Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Few and many
Every skyscraper is trying to be unique and iconic - in a densely built city it doesn't hurt because at the scale of the city they are all like perfume bottles on a dresser: the individual appearances don't really matter anymore, but rather the whole field is the impression. The more unique and impressive ones are admired individually in print (enlarged and singled out, reviewed for their merits, beauty and poetry- like perfumes) and in person.
In print, the criteria for critique is simultaneously zoomed in and zoomed out - zoomed into the engineering and architectural details and zoomed out into the object-form. It is primarily a critique of form and appearance that can be seen in print. What can be read (in words) in print is a critique of the space, but this is built on a personal experience of the space in person.
In person, the experience of the object-form is second place to the experience of immediate space. A small blank wall in print is a huge blank wall in person. In person, the sequence of rooms and the height of room ceilings, the color and texture of walls, circulation paths, the chance for encounters, the implied barriers and entries, the freedom or oppression, these become first place.
So, designing at two scales, 1) Object-form, 2) Space/function
Which is more important?
(In a small building, the two meld together much more, because there the form of a room and the sequence of spaces can actually determine to a greater extent the form of the building without contrivance, while in a large building with many rooms an over-arching form is needed (?) )
Amiens Cathedral to Office Building Morph
To study the effect of detail, ornament, filigree and form.
Wrapping paper vs architecture
There is a confounding of roles.
A wrapping paper designer could also design the box, and vice versa, but the two roles should not be confounded. The former is primarily about affect, about pattern, fundamentally 2-dimensional, could be complex but the complexity is never spatial; the latter is about space and spatial experience.
In an analogy, designing the fabric pattern is not the same as designing the dress with its 3-d proportions.
They could both be excellent, but the fabric has no use were it not for the dress - which one is more important? Will you buy a dress designed by (insert-famous-name) made out of an anonymous, run-of-the-mill fabric or will you buy a dress designed by an anonymous, run-of-the-mill fashion designer made out of (insert-famous-name) fabric? Granted one should see the dress before deciding, but we would think the exceptional fashion designer will handle the ordinary fabric so well that the dress will be exceptional while the exceptional fabric is wasted in the hands of a mediocre dress designer.
Today, there are so many wrapped boxes that one thinks the wrapper is more important. It is for the first five seconds or ten months... and then?
A wrapping paper designer could also design the box, and vice versa, but the two roles should not be confounded. The former is primarily about affect, about pattern, fundamentally 2-dimensional, could be complex but the complexity is never spatial; the latter is about space and spatial experience.
In an analogy, designing the fabric pattern is not the same as designing the dress with its 3-d proportions.
They could both be excellent, but the fabric has no use were it not for the dress - which one is more important? Will you buy a dress designed by (insert-famous-name) made out of an anonymous, run-of-the-mill fabric or will you buy a dress designed by an anonymous, run-of-the-mill fashion designer made out of (insert-famous-name) fabric? Granted one should see the dress before deciding, but we would think the exceptional fashion designer will handle the ordinary fabric so well that the dress will be exceptional while the exceptional fabric is wasted in the hands of a mediocre dress designer.
Today, there are so many wrapped boxes that one thinks the wrapper is more important. It is for the first five seconds or ten months... and then?
What is architecture (Sullivan)
"In it is no joy of living - you know not what the fullness of life signifies"
What is the fullness of life (of the little shopgirls?)
What is the fullness of life (of the little shopgirls?)
visual art (thoughts) - continued
A highrise building, being so tall, so ostentatious, so visible - to design it as visual art seems arrogant - a huge piece of sculpture. As the size of a sculpture increases, the feeling of arrogance increases - we can think about the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, or even the large portraits of contemporary dictators hung in public squares. It speaks of over-achievement, a striving of one over many or of the powerful over the weak. (-does it?) To design huge buildings as visual art is condescending and of bad taste. The best sculptors would not do it. The question is then, how does one design a tall building?
visual art (thoughts)
When architects make something for the sake of aesthetics - it could be form, ornament, cladding, material choice - it is going into visual art: like painting or sculpture. On the other hand, when architects make choices out of functional needs (or requirements, like in parametric systems), it is not visual art. So there are these two categories. An architect then consciously chooses whether or not to design this building as an artist or as a functionalist. These overlap most of the time, but the powerful works tend to lean very much to one side or the other.
