts
2092i01b
c
2009.02.13 08:24
pragmatists turning political?
Is any of what you wrote closely related to "architecture as delivery of content"?
imaginative
scientific
fictive
Are there architectures that perform assimilatingly? metabolically? osmotically? electro-magnetically? ultra-frequently?
per..........form
re..........present
re..........enact
ars ludi
2009.02.17 07:58
Bilocation Syndrome
The delegation from India brought along a paradigm of Sanchi.
Augustus saw it and said "I'm to be buried like that."
And he was.
Then full house, hence Hadrian's bust out.
The huntress Diana came from MADxMAD garden to preside over the virtual pool of Nympheum Neronis. "New York is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."
knock knock
who's there?
instead of a telegram, read a novel
but I was expecting Dora Nobb!
Here a Versailles, there a Versailles, everywhere a Versailles, sigh.
You mean like the distance and angle from Hall of Mirrors to Trianon equals the distance and angle from Capitol to White House?
Not exactly. The latter is somewhat magnified.
2003.09.04
a purposeful walk
during the thick of reenactment season
through a space-time continuum
a week later
"I notice within one of the side chapels is the chair used by Pope John Paul II while he was in Philadelphia 1979. Since no one else was around and the railing to the chapel was only 2 feet tall, I decided to go sit in the chair myself. I found those few seconds sitting to be quite intense, so I got up quickly because otherwise I would have gotten way too comfortable."
09021901 ICM new plans
2110i65
2009.02.21 18:20
Bilocation Syndrome
Yes, museum as eternal wrest
Otherwise, think of it as
meets
meets
2009.02.21 13:47
Bilocation Syndrome
In 315 AD, the Arch of Trajan was dismantled, moved, redesigned, and rebuilt as the Arch of Constantine
Eutropia: "Just take down the Arch of Trajan, and place it within the new arch."
Helena: "That's perfect, but where do we put the new arch?"
Eutropia: "I say over by the basilica begun by my son."
Helena: "Yes, over by the basilica completed by my son."
Eutropia: "Yes, over by the basilica begun by my son and completed by my son-in-law."
Helena: "Ha! Must you always have the last word?"
Eutropia: "Yes, I confess."
et clement Trajano in Paradiso via Dante
206d
2009.02.24 11:49
pragmatists turning political?
What you describe above relates more to schizophrenic situations, i.e., states characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements, rather than to bilocational situations.
Coexistence and bilocation are not the same thing.
Schizophrenia is a whole split.
Bilocation is two of the same whole.
2009.02.24 20:38
pragmatists turning political?
before things get too carried away here...
bilocation
bilocation
"bilocation as it is, however, accepts the disordered, or varied, virtual. its a baroque and complex intertwining of narratives, myths, of the foundation of logic even prior to logic itself..."
Gosh, that sounds just like Quondam.
2009.02.25 10:52
Bilocation Syndrome
Did Kahn 'research' St. Catherine de Ricci while designing the Dominican Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Catherine de Ricci? Who knows? There is a sense of bilocation in the design of the Fisher House, and even earlier in the Fruchter House and the executed Jewish Community Center Day Camp. It's probably just a strange twist of fate that these senses of bilocation came to a maturity within the design of the Dominican Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Catherine de Ricci.
--[what are]The Odds of Ottopia[?]
2009.02.25 13:12
Re: Recent book
Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs (1988)
It describes/explains about 200 themes and gives examples of where they appear throughout literature. E.g., Incubus and Succubus, Jealousy, Labyrinth, Lameness, Language, Laughter... So far I read 'Labyrinth' and it's neat how it is both informative and inspiring and gives you leads into other territories to explore.
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.
09030805 IQ041 model
2419i11
b
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
2009.03.17 18:38
Making it/Thinking Architectural
Using a 3-dimensional representation as a plan (of a city maybe), kind of like architectural thinking in reverse.
2009.03.17 17:02
pragmatists turning political?
Oh, I thought it was more like having a hard time shifting out of bilocation gear.
Anyway, been meaning to interject a little exposition of the "politics of the plan"
09032002 IQ Palace of Versailles plans Eiffel Tower model
2092i03
2009.03.22
bilocation, etc.
I occurred to me last night that active participation within an online forum is like a degree short of actual bilocation. It's the speed of light involved that brings the degree of separation down to the minimum. I wonder if bilocation will be recognized as a part of network culture.
Read about half of Heidegger's "The Thing" last night. A few pages in, Heidegger's writing started to remind me of Gertrude Stein's writing.
