Try as I mightI can’t burp the babywho won’t stop eatingPaper.Maybe insteadI’ll teach it to vomitand stop wasting my bottledInk.
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Author: the.vonz.himanen
Ivan Himanen is an architect, urbanist, and researcher based in New York City.
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The Center Must Hold
First, Rousseau argued it…. Then Kant laid it out…. Then Nietzsche declared it…. Then Yeats sang it…. Then Picasso painted it…. Then Antonioni shot it…. Then Tschumi built it…. Then Bolano practically drilled it into our heads…. It is the primary motif of modernism. It is the concept of decentralization. Since the Enlightenment, the shift in our mode of thinking has…
The purest amateurs require nothing more to operate than the purest excitement and love for a particular subject. The Satellite Collective can strike the balance between professional and amateur dedication. Its goal to envelop multiples contains that love-driven quality which is so often lost when artists find first success. This entire show is reflective of…
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Flirting with Orchestration
Architects are extant Renaissance Men. Vassily L. As little as I hate to contradict or in any way undermine the prevailing layman’s impressions of architects and their profession… there is one niggling stereotype concerning one key task…. While not misconstruing this task, the stereotype does vastly shortchange it. It is so commonly allowed to subsist…
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Utopia’s Paradox
I sat in on Rod Knox’s Utopia-inspired seminar yesterday with Noah. It was the semester’s final meeting, where closing remarks were made, and one point came up which needs recording. There is a paradox at the center of one of history’s archetypal utopias: that of Thomas More. On the one hand is the obvious point–…
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A New Verticality
The first question is: are humans endowed with limits– are we endowed with yokes? The answer is yes, and there is one specific yoke which I wish to highlight, one of a highly fundamental nature. It is horizontality. And it’s getting to be a burden. Our sense of physical reality is shaped almost across the…
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Verticality, a Preamble
The living rocks cooled,The wriggling fish washed ashore,The birds and lizards fellvictim to a more fiery roar–And so will mankind,being once supreme,be reduced to apesby the machine. Consider this a preamble to an upcoming article on verticality. A couple of cool articles: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/rich-doyle-2 http://spacetimearchitecture.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/morphing-scale-to-imagine-habitation/
Caught a glimpse of a mockingbird singing and grooming on the edge of the High Line one early evening. Beautiful voice.
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Between a rock and a wet place
Yesterday afternoon I left the office for lunch. With my food I walked into the public plaza behind 776 6th Avenue in search for a place to sit. On one side there were stainless steel chairs and tables: elevated, new, and shiny. Across from them were long red granite benches; low, unassuming, and blending with…
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First Words
First words, they always do that sexy thinglike the first time I moved on you,their anesthesia makes last light(how many stitches do I need?) But then there are last words,Their breath makes next lightwhich move on the long woundand make you unforgettable.