On the art of pleasing in architecture
(Le Camus)
Yet what I am concerned about in this thesis, might be less about pleasing in the sense of what is beautiful, but pleasing in the sense of satisfying the desire for mystery in the inhabitants of a city...
(Issue) perfume bottle
Tyrone Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, 1963. Ralph Rapson.
What is it about this that I don't like? (Though it looks like a very nice thing?) That it is a one liner? That it is an object? "A perfume bottle?" But what isn't a perfume bottle? Architecture is more than a perfume bottle - is it a crime for buildings to look like objects? But why do I dislike that idea?
(Edit: could it be that, 'as a composition it is not powerful, as an object it is not minimalist?' If we were to judge something based on pure looks, like this, from a picture, or like spectators from the street, like passers-by, like the inhabitants of the city -- if we were to judge architecture based on pure looking (i.e. without studying the plans, or understanding how the inside works, or what it wants to do with regards to space, to relationship) then is it not the same as looking at an artwork? A painting, or a sculpture. The problem that moves to the #1 spot here, then, is that not every architect is an artist -- perhaps someone like Le Corbusier could make a building work as a sculpture, but it cannot be said for every architect. Yet, many buildings are designed today like this, for viewing from the street, for public view, like displaying artwork by an amateur artist - not bad, but not especially good.)
What is it about this that I don't like? (Though it looks like a very nice thing?) That it is a one liner? That it is an object? "A perfume bottle?" But what isn't a perfume bottle? Architecture is more than a perfume bottle - is it a crime for buildings to look like objects? But why do I dislike that idea?
(Edit: could it be that, 'as a composition it is not powerful, as an object it is not minimalist?' If we were to judge something based on pure looks, like this, from a picture, or like spectators from the street, like passers-by, like the inhabitants of the city -- if we were to judge architecture based on pure looking (i.e. without studying the plans, or understanding how the inside works, or what it wants to do with regards to space, to relationship) then is it not the same as looking at an artwork? A painting, or a sculpture. The problem that moves to the #1 spot here, then, is that not every architect is an artist -- perhaps someone like Le Corbusier could make a building work as a sculpture, but it cannot be said for every architect. Yet, many buildings are designed today like this, for viewing from the street, for public view, like displaying artwork by an amateur artist - not bad, but not especially good.)
Is loneliness a constant?
We can agree that if there is no loneliness, Blade Runner could not be made. (Is there any great movie that can be made in the absence of loneliness..?)
Yet, are there people who feel nothing for Blade Runner? Perhaps they would not notice if loneliness is not present? Perhaps they do not sense loneliness? Is it necessary?
What is architecture, what can it do if the canvas is loneliness?
Is there loneliness in a small town? Is there loneliness in a warm family?
Loneliness in a city full of people? Warmth in a city full of emptiness?
Why is a red balloon most red against a solid blue sky? "There is nothing redder in this world" - who said this..?
On Ornament: notes for an architecture thesis (draft)
It seems quite apparent that in the present age, "ornament" is not part of the conversation. The discussion of "ornament" is of a past age. The designers of today's buildings would be very quaint and eccentric indeed to discuss the necessity of ornamentation in architecture. There had been one or two recent discussions on "ornament," I am not acquainted with their contents, and will not comment on those discussions here; but "ornament" has not come back in the way it was the topic of much debate and consideration in the 19th and early 20th century - not in school curriculum nor in practice.