Found out on 2009.03.20 that the base of the Eiffel Tower is just slightly larger than the base of Hadrian's Tomb. Thus directly over Hadrian's tomb is the Eiffel Tower's position within Ichnographia Quondam.
| |
09051501 IQ081 plans models
2392i88
09051801 IQ081 museum plans
2306i04
09051802 Danteum plan model IQ/Ottopia
2165i07
b
09051803 IQ1 plans Museum of Knowledge model
2185i07
09051804 IQ081 Haus der Kunst models
2306i05
b
09051805 IQ081 plans Museum of Arts & Crafts model
2244i08
b
09051901 Museum for Nordrhein Westfalen IQ081 plans model
2226i12
b
09060101 Altes Museum ohne Saulen model IQ081 plans
2374i04
b
09060201 Lustgarten plans model IQ091 plans
2334i02
b
c
09060202 Customs Office of the Neue Packhof plan model IQ081
2122i03
b
09060203 IQ081 plans Wallraf-Richartz Museum model
2227i07
b
09060301 IQ081 plans Breslauer Platz model
2228i02
b
09060302 IQ081 Haus der Kunst model
2419i13
b
09060303 Basilica Sessoriana model IQ
2070i06
b
2009.06.03 09:50
Developing a thesis (and metathesis?) - brainstorming help!
And it's not even Reenactment Season yet!
double your theatrics, double your fun
read this morning:
"When the Convention moved from Versailles to Paris, it reopened in a new hemicycle built into the old palace theatre, the Salle des Machines of the Tuileries, designed by the revolutionary Jacques-Pierre Gisors, even if the semicircular layout, the high colonnade and zenital lighting followed the model of the sober, neo-antique anatomy theatre in the Ecole de la Chirurgie. Although the assembly hall was a bit makeshift (the statues which ornamented its walls were all painted simulations), the hemicycle found favour and was copied when the chamber was enlarged and rebuilt in the Palais-Bourbon. Two centuries later it still serves the Chamber of Deputies. With its obvious division into left and right, it became the model for many parliamentary chambers all over the world--a curious fate for an emulation of an anatomy theatre."
For sure a significant note within "Surgical Double Theater".
now playing:
Siamese, wo bist du, too
2009.06.06 20:18
how about thom mayne?
Quondam is my site. It's the first virtual museum of architecture, online since 21 November 1996. Earlier this year thingsmagazine.net described Quondam as "Stephen Lauf's epically impenetrable 'online collage', a real labyrinth of a website," and that suits me just fine.
Yes, Quondam is dense, and even I don't know where everything is, so I utilize site-specific google searches to find things.
The numbering system has no meaningful significance beyond its sequentiality; file names, that's all.
The specific image you ask about also has no intended significance in terms of how Thom Mayne may see things, but, as you've now demonstrated, it is capable of inspiring a significance. And that's more or less the point...
2009.06.12 08:36
please comment or destroy, thank you
"In German, a mnemonic can be fashioned from the literal meaning of the Latin word complicare. which means "to fold together (zusammenfalten)": the complicated, then, can be rendered graspable via unfolding (Entfaltung), because it thereby becomes simple (einfach) in a sense of naïve or ingenuous (einfältig). But the Latin word complexus means "mutual embrace," or, so to speak, the labyrinthine [emphasis added], the convoluted: here, simplicity already contains within itself the seed of all the complexity that comes to appearance through its own development. In cases of doubt, then, the complicated can be profitably reduced and simplified--but the complex, in contrast, cannot be simplified with impunity. To say that something is complicated means that the finite number of its determinations cannot be grasped directly. To say that something is complex means, by contrast, that the number of its determinations is simply infinite."
Clemens Bellut, "Ach, Luise, lass ... das ist ein zu weites Feld," or: The Gordian Knot of Complexity" in Complexity: Design Strategy and World View (2008).
Eternal Wrest ... really only the beginning?
"All the world's a next stage."
2009.06.14 15:36
please comment or destroy, thank you
Been reading The Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other Arts by Rykwert (2008), and, for some reason I'm not entirely sure of, it came to mind as I read the initial post here. I think it's like I see The Judicious Eye as what the above essay draft could be were it really developed (into a dense 492 page book). What the above essay is empty of (and The Judicious Eye certainly is not) is direct reference to specific buildings and designs along with the architects and artists thereof. Interestingly though, The Judicious Eye is more a complicated subject unfolded, and not so much a complexity. Treating the subject of The Judicious Eye as a complexity could be a very robust endeavor however.
