Ivan Himanen is an architect, urbanist, and researcher based in New York City.
My post on Bernini made me recall a critique in advanced drawing seminar under Sue Gussow. That time she invited a guest professor who identified a simple dichotomy. Looking at my drawings– charcoal on bond on the left, ink wash on mylar on the right– he noted the contrast in technique represented a larger duality, one…
There is a pattern emerging in the past decade or two in the cultural niche of apocalypse-gazing. Namely, we have become increasingly enthralled with the kind of world’s ends which are categorically insidious, infectious, and truly uncanny– the notion is popular that an apocalypse will sprout germ-like from a familiar flower. Both zombie swarms and…
We can learn a lot about a culture by just investigating its vocabulary. Common trivia holds that Eskimos have about two dozen words for snow. As kids, when we first hear this, we are of course blown away– until we realize that the words are in fact used to describe different kinds of snow: falling…
This now can attach in seamless step to the end of my last post on adaptability— concluding with the thought that upcoming architectural typologies, building technologies, and client mentalities are to benefit more than anything from the ability to change and morph harmonically with their surroundings. At this moment I am most interested in the…
Our elders say that youthful Hope and ever-ageless Trust, Created the blushing western sunset and pensive eastern dusk Upon discovering their precious earth was but a stiffened trail And their sky would never bear the rains nor sprinkle icy hail— That they, in fact, were leading lives too focused on some goal— Some two-dimensioned peaks…
On the way home, heaven lover you’ll encounter a juvenile flower do not hold it, for it will crumble just behold it and it will double. Next thing you know a field will grow repeating mirror images ablossom, infinite beauty, sown in the abyss of your deceasing eyes.
Pick up, fear. Pick up and come here. Pick the pace up a gear, clearly I’m in it but uncommitted, long as you live I fear for thee, commit my suicide for me. For I can’t unrationalize thy passionate cries, and fore the knife takes arms against life, against the harm I had, my mind…
Two things– a quotation from Andy Warhol (unexpected) and the death of my grandfather– have given me course to re-examine the definition of “event”. From AW, it comes quite simply: “Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details.” I propose the following definition:…
My very first mashup! ENJOY