Yet, though the overt mention of "ornament" has not resurfaced, there is a spirit of "ornament" - the spirit that is the essence of matter, as great artists, musicians and writers know something about. Call a rose by another name and it is still a rose -- here we go deeper: when the rose dies the spirit of the rose remains as an essence (or a memory, if you will). In an extreme illustration, if the rock I hold in my hand has the spirit of a rose, then looking past all materiality which is known to be fading, temporal and transient, I could say with not a little confidence that I have a rose. If the red rose I hold in my hand have the spirit of a rock, then while I say I hold a rose, I hold nothing when the rose dies in the habitual way of roses. Spirit is closer in distance to thought than it is to matter. Thoughts are not material, having no weight, no texture, no grain, no dimensions - yet thoughts are the essence of action and material. In a murder trial, for example, whether or not the crime was premeditated -in other words, did this thought exist?- is the crux of the matter in deciding for or against the gravest punishment. What is the motivation for much of today's architecture? In this particular thesis, the subject of interest is the high-rise building. What is the spirit of the high-rise?
In most cases, the high-rise is a wrapped core. The elevator core as a practical necessity to transport inhabitants vertically - that being established, the program of the building wraps itself around the core in stacked floors, and finally the whole building is wrapped again in a "skin" which is the subject of much research in recent years in the form of facade treatment, technology and design. The skin is justifiably important, mediating between the weather elements and the inhabited interior, and its fine-tuning could translate into energy savings which is an important topic in a world concerned about climate issues. Yet here another old debate: one which in my view has not ended and should not be ignored until interested parties come to each their own satisfied conclusions - the question of the division between the architect and the engineer.
The spirit of "ornament" is not the spirit of "architecture" (whether or not the latter encompasses in some degree the former is open to discussion.) Yet, in the contemporary field, architects have not recognized, and if recognizing they have not deliberated, and if deliberating they have not articulated, the existence and nature of the spirit of architecture. This is perhaps a sweeping statement, considering that there are small houses and buildings which endeavor to experiment and converse about the spirit of architecture (or, also known as, the meaning of architecture,) but in the high-rises, particularly the steel-and-glass skyscrapers, one could not sense it - as dry as a desert is the seeming oasis of architecture.
In fact -and I refuse to blush- even the term "spirit", and such terms as "meaning", or "essence", is kept inside dark closets in the elite schools of architecture. Rationalism reigns, structuralism is respected, materiality viewed with some interest, environmental or green design the new secret police chief. All these being means to various ends, the end not in essence "architecture." To avoid confusion, at this point one would want to define the meaning of architecture. This thesis student says: the meaning is in life and not death. Death is in the dearth of spirit, the dearth of spirit is the essence of doing things without conviction. Doing things with conviction but in the wrong way would yield a terrible failure but not a boring banality. Then, I also ask, who should be an architect? Should I say, each to his own? Even in Manhattan the myriad of buildings each have their admirers and detractors, and countless others that are boring banalities - yet as a whole tapestry we cannot but be impressed by the majesty of a landscape of towers. My opinion is as such: the high-rise that stands alone, because of the verticality and the harshness of its figure rising upwards, could not be but arrogant - this arrogance reminiscent of the arrogance of the tower of Babel. It speaks of the mortal effort to achieve, to rise above, and yet this mortal body is bound to earth and returns to dust - if it be without spirit. The castles and fortresses of old, though majestic and towering, speak of a different kind of spirit, one of defence, of royalty, of country, of piety, of loyalty - yes, and even of community, of kingdom, of family and of life: these things by which even the modern man could feel his heart stirred - such as we see reimagined in movies. Yet today, the tall towers and skyscrapers speak of very little other than the one thing: capital. The dollar sign. A pauper could be instantly a king if he had but money. Money as flag and banner has from the very beginning been the genesis of the high-rise. When land became expensive, landowners built more stories to gather more rent. With the old masonry construction, certain heights could be reached, but a limiting factor is the massive bearing walls swelling and eating away at the ground floors which are the most rentable and profitable. The height reachable is also limited by the human ability to travel vertically, five stories being the comfortable limit. With the invention of the elevator, the height was doubled. With the introduction of steel skeletal construction, the massiveness of the bearing walls at ground floor was done away with, enabling the height of the building to again be doubled. Indeed it was not a structural limit that barred the high-rises of earlier years from rising higher - the limit was profit. Hence, both the steel skeleton construction and the elevator are economic solutions. The skyscraper was generated from a dollar sign.