2009.06.16 12:04
please comment or destroy, thank you
I can well see that scripting is an advancement in drawing dexterity with the aim of an advancement in production, but it's not altogether evident that scripting is an advancement in architecture.
Does scripting really generate a more enlightened, more liberal architecture?
For example, does scripting engender an architecture of maximum individual freedom? Does scripting engender an open-minded architecture or a more tolerant architecture?
Or does scripting really (only) come to engender a new style of architecture?
2009.06.17 14:49
fouquet's barriere hotel
Great design, very 21st century, consummate use of the assimilating and metabolic imagination.
2009.06.17 22:50
fouquet's barriere hotel
It's seventeen years old now, so it's time to update the Hotel Pia. Delete over half the windows and add the elevation of another building to the background. Voilà!
09061701 Villa Savoye Tower of Shadows plans
2156i13
09062003 Villa Savoye Shadowed model
2407i02
2186i06
2009.06.21 14:58
please comment or destroy, thank you
Like I already said:
"I can well see that scripting is an advancement in drawing dexterity with the aim of an advancement in production, but it's not altogether evident that scripting is an advancement in architecture."
abstract 0.0
Ichnographia Quondam
Advancements in virtual architecture, yes. But does an advancement in virtual architecture necessarily or automatically translate into an advancement in real architecture?
Is this an advancement in architecture?
Is this an advancement in architecture?
Is this an advancement in architecture?
Is this an advancement in architecture?
2009.06.28 11:03
what is the difference between paradise & utopia?
The entire January 1972 issue of Du magazine (Swiss) is devoted to "Utopia: Visionärer Städtebau gestern und heute" (Utopia: Visionary Urban Design yesterday and today). Unfortunately, all the text is in German with not even an English summery.
Off hand, the only specific architect[ural] rendition of Paradise I can think of is Terragni's Paradiso (room) within the Danteum.
There are, however, many oasis reenactments (i.e., paradise) within architectural design. Learning from Las Vegas notes the 'oasis' aspect of the outdoor pool areas of the various hotels, and even Dubai (and it's artificial islands) and Abu Dhabi may be considered reenactments of the oasis/paradise paradigm rather than following an utopian model.
Paradise as the ultimate in real estate?
2009.06.28 12:00
what is the difference between paradise & utopia?
Perhaps also related is Robert Geddes's "The Forest Edge" in A.D. 52 11/12-1982. The opening paragraphs:
"In 1753, Marc Antoine Laugier, the French theorist, proposed the primitive hut as the foundation of architecture in his Essai sur l'architecture. The frontispiece of his second edition shows the muse indicating architecture's true source and origin by pointing to a hut at the edge of the forest made of four trees acting as columns.
I suggest an additional interpretation of Laugier's engraving. I believe the muse is directing our attention not only to the building as the reconstructed forest [or the forest reenacted], but also to the edge of the forest itself. She is pointing out the ideal habitat of man, the forest edge, where the woodlands and grasslands meet."
and later...
"While the current focus of ecological and conservationist movements has given new life to Thoreau's view of wilderness, these political movements do not propose that man should live in the wild. The hold that man is a visitor and should leave no trace of his passing."
Without having now (re-)read all of "The Forest Edge", I nonetheless get the sense that the text may evoke ideas that are both paradisic and utopian, ending with examples of practical design applications.
Is the current "green" movement in some ways an advanced combination of the paradise and utopian paradigms?
2009.06.28 16:43
what is the difference between paradise & utopia?
I'd say both paradise and utopia are man-made [intellectual] constructs, but paradise is metaphoric and utopia is paradigmatic.
| |
2009.07.01 15:36
what is the difference between paradise & utopia?
...I found your intitial query thought provoking in that, as you say, one doesn't really hear about architects designing (a) paradise.
When PG,UB suggested research into landscape design of the Middle Eastern and Islamic world, I began to think about the Alhambra--a fortress/palace/city as paradise.
Regarding heterotopia, for some reason, I began to think of the novel Platform--notions of sex tourism within 'paradise'. Also got out my Foucault Reader and read "Space, Knowledge and Power" where Foucault says a few things about ancient Roman baths and their eventual demise throughout Europe--not exactly places of paradise, but public, social places centered around activities of pleasure.
You say you are planning to design a paradise. Care to share a little more about that?
09070201 Savoye Shadows Annexation plan development
2408i01
09070202 Savoye Shadows Annexation model
2408i02
09070203 Villa + 15 plans
2409i01
09070204 Villa + 15 model
2409i02
2009.07.07 12:44
Bilocation Syndrome
finally, after over 85 pages...
