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 […]
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 […]
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– […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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: […]