Singapore was generated from a dollar sign. The British had recognized the strategic location of the island as a gateway in the South-east Asian trade route, and bought the island to turn it into a free port under the empire. Business and revenue was the banner. The first immigrants to settle in Singapore were the Chinese from China and the Indians from India -- they came bringing not their loyalties but wallets to be filled and sent home to their families. There was no question about who they were culturally or nationally - Singapore was only a place to make some money. With the second generation, Singapore started to become a home. Further down the road, the Second World War and the Japanese occupation, and afterwards the independence from the British and merger and subsequent split from Malaysia were events that mixed and cemented the nation. Following the split from Malaysia, the communist saga and the race riots, Singapore gradually developed an identity, fostered in no small part by a national school curriculum which inculcated in young children the ideas of social harmony, racial tolerance and respect for authority. The government which developed such a program to nurture identity was also the decision maker behind all economic strategies including the choice of industries to build up, the focus of education, the promotion of a tourism image, the last of which led to the creation of the Merlion. This half-lion, half-fish creation became known as the symbol of Singapore, testified to by thousands of photographs by tourists through the years posing with the water fountain sculpture made in its likeness. It was a devious success, almost 'cool' in the way gaming and hacking could be considered as such, the best known evidence being its appearance in the 1998 Japanese cult-animation series "Cowboy Bebop."
At this point, the project of this thesis is a “Singapore high-rise”: following the previous arguments we can see this phenomenon (Singapore highrise) as being generated from the original expression “$ $”. The thesis project is a discarding of baggages - we discard the dollar signs and we discard the genealogy and generation of both phenomenons “Singapore” and “high-rise”. Looking at only the present, the living and the remaining, we generate the project Singapore high-rise. It can be said to be a clean-slate project in spirit. It defines “Singapore”, “high-rise”, “architecture, “ornament.” If it cannot define, it discusses.
(----INSERT #1: High-rise: Singapore version
Necessity:
Human beings need a place to live.
Factor:
Many people need to live on a piece of land.
Necessary evil:
High-rise.
Yet there are benefits. 1) Raised off the ground, the winds are stronger - a much appreciated phenomenon here. 2) In a building full of people, there is a sense of safety. Singapore children grew up never knowing the deep darkness of a farmhouse out in the country at night. The noise and the lights never ceases, they might be muted at some point, but the corridor lamps and every vibration of the inhabitants find their way, attenuated, into private spaces of others. Even if there is no material seepage, there is mental knowledge of the nearness of other human beings. The high-rise is a crowd. A crowd has the potential to be a community -- is a community desirable? There could be opportunities in the high-rise to create varied opportunities of community.
END INSERT----)
(----INSERT #2: Architecture of the high-rise
Function and beauty:
We are no longer tied to structure - to build high is not a structural concern - engineering gymnastics have been done in many examples, e.g. the CCTV. Anything is possible if it be pure structural limit. We do not need to, rather, this is not the age to be like the Gothic masons who discovered and evolved very beautifully the flying buttresses. That is not the spirit of architecture of this age. The spirit of architecture of this age is not about structure -- the structural feats accomplished in buildings, though great, are of the spirit of engineering. The economic facet, the cost of the structure, is a concern. In this sense we are limited by structure.
Regarding truth, honesty, authenticity in the old debate: To be authentic for the sake of authenticity is not authentic, it is pretentiousness. Yet one cannot deny that purely structural buildings are beautiful, for instance, bridges. The need for insulation and weatherproofing in inhabited buildings render it impossible to make an honest authentic building in this sense. Perhaps in a tropical region it could be possible - here again Singapore is an open ended question.
Here, again, the issue of the spirit of "ornament". Ornament for the sake of ornament - that is out of the question. But in wanting to make a building attractive, be it with cladding, with form, with massing - is that not the spirit of ornament? What is not ornament is the part unconcerned with visuals. Here, I think about the human body. If earrings and necklaces are the old style ornaments, and clothing the new ornament in terms of cladding, am I considering then the body shape itself as ornament? The spirit in the body (indeed, the ghost in the shell) is the one important thing, this much one has to come to understand to hold anything more solid than dust and ashes in this life - yet, how could this spirit in architecture be expressed, and would not the material reflect the invisible?