At the same time, in parallel...
"As if the Straits of Gilbraltar acted as some metaphysical junction point between the worlds. In those days to pass through that narrow aperture into the vast, uncertain field of Ocean was to behind the known world, and perhaps its conventions about being in only one place at a time. . . .Once passed through, did the ship take two tacks at once? Did the wind blow in two ways? Or was it the giant fish that possessed the power of bilocation? Two fishes, two Jonahs, two Agadirs?
"This smoke in here I've been breathing," said Kit, "this wouldn't be . . . um, hasheesh?"
As if she had exited her life briefly and been given the ability to travel on a parallel course, "close" enough to watch herself doing it, Dally discovered an alternate way to travel by land, port to port, faster than the ship was moving. . . . She sped, it seemed slightly above ground level, through the fragrant late-summer twilight, parallel to the course of the ship. . . . She would return to her deck chair out of breath, sweating, exhilirated [sic] for no reason, as if she had just escaped some organized threat to her saftey.
It's worth noting that the bilocations began just when Kit reached the ultimate depth of his exploration/discovery of the Stupendica as actually two ships. Indeed, he becomes trapped within the parallel time of the Emperor Maximilian, and hence nowhere to be found on the Stupendica. Note too how it's after searching all over for Kit that Dally actually bilocates herself.
2009.07.07
bilocation, finally
Some more on "Bilocation Syndrome":
1. Axis of Life / Bejamin Franklin Parkway.
2. my walk down the Parkway / Axis of Life.
3. the key to Ichnographia Quondam.
4. Pagan - Christian - Triumphal Way of the Ichnographia Campus Martius.
5. Temple of Janus; Arch of Trajan/Constantine.
6. Diana the Huntress/Nympaeum; Vatican/Life of Constantine tapestries; Gates of Hell; Logan Circle/Hadrian's Tomb; Intercourse building/Love.
7. Quondam / Museumpeace.
2009.07.14 20:38
inspiring Maya Linked Hybrid edge
...the Athenian master craftsman and inventor, Daedalus, was given a commission by King Minos of Crete to build a labyrinth, a prison for the man-bull monster, the Minotaur. Later, Minos imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in the labyrinth. The two escaped on wings made by Daedalus of wax and feathers, but Icarus flies too close to the sun, his wings melt, and he falls into the sea.
remembering "journey motifs"
2009.07.21 10:26
I smell a Vorläufer
"I like the list; like chapters, like lessons, like evolutionary stages, like different floors of a building I'd love to design, like a row of restaurants while you're perpetually hungry."
...the curatorial architect as elevator operator of life.
2009.07.22 17:40
"This market is a game changer"
What I'm more asserting is that lucrative goals are more objective and "the greater good" is more subjective (if not altogether ephemeral).
What's the object of the new (architecture) game?
What's the subject of the new (architecture) game?
2009.07.30 08:06
Rant Magazine... "Artist"/Designer? submittals
Exponential Potential Architecture
1. Architecture plus Weaponization
2. Architecture minus Weaponization
3. Architecture times Weaponization
4. Architecture divided by Weaponization
5. Architecture greater than Weaponization
6. Architecture less than Weaponization
7. Architecture to the power of Weaponization
8. the Weaponization root of Architecture
2009.08.02 14:34
inspiring Maya Linked Hybrid edge
"So an afterlife does not exist for us per se, but instead an afterlife occurs for that which exists between us. When an alien civilization eventually bumps into Earth, they will immediately be able to understand what humans were about, because what will remain is the network of relationships: who loved whom, who competed, who cheated, who laughed together over road trips and holiday dinners. Each person's ties to bosses, brothers, and lovers are etched into the electronic communiqués. The death switches simulate the society so completely that the entire social network is reconstructable. The planet's memories survive in zeros and ones."
from "Death Switch" in Sum
Don't underestimate the oblivion of a deleted archive, however.
2000.01.03:
PD writes:
What about the notion of life? In order to call a composition as a work of architecture there must be a life in it. A life around it does not make it architecture, I think. The composition must embrace a life style, must be an accompaniment of a life style but not be the focus of it. The objects which are for perception only, cannot be called architecture. They are called sculpture.
