 
Horace Trumbauer, Whitemarsh Hall (Wyndmoor, PA: under construction, 1917.12.05)
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1998.12.05 11:30
assimilating architecture?
Since c.1500, humanity (however, mostly Western/European culture) has operated predominantly under the influence of an assimilating imagination--a process whereby everything about this planet, and even beyond, has been and still is run through the workings of absorption -- absorption of land, data, capital, whole societies, etc. (Science in general is a very assimilating process, and genocide is just one example of absorption in the extreme--purge.)
According to chronosomatics, a theory based on the interrelationship of time and the human body, there are roughly 200 years left where assimilation will play a major role with regard to the human imagination, and, more importantly, the next 200 years of assimilation will also be the largest and grossest "chunks" of assimilation yet, perhaps culminating with the total and complete knowledge of every bit of rhyme, reason, cause and effect of the human genome. Chronosomatics also shows us that metabolism (equal doses of creation and destruction) has been steadily becoming the new and eventually predominate operation of the human imagination. Therefore there is a strong pluralism within the operation of the human imagination today as well.
Are there thus some things within the last 500 years architectural history that relate to the notion of an assimilating architecture? Is there something about the present state of architectural affairs that points to an assimilating and/or metabolic architecture? For example, is the high eclecticism of the late 19th century one form of assimilating architecture? Is Le Corbusier's Purism akin to assimilating architecture in the extreme? Is the current widespread/global land development precisely a continuation of the assimilating process begun by the likes of Christopher Columbus? Will humanity, 200 years hence, have come extremely close to assimilating (for better or for worse) every square inch of this planet?
Personally, I think the answer is yes, but that's not the worst of it. After assimilation ceases to be a major element within the operation of the human imagination, humanity will spend 500 years working under the influence of an almost purely metabolic imagination. Imagine living on Earth when pretty much everything thought and done is create and destroy, create and destroy, create and destroy. . . . .
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2005.12.05 13:22
Thom Mayne on Charlie Rose
Morphosis architecture represents architecture well, but I don't think Mayne on Rose represented architecture well at all. The times when Rose "had no idea what he (Mayne) was talking about" are when Mayne didn't honestly answer the question. For example, when Rose asked what motivates Mayne's design now, Mayne couldn't give an honest objective answer. Instead, Mayne, after some silence, gave ethereal blah-blah. Granted, it was just that type of stuff architects are used to hearing at design juries among themselves, but that does not make it a good answer.
2005.12.05 16:00
Thom Mayne on Charlie Rose
First of all, presenting a sound-bite answer is not the issue here, especially since Rose gave Mayne a whole hour. Rose's question contained some leads, "is it politics?, is it style?" (I don't remember all the exact words), and given the question, I would have given the context of where I see Morphosis within architectural history, and then explained what the Morphosis design approach sets out to accomplish. I can't answer what Mayne would say himself, but that's the way I would have approached an answer to the question. What I thought after I saw Mayne's hesitation and then heard his answer is just how afraid and subsequently unable architects are at talking about style. But, more to the point, architects are afraid to discuss their motivation because a lot of the motivation (especially for Morphosis) is about creating a certain style.
style 1 : the way in which something is said, done, expressed, or performed
The notion of style in architecture has been so debased by Modernism's reaction to eclecticism that architects now don't even know how to talk about it.
07120501 Girard Collage site plan 2389i02 b
07120502 Girard Collage model 2389i03 b c
07120503 Girard Collage perspectives axonometrics 2389i04
2009.12.05 12:42
where's the avant garde?
Get a notion or idea
that most will resist,
and chances are
that it's avant garde.
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