2004.05.08 11:02
Re: Unintended Consequences
...if what you describe are "unintended consequences," then what are (or were) the intended consequences?
For example, does being "cowardly in testing new means and methods of design and construction" really signify an intention rather than an unintention?
Similarly, does the notion that "building is no longer where architecture occurs, but instead takes place in the realm of ideas and imagination, with the physical manifestation in photographs, models, renderings, publications, TV, talk, performance, museums, as a variety of mediated media" really signify that the intention here is to generate as much publicity as possible?
When you look at the history of any architect-designed building over the span of its 'lifetime', most of that history is a series of manifestations that, for the most part, were never intended by the architect. If this is indeed true, then I'd say that most of 'architecture' is (and always has been) a manifestation of unintended consequences. Moreover, what is deemed unintended is also mostly seen as some sort of aberration, something that "really should be fixed because that wasn't the intention."
What I find almost comical is that intentions, either good or bad, are far from resolute. Intentions change all the time.
On 6 April 2000, I ended a post--"ironically, I never mentioned skin"--with the question: "So what then is architecture? Is it a hard, 'simple', 'natural' protective shell that engenders the continuation of life? Or is it a soft formlessness forever (re-)designing an applied shell it doesn't naturally have?"
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2004.05.08 15:20
Dis: content
Received Content (the new Koolhaas book) in the mail a couple hours ago. Looked through the whole thing page by page once so far. After doing that I realized that Content inside looks exactly like i-D magazine of 20 years ago. The only difference is that i-D is still better at its delivery of content.
[i-D, the worldwide manual of style, a sort of 'underground' fashion magazine that started coming out of London October 1980, and is today more a mainstream, albeit still 'avant garde' fashion magazine.]
I still have my collection of i-Ds from the mid-1980s, and I'll keep on keeping them (especially since they are still so up to date). I doubt I'll still own Content 20 years from now, however.
[reenactment note 356.38976--remember how Koolhaas' delivery of Content essentially reenacts i-D's delivery of content 20 years ago. I wonder if Koolhaas even knows he was following the "manual of style"? I seriously doubt it. Just thought of a new working title: From Euphrates Cat To Copy Cat.]
The "Editor's letter' of Content by Brendan McGetrick suggests that "remaining at home [is] torturous," thus it is obvious the editor here doesn't know that remaining at home is the grand luxury of being virtually famous.
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2005.05.08 10:06
Re: Tafuri
Does this so-called "divorce of signs from their signified" create some kind of inferior, less authentic, outcome? Or is it really just a matter of degrees of separation?
2005.05.08 12:59
Koolhaas versus the Actor
The notion that texts within the Internet are somehow not published is bogus. Furthermore, the notion of texts published within the Internet being automatically much less reliable than texts published via books is also bogus, since texts published via books (and reputable publishers like MIT Press) are not automatically more reliable, and Tafuri's repeated publications of erroneous material regarding Piranesi's Campo Marzio plan is a prime example.
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13050801 Wall House 2 plans derivative plans etc 3713i09
13050802 Library 1 axonometrics 2256i02
13050803 Library 2 axonometrics perspectives 2257i03
14050801 Working Title Museum 004 plan 22002 in situ 2326i05
14050802 Bye House Distorted plan 22002 context 2327i04
14050803 Ludi 002 plan 22002 context 2329i02
14050804 Lustgarten plan 22002 context 2120i39
14050805 House of Ill-Repute 001 plan 22002 context 2339i03
15050801 OMA The Prada Foundation Milan
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16050801 Cubist ICM IQ43 plans 2436i47
16050802 Cubist ICM IQ44 plans 2436i48
16050803 Cubist ICM IQ45 Le Composites museum compilation plans 2436i49
18050801 Gallaratese Housing Block plan elevation work with 860 Lake Shore Drive Apartments Unité d'Habitation 2214i04 b
19050801 Novel Architecturale iqq19 plan development 2481i03
20050801 Dominican Motherhouse axonometrics 2206i38
20050802 Château de Chambord Dominican Motherhouse plans Château de Coucy image plan 2206i39
21050801 Pyramids of Gizeh Plan Obus Cubist ICM plans iq32 2060i42
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