SL replies:
What PD writes comes across as very true as a reasonably way to approach "what is architecture?" as opposed "what is sculpture?" And for the most part I agree with the notion that architecture accommodates life. So I then ask if this 'definition' must be broadened to include all built forms that once accompanied life and a life style, but over time have come to no longer do so. I am thinking of ancient ruins, be they Stonehenge, the Pyramids, the Parthenon, the cave temples of India, etc. These are commonly referred to as examples of architecture, yet today they are clearly "objects which are for perception only." Have these architectures become architecture/sculpture hybrids? Furthermore, no one now lives in Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, nor, it might be argued, does the life style around which the Villa Savoye was designed to accompany now exist. Is the Villa Savoye a master work of modern architecture that is now an "object which is for perception only?" Or is it merely that the 'life style" the Villa Savoye now accompanies is one where great buildings (if they're lucky) become cultural shrines, where the buildings now accommodate our 'perceptual worship'?
How much of life is really spent in perceptual worship?
"Meanwhile, the question posed in 1918 by the Hermitage's first commissar and futurist Nikolai Punin, "Is a Museum a Shrine or a Factory?" is yet to be answered."
from Content
2009.08.14 10:44
hence creative ingenuity
creative : resulting from originality of thought, expression, etc.; imaginative
ingenuity 1 : the quality of being cleverly inventive or resourceful; inventiveness 2 : cleverness or skillfulness of conception or design 3 : an ingenious contrivance or device
creative [architecture] by itself; that's relatively easy.
2009.08.16 12:01
Postmodernism sucks... discuss
...where we see Postmodern architecture related to the growing trend of realism in film (including cinematic pornography). Not exactly a parallel development, but more where realism in films opened up designers/architect's minds to a more realistic approach to designing buildings/environments. Prior to realism, most films were an adapted form of theater/stage production. Realism in film presented 'real' situations within 'real' settings. [Yes, there is the omnipresent irony of films themselves not being real to begin with.]
aside: Does anyone else remember the paparazzi catching Jackie O. after she saw I am Curious (yellow).
Outside the stage directions of the Modern Movement there is the quickly found serendipity of everyday living/experience, and this realm of no clear rules beyond the immediate context of the situation made it easy for (what Portoghesi called) 'the end of prohibitionism'.
Postmodern architecture would not have happened without a certain frame of mind, and that frame of mind was becoming more and more prevalent within films of the later 1960s and 1970s.
Strictly within architecture itself, Scully, in 'How things got to be the way they are now', finds the genesis of Postmodern architecture with Kahn and Kahn's Beaux Arts education and Roman-ness (wrapped together via Piranesi's plan of the Campo Marzio).
It seems worth noting that the two most significant architects to come out of the 'Strada Novissima' are Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas/OMA.
2009.08.16 14:07
Postmodernism sucks... discuss
I think you have to first define what 'that' is.
Otherwise, architecture still pretty much operates within the 'realm of no clear rules beyond the immediate context of the situation'.
2009.08.16 15:44
Postmodernism sucks... discuss
Many of the architects who utilized "the application of content and forms and motifs that are deliberately identifiable in cultural and historical terms" 30 years ago still design that way today (if they are still active and/or alive).
The first Greenaway film I saw was The Draughtsman's Contract in 1983, 27 years ago, and that's the kind of murder mystery I'm talking about.
The first Tarantino film I saw was Pulp Fiction in 1994 and soon after that architecture started becoming very virtual.
2009.08.16 18:06
Postmodernism sucks... discuss
Of course architecture and film evolve for the most part independently, as I already referenced Scully and Kahn above.
The relation between film and postmodern architecture I'm here discussing is not one where the architecture emulates the films, rather architects took on the 'realist' frame of mind of 60s and 70s films, again where there are no clear rules beyond the immediate context of the situation.
Architecture today is still very eclectic, diverse even, and, perhaps more now that ever, there are no clear rules beyond the immediate context of the situation.
2009.08.16 12:42
hence creative ingenuity
creative: the vast majority of more recent residential architecture.
ingenutiy: the more recent residential projects of Koolhaas/OMA.
2009.08.18 12:50
Postmodernism sucks... discuss
Does 'ad grand mosque' operate within a realm of no clear rules beyond the immediate context of the situation?
Religious architecture, almost by definition, operates within a realm where there are clear rules beyond the immediate context of the situation.
I'm reminded of Frank Lloyd Wright's Beth Sholom Synagogue (1954),
where there are clear uses of ornament, albeit a modern building.
Symbolism, too, continues to be an (almost innate) ingredient of religious architecture.
St. Helena Church, Olney, Philadelphia (1950).
According to legend, St. Helena, feast day 18 August, discovered the 'True Cross'.
2009.08.18 15:40
Postmodernism sucks... discuss
...it is interesting that a legal prohibition of official prayer within Hagia Sophia was deemed necessary, but I'm not sure what that has to do with architectural design and how architects design.