END INSERT----)
(----INSERT #3: Ornament
I look at the picture of Amiens Cathedral and such are my thoughts:
Beautiful - why beautiful? Ornament, detail, arches, proportion
Impressive - why impressive? Scale, size, ornament, detail, arches, proportion
Imaginative - why imaginative? Detail, filigree, scale, size
This last point brings me to the landscape of the film Blade Runner. Why imaginative? So many spaces for so many lives (yes, even android lives) to interact, to touch each other, to speak to God. I thought, such is the characteristics of the filigree.
Filigree: it occurred to me that as we zoom in closer and closer into a city-scape such as Manhattan, the interesting-ness is carried by the detail, and these details (the windows, the doors, the dividing lines) are something like filigree. Filigree-like. Layers and layers of filigree - a filigree of possible spaces. Even in Blade Runner, the neon lights draw a landscape of filigree in the rain and the dark mist. Such is the difference between a real city and a model of a city made out of wooden blocks - from a certain distance the wooden blocks city is interesting, but zooming in they tell nothing more - it is a dead thing. This thesis student thinks: the meaning is in life. “You cannot clothe the petty things of life in majesty” - perhaps not (and that is why high-rises are not seen as “majestic”, no matter how tall and imposing - because majesty is of the spirit, and the majestic spirit cannot exist in today’s commercial climate), but we can clothe them with imagination - the spirit of imagination can live anywhere, unlike the spirit of majesty it is not loathe to clothe the petty things of life.
END INSERT----)
Yet, though the overt mention of "ornament" has not resurfaced, there is a spirit of "ornament" - the spirit that is the essence of matter, as great artists, musicians and writers know something about. Call a rose by another name and it is still a rose -- here we go deeper: when the rose dies the spirit of the rose remains as an essence (or a memory, if you will). In an extreme illustration, if the rock I hold in my hand has the spirit of a rose, then looking past all materiality which is known to be fading, temporal and transient, I could say with not a little confidence that I have a rose. If the red rose I hold in my hand have the spirit of a rock, then while I say I hold a rose, I hold nothing when the rose dies in the habitual way of roses. Spirit is closer in distance to thought than it is to matter. Thoughts are not material, having no weight, no texture, no grain, no dimensions - yet thoughts are the essence of action and material. In a murder trial, for example, whether or not the crime was premeditated -in other words, did this thought exist?- is the crux of the matter in deciding for or against the gravest punishment. What is the motivation for much of today's architecture? In this particular thesis, the subject of interest is the high-rise building. What is the spirit of the high-rise?
In most cases, the high-rise is a wrapped core. The elevator core as a practical necessity to transport inhabitants vertically - that being established, the program of the building wraps itself around the core in stacked floors, and finally the whole building is wrapped again in a "skin" which is the subject of much research in recent years in the form of facade treatment, technology and design. The skin is justifiably important, mediating between the weather elements and the inhabited interior, and its fine-tuning could translate into energy savings which is an important topic in a world concerned about climate issues. Yet here another old debate: one which in my view has not ended and should not be ignored until interested parties come to each their own satisfied conclusions - the question of the division between the architect and the engineer.
The spirit of "ornament" is not the spirit of "architecture" (whether or not the latter encompasses in some degree the former is open to discussion.) Yet, in the contemporary field, architects have not recognized, and if recognizing they have not deliberated, and if deliberating they have not articulated, the existence and nature of the spirit of architecture. This is perhaps a sweeping statement, considering that there are small houses and buildings which endeavor to experiment and converse about the spirit of architecture (or, also known as, the meaning of architecture,) but in the high-rises, particularly the steel-and-glass skyscrapers, one could not sense it - as dry as a desert is the seeming oasis of architecture.
