quondam @ archinect/79/7912w.htm
figure/ground vs field condition
wcorco1 2005.04.10 19:48
Rita thank you for your interest in my discussion.
I had the opportunity to work w/ Doug Garofalo in Chicago on a temporary exhibit outside of the Museum of Contemporary Art. One of the main objectives of this design was to introduce a non-hierarchical field condition infront of the museum in order to compensate for the extrodinarily rigid figure/ground relationship the building has with the city. http://garofalo.a-node.net/mca.html
I would also say that Eisenman's design for the City of Culture in Santiago de Compestela is comentary on the disolve of classical figure/ground compositions.
figure/ground vs field condition
Rita Novel 2005.04.11 09:22
wcorco1, can you explain why the (so-called) extraordinarily rigid figure/ground relationship outside the Museum of Contemporary Art needed compensating? What about the temporary exhibit was non-rigid? (That's 'non-rigid' speaking figuratively, since the exhibit structure comprised many rigid components. The notion of non-hierarchical also seems a figurative notion, since a temporary condition by definition falls within a hierarchy.)
Exactly what classical figure/ground compositions does the City of Culture in Santiago de Compestela design-as-commentary dissolve? To me, the design looks more like the rethinking of a typical US suburban mall. Suburban malls are more a field condition than a figure/ground composition, aren't they?
Eisenman's Holocaust Memorial is probably more a traditional figure/ground condition inserted into a site-specific inserted field condition, rather than the other way around. Berlin since the end of WWII was/is hardly a 'traditional' place anymore.
If field conditions are somehow non-hierarchical, why do I get the feeling that field conditions are seen (at least by those that design them) as somehow better than figure/ground compositions?
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