Or are you providing an example of religious architecture operating within a realm where there are clear rules beyond the immediate context of the situation, even when the rules are clearly anti-religious?
| |
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.
2009.09.03 12:00
Palais Imperial de Dolma Baghtche
[The account of Hamann's subsequent relationship with Kant, where the latter was engaged by Hamman's quondam employer in Riga to bring the reborn religious enthusiast back to the path of reason, is the stuff of the very best historical novels.]
As if by divine chance, the next chapter (this morning) is entitled: Spectacles and Eyes to See With: Two cultures in philosophy. Operations within a surgical double theater, indeed.
malpractice case Cambridge 1992
the Derrida affair
They [Ayrs and Bataille] met in a Parisian bar in 1951, with Merleau-Ponty.
who are they?
and was it on purpose that their mirror image is what appears in this chapter?
then again, upon reflection
"I believe in spectacles, but I think eyes are necessary too."
no C.P. Snow daze. know sleepy snow days.
finally Cosmopolis.
2009.09.03 13:11
fashion tip (of the iceberg)
It was the "post-mortem discourse" that rekindled the vertigo of the mélange. The thought was post-modernism as still life.
But the strange fascination of still life, isn't it also a fiction? Or indeed an ethereal necrophilia?
--The Man without Qualities
The only gesture possible would seem to be stillness, what "in painting is called Stilleben (still life), or in other languages... natura morta (dead nature)."
--ibid
Life is magically arrested in its impermanence: "objects, animals, plants, landscapes and human bodies frozen into stillness by the magic of art," in a sort of "demonical" mystery.
--ibid
The world itseld seems to be suspended in an unending instant, in a landscape like the "sixth day of Creation, when God and the world were still alone, without men"
--ibid
"It is extraordinarily simple, but also very odd," says Ulrich.
"We have found many contrived answers," says Ulrich, "but we have overlooked th simplest: that both may have the intention and the capacity to take everything of which they have experience only as Gleichnis" And "every Gleichnis is ambivalent for the intellect, but for the feeling it is univocal;" and therefore it should be possible to experience "as oneness that which be common estimate is twofold."
"In that instant there occurred to Ulrich the idea of a state of life in which the being here was Gleichnis of the being there, and the impossible experience of being a person with two distinct bodies might lose the thorn of its impossibility."
Gleichnis is never Gleichheit.
--overall Franco Rella
He found Renfrew in a hectic mood, as close to desperation as Lew could recall.
... Lew had the sudden certitude that right now in Göttingen some bilocational Lew was asking Werfner the same question...]
--mirror::rorrim
"magnigicent chaos of the museum"
2009.09.04 15:06
Process is more important than product
Just for clarity's sake, care to provided examples of site-sensitive form-making.
The gist of Gage's essay overall speaks of precedence and intuition as a seemingly forgotten or overlooked part of the design process. What Gage's essay does not have is any illustration of what precedence and intuition within the design process might produce. Judging his firm's work in light of the essay may indeed be (further) revealing.
2009.09.18 16:54
Your Ideal City mash up....
Neuschwanstein + Las Vegas + Atlantic City + an Indian Reservation + Monte Carlo + Dubai + Angkor Wat + Pompei = "My kind of town."
2009.09.19 10:38
Rem: use minimum items to understand its project
Study any of the more recent Koolhaas/OMA residential projects* and you will quickly find that you cannot "use two drawings and one sentence to understand" the work.
*
Bordeaux House
Y2K
Wenner House
Flick House I
Flick House II
Ascot Residence
Sighvatsson House
Vincent Gallo Apartment
Also look at Prada San Francisco Epicenter and Whitney Museum Extension.
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.
2009.09.27 14:38
Who are the URMs in architecture grad school?
So, maybe, if architecture school wasn't such a pretend thing, the minority would excell and the majority would fail?
2009.09.30 21:33
Information Architects Talking About Architects and Architecture
Presently, I like to design delivery of content in the enfilade slash labyrinth style.
Perhaps, someday, I'll design some delivery of content following the architecturale promenade formula.
Actually, I've been struggling with a big design/renovation brief, the solution to which has been eluding me for well over a month now. Alas, today, while just stepping out of the shower, it finally dawned on me--delivery of content in the enfilade slash labyrinth style via bilocation.
Is subtext actually text bilocated? 4704b
2009.10.01 11:31
Information Architects Talking About Architects and Architecture
It turns out, for my design at least, that text is subtext bilocated.
