this will kill that.
_"It was a presentiment that human thought, in changing its form, was about to change its mode of expression; that the dominant idea of each generation would no longer be written with the same matter, and in the same manner; that the book of stone, so solid and so durable, was about to make way for the book of paper, more solid and still more durable. In this connection the archdeacon's vague formula had a second sense. It meant, "Printing will kill architecture."
When the memory of the first races felt itself overloaded, when the mass of reminiscences of the human race became so heavy and so confused that speech naked and flying, ran the risk of losing them on the way, men transcribed them on the soil in a manner which was at once the most visible, most durable, and most natural. They sealed each tradition beneath a monument.
Behold how, beginning with the discovery of printing, architecture withers away little by little, becomes lifeless and bare. How one feels the water sinking, the sap departing, the thought of the times and of the people withdrawing from it! The chill is almost imperceptible in the fifteenth century; the press is, as yet, too weak, and, at the most, draws from powerful architecture a superabundance of life.
It is that setting sun which we mistake for the dawn.
The edifice has a thousand stories. Here and there one beholds on its staircases the gloomy caverns of science which pierce its interior. Everywhere upon its surface, art causes its arabesques, rosettes, and laces to thrive luxuriantly before the eyes. There, every individual work, however capricious and isolated it may seem, has its place and its projection. Harmony results from the whole."_
victor hugo
when does it become more than form?
a process of removal. carving and digging away. how does the space differ through that process than from an additive one?
the manipulation of light is quite interesting.
texture, space, and drawing
these textures are becoming more interesting and the space is beginning to read through the quality of the drawing. the contrast of the shading for the corrugation parallel or perpendicular to the cut is quite intriguing. i wonder how this could be drawn at a larger scale.
id like to see a deepening in the shading for the reveals in the model. the places where one material or form crashes into another. what happens there?
the shading on the right hand side of the model needs some work and the whole thing could do with an increase in contrast. however, the dark shape in the middle intrigues me. is that the shadow of the form? nice, continue the drawing.
simple and effective :
a lesson in perspectival distortion.
just because its funny.
guess who.
almost perfectly square.
an _affect of light.
interesting tactic : using light as a medium to push the drawing.
how could you take this further? continue.
up from the roots
the origins of things.
from where do ideas stem? what nurtures them and brings them from the earth? as they grow and reach upwards, where does the detail form? what allows an idea to become cultivated and transform into a fully formed intuition? then, proceeding towards a motivation and a construction?
how does the detail have to transform once it must actually be constructed?
scale changes entirely.
also, just to build a representation of a thing is something. further than that, more challenging than that. what about a re - presentation of that same thing? how can you, as a designer, produce something else entirely through that process in a new context? what does the change in vocabulary indicate?
grounding : reiteration
1. be firmly grounded in a close and careful understanding of your site; some suggestions:
- your site’s specific phenomenal qualities (views, tones + colours, reflections + refractions, surface textures, sound qualities, sense of enclosure vs. openness, …etc). And let’s think of our windows beyond a thin layer of glass between frames; instead as a space. Does your site, from window to the gallery wall behind it, form a bright shallow space in contrast to the darker situation of window + deep space of the canteen area? Next session, you will map yourwindow in relation to solar movement in plan and section.
- the specific qualities of light at your window. Think of light as a material. What colour is light there? What tones? And on which surfaces andaround which corners (e.g. the glass mullion vs. metal rail)? How can you shape light there? Look closely at how (bright) light behaves around edges; revisit / research light movements in physics. How can you direct light, reflect /refract it, ‘squeeze’ it, …?
- the activities / movement of bodies afforded or suggested by the window itself and those unfolding around it for other reasons (walking-by, sitting, standing / leaning, looking / looking-away; … ). Do views though your window stop people in their tracks (even if for an instant) to look at something beyond? Is there a subtle alignment (with tree, with ramp, with distant skyline, …) that is unique to this window-frame?
- Does your window reveal something unique about the courtyard and its landscape (trees, bushes, …) , the canteen area or the city – because it affords unique views? Does your window frame bodies in ways which present them differently? For instance, seen from the courtyard or the canteen, bodies walking through the gallery may evoke the effect of a cat-walk in a fashion-show. Bodies are usually dynamic behind the gallery window, while many are static right behind the canteen ones (sitting, lunching, …); facing southwest, the shallow space of the gallery is brighter than the northwestern and deeper windows of the canteen.
2. be firmly anchored in a critical interpretation of your site (one of the three framed by the readings, or one that evolves in your discussions with your tutor); again, some suggestions:
- do the site’s phenomenal properties and materilaities privilege vision over all other senses? Does this cause us to overlook some rich but subtle experiences of sound, texture and enclosure? (e.g. gallery windows define an intimate enclosure between their glass mullions confirmed by relative auditory isolation).
- Do the site’s phenomenal and spatial properties frame bodies to each other in an unequal relationship (panopticism)? How do bodies appear through the gallery windows as opposed to the canteen windows? How does this relate to the issues raised by John Berger or Michel Foucault in the articles we are reading?
- Does the site hint at a distinct (if subtle) relationship to landscape (trees, ground + sky, grass + bushes, …)? How does the sky / tree / ground appear through the gallery windows as opposed to the canteen windows? For example: the gallery windows seem to project into the courtyard alike tree houses; the tree may be/could be too close to the gallery window to be seen as an object but instead the arrangement subtly suggests seeing closeups of the tree as it changes seasons – i.e. as a process. Relate this to the reading “Sites of Time”.
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