[arch] Paspels lecture

Went to a cArch lecture today. The architect presented his work process on a single project, a high school at Paspels. The town has a distributed typology; the buildings are situated in liberal relations with each other. There exists no grid or any other such strict urban organizations; rather, the buildings are phenomenally scattered such that a manifold of pathways can be imagined in a journey between any two points. In order for the building to maintain consistency with the emergent urban typology, the architect conceived of a "box" and placed it into the site accordingly. The "box" is a three level volume, with a sloped roof. He presents this as a small red box in the town-scale figure-ground plan. Presenting the conceptual phase of the design process, he shows eight volumes for the eight classrooms, and two (or four?) volumes for another function. These regular volumes are then fit into the regular plan on two floors. Dropping this configuration of volumes into the box, the architect renders an "outside" and an "inside", for which an external, or an envelope, is clearly delineneable from the internal content. The internal content is dropped into the container. The dichotomy between inside and outside is resolved with the use of the same materials, especially concrete. And skewed, slightly, by 86 and 94 degrees. The volumes, enveloped by the skewed walls, read as regular forms on cursory glance. The user's discovery of false perspectives and the reading of regular perspectives are simultaneously possible, depending on vantage points. The subtlety of this architectural gesture, the ambiguous perspective, exists to the user as a puzzle to be discovered, and suggest that this architecture may be a system of possibilities to be opened up. The subtlety with which such possible puzzles become part of the composition, here at the scale of wall, contrasts the substantial material of concrete. Moving on, the architect shows the various precise details in materials and construction that contribute to the phenomenal readings by the user. He showed window construction details that utilize massive brass that can flush with the concrete plane, and the door details, including the hinge that fits into the concrete. He then talked about including the extension of an edge from the roof that creates a waterfall to the ground such that no pipes would interfere with the unity of the exterior. He also addresses and emphasizes the issue of water slippages, its effects on the concrete, and its drainage. Concrete, both the issues and design considerations in its uses, are also emphasized in this presentation. Other materials include wood for the interior definitions of classrooms, and brass for window and roof details. The details he presented were consistent with the original formal expression, which is a logic of forms inside a simple envelope. In summary, the architect's presentation of the project reveals how the various details of the building integrally contribute to the piece of architecture's identity. Its identity, manifesting through the various scales of consideration, reflexively addresses the phenomenal sense that was originally prescribed in the conceptual model. That the forms at different scales work integrally, with the same underlying precision, and all respecting the original formal ideas, which were first expressed at the scale of the building as a whole, goes towards the unified expression of the architecture's identity. The expression of the architecture's identity, correlated with the architect expressing an architectural idea, naturally occurs in the consistent and continual making of gestures contributing to it at different scales.

[C/i/a] picturing utopia, part ii

 here it is..  Imaging apparati and network technologies are two fronts of development that have invoked dreams of a different kind of reality. In fields as diverse as the sciences, the military, as well as arts and entertainment, the former is employed to create images that reflect or project something of the natural and the artificial, and the interaction in between. Via newly proliferated channels provided by advances in network technologies, the images circulate amongst individuals involved in specialized enterprises; often, their distribution also extends to the general public. As images and the technologies become increasingly available, the sense arises of there being more possibilities of participation than ever before. There arises the sense that by actively perceiving, transforming, and relating information streaming through the channels, one jacks into a collective circuit and becomes involved in a widescale undertaking towards some yet unexplicated, perhaps perfect, ends. Poised before the possibilities of appropriating the use of images and instruments to take part in discoveries and creations, one's continual activity and involvement with peers, whether strangers and friends, become an ends to themselves. [The original image is a still captured from a film of mine. It's transformed in Photoshop. The mosaic in midground is created by sampling and cropping (and degrading) a number of random and select images.] [ref: 8.02.2005-02:54pm : fournos]

[stream] experiencing virtual aesthetics

 What consists in the textual aesthetics of the virtual... the textual, in English? The language of modern science, what potential has it to dream the accounts of our times? The grammar and the vocabulary, sampled and traced the mass of canons and thousand corpus... transformed, will they suffice to discover a new tune? (Transform how?) To recall the silent wares of logic, deeply embedded in our being, and remembering, to express again, to generate again, to experience fully again this exhiliration of our already always present logical imagination.

[stream] "dream towards"

Opening my eyes I saw lit neon, trailing, flashing, blinking in and out of existence, perfect renderings of lit trajectories. I heard the whispers of the metro, the declarations of engines and aluminum machines, the primal rhythms of footsteps and jumbled noise, the procession of perpetual fluoresence. Sliding into the wires I slipped out to the empty darkness of space. Motioning along at the speed of light, I was still and never moving. The cluster of million points of light accelerated towards me, and slowing, transformed into transecting lines of alphanumericals. I have arrived at the city of incessant exchange. The entity of digital atoms has come to me. Through the white blur of neon data I catch a glimpse, a series of transparent body forms, now here, now gone. I hear voice, one there, one there, one here, one here. Soft, precise, doppling sounds and images fade in and out, of people, persons, the fellows of my own.

[C/i/a] picturing utopia part i