I’m currently collaborating with The Satellite Collective, headed by Kevin Draper, in a handful of capacities. -Designing their latest online publication: Transmission -Consulting on motion graphics to accompany Manuel Vignoulle’s dance piece which will premiere in mid-May at BAM -Writing a review for my good friend Esme Boyce’s piece, also premiering at that show -Eventually,…
Author: the.vonz.himanen
Ivan Himanen is an architect, urbanist, and researcher based in New York City.
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Laura Marling – Saved These Words
At the close of the at-once heavy and light hour-long evolution of Once I Was An Eagle by Laura Marling, I feel greatly rewarded with a verse which morphs meaning at least once per line: Thank you naivetyfor failing me againhe was my next verse. A light personification of ‘naivety’, and a word of gratitude,…
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Bedeviling details
Architects thrive in the jack-of-all-trades role. We fantasize about being great designers, and great builders, and great theoreticians, and great teachers, and great dressers…. But, of course, consummating a union of all aspects of building is difficult to achieve consistently on every single project, particularly the theoretician part, particularly still in the early years when recognition and craft are still developing. Imagine a…
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Our Invention of Fitting
Every time I’ve caught you, airborne or bedridden, I’ve… Tried to invent a new way of holding you. And while hundreds there were, cradles, clasps, passions, pietas, more often than not my curls and swoons and tenderness forced brought me so close, so deafeningly in that you ended up holding me… You know how: true…
Lebbeus Woods called Michelangelo’s sketches one step in “the risky task of invention.” The intense precision of his lines and how ahead of their time they are– still fresh to look at, conjuring many associations– bring to my mind the peculiar case of how architecture evolves. Invention is violence. The conflict of ideas against reality. This profession,…
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Meet me at Grand Central
Christian and I gave an architectural walking tour of midtown in September (titled “Outreach To The Elderly”). In writing it, we were ourselves surprised to discover an elegant distillation of the architectural merit of Grand Central Terminal, and a simple explanation of what architects mean by “space.” One of the unique challenges of URBAN…
To those who haven’t watched it, this video gives some good insight into the players behind the MoMA expansion, and some good counter-arguments from the panel. Times are tough at DS+R, their feet are in some muck. Liz Diller’s presentation comes across as stilted and uninventive, which is strange coming from a firm that has successfully championed…
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Specters of Cooper
These thoughts have taken a while to put down, partly because of so many implications in each (you will see the drift to rant mode)…. The Cooper Union’s current predicament is shitty, no matter what road is taken. However, the shittiest fact to swallow is that there seems to be an unwillingness to take risks…
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A Contorted Universe
The universe may be much more contorted than we think. Denis and I were walking out of AP physics, exchanging, bug-eyed, our newest theories on the makeup of the cosmos. That day, the class had done a review of Newtonian physics– the crux of which, it was concluded, lies not in gravity or the three…
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Politics of the English Language
Politics of the English Language, by George Orwell. A must-read. There are strong lessons here for poets and speech-writers in equal measure. Unfortunately, what Charlotte, Ezequiel, and I recently concluded on the definition of poetry– that it is the economy of language– applies here to any form of writing at all. Just the way it…