1998.08.02 12:55
Re: Nightline Nurb
Actually, I was at a crab cookout last night and one of my friends (a non-architect) said she saw some architects on TV saying how tremendously unfortunate it is that not only is America now so ugly, but, even worse, the average American doesn't even know that it is all ugly out there. References were made to strip malls and the like.
Just off the cuff, I would say that the packaged "beauty" of someplace like Seaside, FL is an unfortunate panacea.
I think my next design will be a gated community of messy vitality--a place where, for example, all the gas stations double as palaces, most of the houses are under huge modern canopies (a la Corbu's Weber Pavilion/today's American gas stations), and the whole population of the place is ugly and ordinary.
Thank God the twentieth century is now over!
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2001.08.02
/reenactionary
11. cloning - is this exactly what makes reenactment a topical issue now?
020802a circle/square juncture diagram studies 2080i04
020802b plan and elevation scale comparisons 2120i16
020802c Hurva Synagogue plans elevations section axonometrics and circle/square juncture diagram studies 2209i05
020802d Motherhouse for the Domincan Sisters circle/square juncture diagram studies 2206i02
020802e Islamabad Capitol circle/square juncture diagram studies 2205i02
020802f Motherhouse of the Dominican Sisters site plans site elevations axonometrics perspectives 232ai23
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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 approval 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.
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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
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11080201 Monastery of La Tourette working plan 2178i03
14080201 OMA LSE Global Centre for Social Sciences London
15080201 Electronic Calculation Center Olivetti plan work image attached 2195i09
15080201 Sou Fujimoto Ochoquebradas House Los Vilos
17080201 GAUA 104 design development plans model 2458i15 b
19080201 diptych plans 2061i14
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