In fact -and I refuse to blush- even the term "spirit", and such terms as "meaning", or "essence", is kept inside dark closets in the elite schools of architecture. Rationalism reigns, structuralism is respected, materiality viewed with some interest, environmental or green design the new secret police chief. All these being means to various ends, the end not in essence "architecture." To avoid confusion, at this point one would want to define the meaning of architecture. This thesis student says: the meaning is in life and not death. Death is in the dearth of spirit, the dearth of spirit is the essence of doing things without conviction. Doing things with conviction but in the wrong way would yield a terrible failure but not a boring banality. Then, I also ask, who should be an architect? Should I say, each to his own? Even in Manhattan the myriad of buildings each have their admirers and detractors, and countless others that are boring banalities - yet as a whole tapestry we cannot but be impressed by the majesty of a landscape of towers. My opinion is as such: the high-rise that stands alone, because of the verticality and the harshness of its figure rising upwards, could not be but arrogant - this arrogance reminiscent of the arrogance of the tower of Babel. It speaks of the mortal effort to achieve, to rise above, and yet this mortal body is bound to earth and returns to dust - if it be without spirit. The castles and fortresses of old, though majestic and towering, speak of a different kind of spirit, one of defence, of royalty, of country, of piety, of loyalty - yes, and even of community, of kingdom, of family and of life: these things by which even the modern man could feel his heart stirred - such as we see reimagined in movies. Yet today, the tall towers and skyscrapers speak of very little other than the one thing: capital. The dollar sign. A pauper could be instantly a king if he had but money. Money as flag and banner has from the very beginning been the genesis of the high-rise. When land became expensive, landowners built more stories to gather more rent. With the old masonry construction, certain heights could be reached, but a limiting factor is the massive bearing walls swelling and eating away at the ground floors which are the most rentable and profitable. The height reachable is also limited by the human ability to travel vertically, five stories being the comfortable limit. With the invention of the elevator, the height was doubled. With the introduction of steel skeletal construction, the massiveness of the bearing walls at ground floor was done away with, enabling the height of the building to again be doubled. Indeed it was not a structural limit that barred the high-rises of earlier years from rising higher - the limit was profit. Hence, both the steel skeleton construction and the elevator are economic solutions. The skyscraper was generated from a dollar sign.
Singapore was generated from a dollar sign. The British had recognized the strategic location of the island as a gateway in the South-east Asian trade route, and bought the island to turn it into a free port under the empire. Business and revenue was the banner. The first immigrants to settle in Singapore were the Chinese from China and the Indians from India -- they came bringing not their loyalties but wallets to be filled and sent home to their families. There was no question about who they were culturally or nationally - Singapore was only a place to make some money. With the second generation, Singapore started to become a home. Further down the road, the Second World War and the Japanese occupation, and afterwards the independence from the British and merger and subsequent split from Malaysia were events that mixed and cemented the nation. Following the split from Malaysia, the communist saga and the race riots, Singapore gradually developed an identity, fostered in no small part by a national school curriculum which inculcated in young children the ideas of social harmony, racial tolerance and respect for authority. The government which developed such a program to nurture identity was also the decision maker behind all economic strategies including the choice of industries to build up, the focus of education, the promotion of a tourism image, the last of which led to the creation of the Merlion. This half-lion, half-fish creation became known as the symbol of Singapore, testified to by thousands of photographs by tourists through the years posing with the water fountain sculpture made in its likeness. It was a devious success, almost 'cool' in the way gaming and hacking could be considered as such, the best known evidence being its appearance in the 1998 Japanese cult-animation series "Cowboy Bebop."
At this point, the project of this thesis is a “Singapore high-rise”: following the previous arguments we can see this phenomenon (Singapore highrise) as being generated from the original expression “$ $”. The thesis project is a discarding of baggages - we discard the dollar signs and we discard the genealogy and generation of both phenomenons “Singapore” and “high-rise”. Looking at only the present, the living and the remaining, we generate the project Singapore high-rise. It can be said to be a clean-slate project in spirit. It defines “Singapore”, “high-rise”, “architecture, “ornament.” If it cannot define, it discusses.
(----INSERT #1: High-rise: Singapore version
Necessity:
Human beings need a place to live.
Factor:
Many people need to live on a piece of land.
Necessary evil:
High-rise.
