quondam @ archinect/79/7905j.htm
cloning architecture - a global search
Rita Novel 2004.06.19 10:35
uneDITed wrote:
Now..in another galacting corner....as a brainteaser...what is the difference between the 'rebuilt Barcelona Pavilion' and the 'cloned Barcelona Pavilion' ...they're both in exactly the same plot..they are inside each other's gut..where does one start and the other end
Novel replies:
the 'rebuilt Barcelona Pavilion' and the 'cloned Barcelona Pavilion' are the same thing, not two different things. The original Barcelona Pavilion was destroyed, and the pavilion that exists now very closely reenacts the original.
Subject: from soup d'jour to deja vu:
[excerpted from a post to design-l 1999.12.28]
Two of the architects I met almost immediately in Brussels at the INSIDE DENSITY colloquium were both named Eleni--Eleni Gigantes and Eleni Kostika. We were members of the same "Thinking Density" session, and they presented their paper "Greece: Seasonal Densities, Built Density, Landscape Saturation--the ongoing transformation of a country through tourism" after I presented my paper. Upon hearing their talk, it wasn't difficult to see that our two papers had some strong similarities in that what happened in Greece vis-à-vis 'constructed' tourism comes very close to what Piranesi did within the Campo Marzio vis-à-vis reenactment. I quickly mentioned this similarity to the two Elenis in-between two of the subsequent papers, and then, during the session break, the three of us had a lengthy discussion regarding "what is reenactment?". I used Princess Diana's funeral [6 September 1997--five years ago today] as an easy example of ancient Rome's triumphal way being reenacted, and also said that modern Greece may in some circumstances be trying to reenact its ancient glory as an ingredient for tourism. Eleni Kostika still questioned the notion of reenactment, however, and offered that perhaps anything (or everything?) is indeed a reenactment of something. In the midst of all this, we found ourselves talking about Thanksgiving Day in the USA (actually it was Thanksgiving Day, but we were in Brussels), and it quickly dawned on Eleni Gigantes that Thanksgiving Day is a huge reenactment (if not the biggest reenactment within the United States).
I then turned the conversation into something the two Elenis did not expect, namely my work this year involving St. Helena, and my thesis that she was the first master architect of Christianity. Eleni is the original rendition of the name Helena, and I told Eleni and Eleni that they had no idea how thrilled I was to be sitting in Brussels having just met two architects named Eleni, and to be discussing architecture and reenactment with them. Of course, I gave them a quick synopsis of my thesis, and Eleni Gigantes absorbed it all most agreeably, while Eleni Kostika seemed to remain somewhat circumspect.
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