photoshop presentations

A chair and a 4-dimensional cube with point H in common.


even more fooling around. photoshop effects are so addictive. A triptych

Bernard Tschumi

Tschumi's response to the ambivalence of the idea-object is formulated in his conception of an 'event.' Considerations of program are generative of his projects. His architecture is a collage of uses - creating new possibilities of being in an urban space, that is, new 'events.'
Form and composition are denied - for Tshumi it is clear that on that level form can claim no coherence with ideas or uses. He chooses to emphasize a disjunction. Architecture becomes then an exercise in finding abstract intermediaries between the site and the programmatic demands.




















'crossprogramming: displacement and mutual contamination of terms'


In this sense he practices 'architecture as infrastructure,' that is, his buildings are carriers of events. Consequently they are stripped to interlaced structural walkways and glass-bound volumes - applying the minimum necessary to join and complicate the web of city events, while providing a spectacle of the new juxtaposition (a pleasure particular to the city).


















Fragmentation is favored over hierarchy. 'no design, no composition, but materialization of the construction concept'

'programs fall into three categories: those that are indifferent to the spacial sequence; those that reinforce it; those that work against it'


The 'minimum,' however, sets structure off as an aesthetic pursuit. Now, Tschumi says, when technology of construction is no longer a concern (with the technologies available that allow for more than is practically needed in building at this time) architects should focus on construction of technology. - (which i take to mean:) devising of new urban systems, furthering new technologies of living. - an often element in his project is a multimedia screen. Allowing architecture to be constituted by transient images.

Notion of an image is recurring within his work: 1. in the form of projections on the aforementioned digital casings. 2. As public spectacle - flattened image seen through a glass screen.




'removing the hierarchy between frame and image' - image getting loose in the linear core of The (proposed) Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe '89.
F. Jameson describes how the image is 'of itself' an artifact in the postmodern. (so that it is rare to find images of anything)


'the 'city,' a complex and interactive web of events'















Le Fresnoy 'there is no architecture without the city, no city without architecture'

Piranesi captured the experience...

untitled

an exercise in description

Model materials themselves usually carry little information. They are somehow not particular, i.e., available in copies. Perhaps it is a settled gesture to the industrial materials that usually 'come clean' and are available as copies of some unit.

In the last few 'sculpture-models' I have limited altering of the 'building blocks' to the minimum. In particular here, the object begun in a form far off from the final. The shape it has gained is a consensus primarily among the proportions of the elements. Every coffee-stirrer is intact (and has a nice 'finished' rounded edge).

Same happens in terms of structure: I have not used any glue. Some string was needed to hold the main rectangular units together before they were put in tension with the rest of the structure.

On one hand, it is laziness not to complicate the making with too many aids (tools and additional materials), on the other - it makes for a challenge.
By now the 'bridge' has also aged a bit. The wooden pieces deflected permanently making the connections weaker.

For some reason it feels 'Japanese' to me. 1. As a bridge it does not necessarily stretch over anything. It is more of a garden-walkway. 2. The clean, bear materials in this context resonate of some 'Japanese' feng-shui honesty/aesthetic.

Well, there may be some martial arts about it. It manages its destruction with tranquility; tames violence into an aesthetic form. It is too well-tuned perhaps to be either in-destruction or in-creation.

STRUCTURE ?

Structure:

1. when pieces articulate how they are connected among themselves.

2. efficiency and economy (not in terms of time and money though)








3. mutual occupation. good fit.

Structure has some aim. or it feels so.

Structure is best articulated when it falls apart (deconstruction?)

pieces - in reading Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge

"Our ultimate aim is to probe the possibilities of building architecture as a poetic translation, not a prosaic transcription, of its representations"

"for architecture the dificulty of manifesting a symbolic order is necessarily double, since it concerns both, the project and its translation"

ARCHITECT: the producer of mediating artifacts
ARTIFACT: the link between idea and experience - the place of culture/ interpretation or tone


"the horizon of things, now excluded by the frame."

An image from Engineering and the Mind's Eye.

I quote it as an interesting example of the relation between an object and an idea. We see a series of utalitarian objects - they are the fruits, or more precisely - the by-products, of purposeful engineering investigations;

The objects themselves seem to be meant for little more than demonstration. Each is a model representing an instance of engineering thought. As models they are made very purposefully - raggedness and carelessness is allowed whenever the idea itself is already embodied within the form. In this sense they are very efficient objects.

The ideas expressed here are tied back into the objects themselves. The connection is so evident that the objects are both: designs and the designed objects. They encapsulate a wide span of the 'idea-object' spectrum: From the engineering purity of gear concepts to the crude materiality of weathered wood.

Finally, they are dynamic: obviously, as objects meant for movement, but even more so as fragments of some larger purpose-driven machinery they make potentially possible. In the latter sense they are very enigmatic (even though the principles of their operation are made visually apparent).

On the left we see another very purposeful model - demonstrating principles of Newtonian mechanics. A very 'informed' object.

What about these...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaHvLE_7lTY&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dR38uQN74c&feature=related