Yet there are benefits. 1) Raised off the ground, the winds are stronger - a much appreciated phenomenon here. 2) In a building full of people, there is a sense of safety. Singapore children grew up never knowing the deep darkness of a farmhouse out in the country at night. The noise and the lights never ceases, they might be muted at some point, but the corridor lamps and every vibration of the inhabitants find their way, attenuated, into private spaces of others. Even if there is no material seepage, there is mental knowledge of the nearness of other human beings. The high-rise is a crowd. A crowd has the potential to be a community -- is a community desirable? There could be opportunities in the high-rise to create varied opportunities of community.
END INSERT----)
(----INSERT #2: Architecture of the high-rise
Function and beauty:
We are no longer tied to structure - to build high is not a structural concern - engineering gymnastics have been done in many examples, e.g. the CCTV. Anything is possible if it be pure structural limit. We do not need to, rather, this is not the age to be like the Gothic masons who discovered and evolved very beautifully the flying buttresses. That is not the spirit of architecture of this age. The spirit of architecture of this age is not about structure -- the structural feats accomplished in buildings, though great, are of the spirit of engineering. The economic facet, the cost of the structure, is a concern. In this sense we are limited by structure.
Regarding truth, honesty, authenticity in the old debate: To be authentic for the sake of authenticity is not authentic, it is pretentiousness. Yet one cannot deny that purely structural buildings are beautiful, for instance, bridges. The need for insulation and weatherproofing in inhabited buildings render it impossible to make an honest authentic building in this sense. Perhaps in a tropical region it could be possible - here again Singapore is an open ended question.
Here, again, the issue of the spirit of "ornament". Ornament for the sake of ornament - that is out of the question. But in wanting to make a building attractive, be it with cladding, with form, with massing - is that not the spirit of ornament? What is not ornament is the part unconcerned with visuals. Here, I think about the human body. If earrings and necklaces are the old style ornaments, and clothing the new ornament in terms of cladding, am I considering then the body shape itself as ornament? The spirit in the body (indeed, the ghost in the shell) is the one important thing, this much one has to come to understand to hold anything more solid than dust and ashes in this life - yet, how could this spirit in architecture be expressed, and would not the material reflect the invisible?
END INSERT----)
(----INSERT #3: Ornament
I look at the picture of Amiens Cathedral and such are my thoughts:
Beautiful - why beautiful? Ornament, detail, arches, proportion
Impressive - why impressive? Scale, size, ornament, detail, arches, proportion
Imaginative - why imaginative? Detail, filigree, scale, size
This last point brings me to the landscape of the film Blade Runner. Why imaginative? So many spaces for so many lives (yes, even android lives) to interact, to touch each other, to speak to God. I thought, such is the characteristics of the filigree.
Filigree: it occurred to me that as we zoom in closer and closer into a city-scape such as Manhattan, the interesting-ness is carried by the detail, and these details (the windows, the doors, the dividing lines) are something like filigree. Filigree-like. Layers and layers of filigree - a filigree of possible spaces. Even in Blade Runner, the neon lights draw a landscape of filigree in the rain and the dark mist. Such is the difference between a real city and a model of a city made out of wooden blocks - from a certain distance the wooden blocks city is interesting, but zooming in they tell nothing more - it is a dead thing. This thesis student thinks: the meaning is in life. “You cannot clothe the petty things of life in majesty” - perhaps not (and that is why high-rises are not seen as “majestic”, no matter how tall and imposing - because majesty is of the spirit, and the majestic spirit cannot exist in today’s commercial climate), but we can clothe them with imagination - the spirit of imagination can live anywhere, unlike the spirit of majesty it is not loathe to clothe the petty things of life.
END INSERT----)
Re: structure and construction classes
"To awaken and discipline the sense of this beauty, there is no means so good as that of drawing from nature itself....The sense of proportion and all the amenities of art are dependent on the training of mind and eye that drawing tends to give."
- Charles H. Moore
- Charles H. Moore
Diameters! Poor fool. Think you that we live by a formula?
"Yes [you have measured] feet and inches; not our spirit....Your architecture! Where is it? Show me some work that is really yours - that your soul delights in. Therein will be the hope for your art....You seek for the dead matter of Art, not for the living spirit, which is the same yesterday, to-day and forever."
"- But how are we to work?
- In thy own delight, and with reason, as we did, and as the great ones that followed us did."
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