Since I actually have two design/renovation briefs, the second project will be delivery of content in the enfilade slash labyrinth style via bilocation and the theory of chronosomatics.
Like 18 January 2005, 19 April 2005 was another trilocation day...
...already made provisions in case anyone attending the lecture comes down with trilocation-sickness.
Looks like there's now no denying that there are architects and there are appositional architects.
2009.10.02 14:46
Information Architects Talking About Architects and Architecture
Does that perhaps mean that architects have an aversion to being cognitively challenged by virtual worlds?
2009.10.23 15:10
Really, what boundaries have you pushed?
Is the rollercoaster a boundary? Or is riding the rollercoaster an experience of pushing boundaries?
food for thought:
"Writing in a language never fully his own, Kafka pushes that language further and further in the direction of his own deterritorialization, to the point where it shakes free all literariness, taking on a concrete but strange--surreal? hyperreal?--materiality. Deleuze and Guattari actually characterize Kafka's mode of writing as a "new sobriety." They contrast the rigorous strangeness of his form of literary enunciation with the esoteric and kabbalistic mysticism of Max Brod, his friend and fellow Czech-Jewish writer, the latter attempting to effect a symbolic reterritorialization by artificially enriching the appropriated German language with arcane signifiers. Likewise, citing the parallel instance of two Irish writers, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, Deleuze and Guattari compare Joyce's excessive, polyglot Irish-English with Beckett's parsimonious English and French: "The former never stops operating by exhilaration and overdetermination and brings about all sorts of worldwide reterritorializations. The other proceeds by dryness and sobriety, a willed poverty, pushing deterritorialization to such an extreme that nothing remains but intensities."
--Ockman
"We happen to be fundamentally interested in challenging and advancing typologies. So from day one we were much more interested in "OK, this has to be a flexible theater. What does that mean? How do we do that? How do we make that happen."
--Prince-Ramus
2009.10.25 10:11
Really, what boundaries have you pushed?
Might we then conclude that pushing boundaries is uncommon, and muddling-through, (drunken) rage, and even pretense are common?
Does pushing boundaries at least require a metabolic (destructive / creative, challenging / advancing) imagination?
2009.10.25 11:30
Really, what boundaries have you pushed?
Might we then conclude that passive is common, and active is uncommon?
| |
2009.11.16 09:55
The current state of Architecture Theory
"The ability of the computer to locate every point on a carved surface does away with the need for rational comprehension on the part of the designer in conceiving, or the observer in perceiving, a building. Thanks to the computer, pure empiricism has no longer any practical need for the mediating grasp of the intellect. The maximum of an empirical nominalism coexists with the maximum of abstraction. The space between nominalism and abstraction is left void. The mind no longer needs to understand itself. After a long evolutionary detour, human thought returns to its primitive instinctual roots."
Colquhoun (2005)
"...I was entranced by the work of James Gamble Rogers, the architect who designed most of Yale's Gothic and Georgian architecture in the 1920s and 1930s. Roger's determinedly nonideological stance, his avoidance of theory in favor of what can only be called intuitive design, was liberating. It was alright for architecture to be about feeling good, I suddenly realized; stage sets were not immoral. It was the perfect epiphany for a twenty-year-old who was just beginning to learn about empirical experience and only starting to trust his eye."
Goldberger (2009)
2009.11.16 15:25
The current state of Architecture Theory
Jargon aside, it is now progressively easier for intuitive design intentions to become reality.
2009.11.17 16:17
The current state of Architecture Theory
I like my raspberry bushes because they bear fruit twice a year, mid-spring and mid-autumn (like right now). And although still seasonal in their development, there's also this kind of double-helix thing about it.
Architecture theory structured as DNA?
Colquhoun's passage isn't really about how modeling systems work, rather how digital (modeling) data can be manufactured. It's about the voiding of the mediating grasp within the design/execution process. (Not too dissmilar from the voiding of the mediating grasp within the design/execution of self-publising, eg, blogging.
2009.11.17 16:48
The current state of Architecture Theory
That's closer to what Goldberger said. It looks like you're interpolating from both quotations, which, for the most part, is fine, because there is, as you just unwittingly demonstrated, something about the the two quotations intertwined that could well be the germinating point of a[n architectural] value system.
2009.11.17 17:42
The current state of Architecture Theory
Perhaps the struggle today is more with the dual reality of "anything goes" and "whatever works".
