2001.09.28 10:41
Re: travels in hyper-reality
I find it highly ironic that the movie Suburbia is first and foremost a piece of entertainment, moreover, a piece of entertainment that reenacts what is considered "gritty reality [i.e., authenticity] of youth alienation from the dreary suburban gravity of small town living in the mid-nineties." It seems that "learning from" Suburbia is itself "a symptom of our social preoccupation with the entertaining experience."
If anything, architects and designers and social engineers should begin to understand the pervasive workings of reenactment in order to start generating a 'better' learning/entertainment environment. The largest themed environments today are for the most part fantasy reenactments, and for the most part the general public is completely aware of the fantasy. That the fantasy is many times also so real, only adds to the appeal. Again, the issue is the blurring of distinction between what is real and what is artificial, and therein lies the further fulfilling of fantasy, a longed for fulfillment which may indeed engender the very core of the desire for entertainment.
Reenactment has been a integral part of architecture and design for at least 4500 years. The Great Pyramid is a massive reenacted mountain that fits perfectly on Earth via its alignment with the cardinal points, and with its quondam capping of electrum (an alloy of platinum, gold, and (I think) silver) this mountain further reenacted both a volcano and the sun rising and setting over the mountain. When new, the Great Pyramid at Giza very much manifested an artificial and themed environment, and for sure was one of the most entertaining sights/sites that has ever appeared on this planet.
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2003.09.28 13:39
29 September, the end of reenactment season
24 September 1814: the death of J-B-L-G Seroux d'Agincourt.
I have cursorily known of Seroux d'Agincourt since purchasing a bound edition of his 70-odd architectural engravings for $50. at a Philadelphia used book store in 1984, and in 1988 I became more aware of Seroux's work via Anthony Vidler's "The Decline and Fall of Architecture: Style and Epoch in Gibbon and Seroux d'Agincourt" in The Writing of the Walls. Here I found out that the engravings I have are from a much larger work (in French, whose title translates The History of Art Through Its Monuments From Its Decline in the Fourth Century to Its Renewal in the Sixteenth). Seroux makes reference to this work as itself (like) a museum (of architecture, sculpture and art), and several of Seroux's engraved plates were on display during Quondam's first two years online. While Seroux's architecture engravings (in Quondam's collection) are very engaging, they are also frustrating (for me) because each individual drawing is numbered, but no text was included with the engravings (as purchased). About a month ago I found that Seroux's entire work was translated into English in 1843, and that a copy of this edition is within Temple University's Paley Library, albeit in the behind-locked-doors limited circulation collection. It turns out that 'limited circulation' means borrowing privileges for two weeks instead of four week. It took me the better part of a week to electronically transcribe Seroux's text, and it turns out that the engravings present a history of architecture depicted in more or less strict chronological order, thus manifesting (something like) a vast evolutionary chart that diagrams whole buildings, as well as building parts like arches, walls, columns, capitals, and bases, and domes. It didn't take me long to see that Seroux's method would be favorably enhanced via HTML.
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2003.09.28 16:55
Re: Quite a reenactor!!!
I see the possibility of Seroux's work being enhanced via HTML in that throughout the text that accompanies each engraved plate there are references from an image or set of images on one engraved plate to other images on another or even several other engraved plates--hyperlinkage could be of benefit here. Moreover, I found that aspects/details of many buildings are distributed throughout the whole set of engravings. For example, a plan of a church may be displayed with other church plans of the same era, but a column from this church is depicted on another engraving that presents a vast variety of columns all arranged in chronological order. The same disbursement goes for details of arches, walls, and domes. In redoing the work utilizing HTML, not only can the work be recreated as originally published albeit with hyperlinks, but whole new 'plates' of drawings can be composed where (for the first time) all aspects of an individual building are displayed together, and these new displays can then be further worked via hyperlinks into the historical outline Seroux already established. I'd also like to add some new text to the Histoire.
Interestingly enough, the drawings (by many top-notch French architectural apprentices that Seroux hired) on which the engravings are based are now at the Vatican Library. And, according to Vidler, the original drawings far surpass the engraved drawings, mostly because the engraved drawings are much reduced from the original size.
My favorite 'discovery' to come out of this exercise so far is learning about the Basilica of St. Stefano, Bologna, thirteenth century, a religious compound where the Court of Pilate and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem were/are specifically reenacted.
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2008.09.28 13:05
How can a building be 'critical'?
[sic]
To ERr with SuperGlue
Bilocation Syndrome
Going into Eclectic Shock/Therapy
Surgical Double Theater
Waiting Room: Anxious, Reading, Liszt
Operation a Success; Patient Dead
Malpractice Case: Houses
Eternal Wrest
chapters of Architecture in Critical Condition
2008.09.28 16:35
On Formalism and Reenactment
Place the following items in chronological order from oldest to youngest.
a. something original
b. reenactment
c. meme
d. tautology
e. all of the above as something original
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13092801 Ara Martis complex Altes Museum Motherhouse of the Dominican Sisters Museum of Architecture plans 2120i31
14092801 Museum of Architecture 22002 NNTC/District Q context plans 2245i10
14092802 Museum of Architecture plan 22002 NNTC/District Q context 2245i11
14092803 Museum of Architecture plan 22002 NNTC/District Q context with elevations models 2069i08
14092804 Museum of Architecture elevation image attached plan 2245i12
15092801 NNTC01 grid block infill 2413i36
18092801 BIG East Side Tower Berlin
18092802 Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House Ilinois
19092801 ICM plans in situ orthagonal 2110i183
19092802 ICM plans in situ
19092803 ICM plans in situ 2110i184
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