 
1998.10.29
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1998.10.29 10:08
what's fire?
With regard to architectural theory and lighting, I'm curious as to whether fire is considered natural illumination or artificial illumination.
When I went to architectural school in the late 1970s, natural lighting was the sunlight/daylight that came through windows, and electrical lighting was called artificial lighting. There was never any discussion as to the place of fire as illumination, even though for the greater part of architectural history fire was the only other means of illumination excepting light from the sun.
2002.10.29 09:49
Re: Traffic Design
In describing what is now a somewhat ubiquitous housing type in the USA, Brian wrote, "not like townhouses with the 1st floor dedicated to parking, and housing above." My mother lives in such a model of early 1970s vintage, and most of Northeast Philadelphia is of like ilk. I too have seen this paradigm as more regrettable than not, yet at the same time I realize that my mother's house is oddly related to Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, though without the pilotis, ramp and roof garden. The genealogy goes like this. First there is Savoye and Le Corbusier's housing project at Pessac. Savoye over the years decays but is rescued and restored as museum piece, all the while being an icon in print. Pessac is rather quickly transformed from Purist manifestation into what is essentially ur-postmodern design by its individual inhabitants. The house my mother lives in is then post ur-postmodern Pessac (but because it is part of a twin rather than part of a row, it still harbors buried evocations of Savoye).
The (row) house I live in, built in 1938, is (I believe just still) within the first generation of US housing to incorporate a garage. Here, all the designated parking happens in the back at ground level via a communal driveway, which in reality is a semi-private/semi-public street. From the back my house shows three stories, yet from the front the houses were made to look like two story dwellings via bermed lawns.
I sometimes wonder what Northeast Philadelphia would be like if its housing had more closely followed the design of Savoye and Purist Pessac. (Incidentally, Stonorov's and Kahn's Pennypack Woods housing, certainly among the first planned housing communities of Far Northeast Philadelphia, has a strong affinity with Pessac, kind of a combination of both Pessac's Purist and post-Purist manifestations.)
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2013.10.29 08:34
Why won't you design what we (the public) want?
...something's not making sense: you say, "they [the public] simply want good housing," yet most of the housing in the US is currently done in a "traditional" style. Are you saying that this "traditional" housing currently produced in the US (which for the most part is developer designed) is not what the public wants?
If so, then why are you blaming architects and their education? You and the public should be aiming your complaints at home developers.
Also, if there are a good number of architects out there that design "traditionally", and if there are also a good number of people that want "traditional" architecture, and, for some reason, you are still not satisfied with the results, then it's the architects that practice "traditional" architecture that are to blame for not doing a better job.
If, however, what you really want is to see modern architectural design somehow eradicated, then you better face the facts and realize that that is just not going to happen.
2013.10.29 10:37
Why won't you design what we (the public) want?
If there is such a big market for traditional architecture, then the capitalist system of the US will more than likely cater to that market. More than anything else, the built environment of the US is a fairly clear representation of its concurrent market economy.
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