2009.11.18 11:31
The current state of Architecture Theory
It's not that "there really isnt meant to be any real thought there" but that "intellectual rigor" really isn't necessary to design architecture. In fact, it could well be asked: Does it really behoove us to mask our lack of depth and our inability to achieve real, effective, incisive strength in our work with intellectual nonsense? A lack of depth and an inability to achieve real, effective, incisive strength are not fixed with intellectual rigor, rather they are fixed via design rigor. The architectures of Zumthor, Predock and Chipperfield (for example) do not stand out because of their intellectual rigor, but because of their design rigor.
Yet design rigor isn't always necessary to create architecture either. Gehry's architecture exhibits a very high-grade design facileness, and maybe that is indeed something rare.
As for the "computer people", the various/sometimes architectures of Hadid and UnStudio (again for example) well demonstrate being beyond "figuring it out", and they're even doing it rigorously.
I'm not here trying to express my opinion, as much as I'm experimenting with establishing some kind of baseline for architectural theory to build upon. I am of the opinion, however, that honesty, or at least objective observations and assessments of present conditions, is a fair place to start.
2009.11.18 13:40
The current state of Architecture Theory
Is it Eisenman's words, or Eisenman's designs that might of made the likes of UNStudio, FOA and Lynn possible?
2009.11.19 17:32
The current state of Architecture Theory
Computers are not competing with thinking.
For the sake of the argument here, computers greatly augment/assist instinctive/intuitive design thinking. Designing instinctually/intuitively (for example, Savoye derivatives) doesn't mean you're designing without thinking.
2009.11.20 11:50
The Great Books (of Architecture)
The Decline of the Whiskey Empire
Eutropian Theories
Voodoo Valley, 19120
buildings that move(d)
Apostate Architecture
Kissing That Reality Good-bye
The Last Great Pagan Architecture of Rome
Uninhibited Habitations
Architecture of the Divided States of America
Appositional Architecture
Rita Novel This Sontag
2009.11.20 15:34
The current state of Architecture Theory
Here's what comes to my mind when I (too) wrestle* with then what.
I made a bunch of collages during the summer of 2001. These were done for art, and not for architecture, but there was some architectonics within some of the collages.
Last year there was "has the sun finally set on oma?" thread here at archinect/forum. To join in the discussion I wanted to post images of a couple recent OMA projects that I like. And while finding the images online and seeing the projects again and trying to figure how to explain why I like the projects I noticed a kind of strange resemblance to two of the collages I did in 2001. (I did not think that maybe OMA saw the collages online.) What happened at that moment of 'recognition' was an insight into how I myself could have found architectural inspiration in the collages.
*"Eternal Wrest" is the last chapter of Architecture in Critical Condition.
2009.11.20 15:46
The current state of Architecture Theory
similarly...
Quaestio Abstrusa Background No. 191
28 April 2001
manipulated digital image file
OMA/Rem Koolhaas
Quartier des Halles
2003 2004
2013.07.15 13:34
Why is everyone bashing OMA and Rem Koolhaas?
Since 2009.11.20, I like how OMA/Rem Koolhaas's Quartied les Halles (2003-04) helps me to imagine Quaestio Abstrusa Background No. 191 (2001.04.28) in 3-dimensional architectural form.
2009.11.25 11:29
I propose a ban
Render the proposed building with lots of people.
Photograph the executed building with no one present.
Funny that.
2009.11.27 11:35
Dubai is officially broke.
1990
?
2009.11.27 12:10
The current state of Architecture Theory
an (experimental inclined toward intuitive) architectural theory:
architectural design falls into three types:
intuitive architectural design
theoretical architectural design
experimental architectural design
with the three types forming a triade, thus each type can incline towards one or the other.
e.g.
the architecture of Frank Gehry -- intuitive architectural design inclined toward experimental architectural design
the architecture of Peter Eisenman -- experimental architectural design oscillating between theoretical and intuitive architectural design
the architecture of Le Corbusier -- theoretical architectural design oscillating between experimental and intuitive architectural design
Gothic architecture -- experimental architectural design inclined toward intuitive architectural design
Beaux Arts architecture -- theoretical architectural design oscillating slightly between experimental and intuitive architectural design
the architecture of Louis I. Kahn -- started as theoretical architectural design and ended as experimental architectural design inclined toward intuitive architectural design
the architecture of H&dM -- experimental architectural design inclined toward intuitive architectural design
the architecture of UNStudio -- theoretical architectural design inclined toward experimental architectural design
[to be continued]
2009.12.05 12:42
where's the avant garde?
Get a notion or idea
that most will resist,
and chances are
that it's avant garde.
|
