Note_Verso and Recto

Told by my colleague G.Cuellar about the term “verso”, it means the left hand page of a book or pamphlet. Also the famous “the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world” publisher Versobooks http://www.versobooks.com/ refer to this, means left-wing political thinking.
Recto is right-hand side of book by the way.

Note_Hortus Conclusus study for housing project

The research from the recently commitment developing the design to renovate/build a house in Taiwan, the house has series of garden with different properties and my first intention was to study these pattern of garden as a starting point. And I found some really interesting article about enclosed garden during my investigation of garden and might be further develop into the design.

Hortus Conclusus means “Enclosed Garden” in Latin word, most convinced originate from King Solomon's 「Song of Songs」 4:12 "Hortus conclusus soror mea, sponsa, hortus conclusus, fons signatus" ("A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up."). It be seem for more private garden later but actually its for the representation of essential and harmony of life. Hortus Conclusus was becoming common scene for the medieval painting for Virgin and child. “the notion of the garden as an enclosed space, set apart, and infused with metaphorical meaning – a representation of nature perfected through human art in the service of an ideal – is fundamental to our understanding of the history of landscape design.”[1]

Virgin and child with saints and donor family, c1430, Cologne

And here is another case I am referred to is Place des Vosges in Paris. After sixteenth century the city development in France was determined by two main architectural principle, Baroque and Neo-classical, in seventeenth century, the Henry IV employ the garden to predefined the city development according to his ideal urban space. It was built in once and sold to individual holder late with the clause clearly stating the uniformity had to be preserved. The garden later become the leisurely centre of Le Marais to relax and also for the whole Paris for holding festivals and events. [2] From the aerial view we can distinguish the complete form of square garden and the resident surround are irregular with the same façade, it shows the idea city of Henry IV, the arrangement of building could be also defined public domain. The building could be changed due to the time and use, but the enclosed garden insure the quality of the space. And this archetype later also implement into other place within Paris.

source:http://www.viaje.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Place-des-Vosges.jpg

Most recently interpretation of Hortus Conclusus was the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011 designed by Peter Zumthor. He said “…the hortus conclusus that I dream of is enclosed all around and open to the sky. Every time I imagine a garden in an architectural setting, it turns into a magical place.”

Photograph: John Offenbach

[1] Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Landscape Design: a cultural and architectural history

[2] Rob Aben and Saskia de Wit, The Enclosed Garden

Review_Atlas of Novel Tectonics

Atlas of Novel Tectonics by New York base architects Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto published in 2006 was a research project supported by grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Princeton University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the New York State Council for the Arts. Atlas in its literal terms means a bound collection of map, often including illustration, informative tables or textual matter. The book accumulates a series of maps of novel tectonics provoking the new architecture. The book is divided into three section named by foremost order of architecture: geometry, matter and operation. It addresses the intersections and interplay between architecture and culture across a series of 67 short, non-linear chapters or “documents” containing illustrations or diagrams with glossy tip-ins. The tip-in presents the project of Reiser+Umemoto as mutual reference with each document. “...it reclaims the autonomy of theoretical discourse in relation to built architecture. That alone makes it an event. Given such heroics would typically be the hallmark of a budding practice with no built work to get in the way…”[1] The design of book of Atlas of Novel Tectonics has been awarded: The Jan Tschichold Prize for Best Designed Swiss Books 2006 and The Gutenberg International Prize of Leipzig Goldletter - 1st Prize.

It proposes that architecture need not rely on historical references, but is capable of producing its own history. “History, merely as a form of consciousness, is not sufficient to give rise to the architectural project.”[2] Thanks to Aldo Rossi who defined the matter and the energy as a precondition of architecture, the book argues that architecture should through there intrinsic physical order, such as structure, material, construction logic, should establish new history. Each chapter in Atlas of Novel Tectonics functions as an argument, as well as a meditation on a particular topic, re-contextualizing it within the practice of architecture as a provocation to a wider culture. 

Here are some selective documents from the first chapter: Geometry

1.  Difference in Kind/Difference in Degree.

The first chapter addresses the issue of the difference on how the prescriptive model has departed so much from the model it emerged from that it translates itself into a difference in kind from difference in degree. The classical model -The Greek orders for instance - conveys a constraint of being fixated within its own identity like in the game of chess in which its pieces have a particular function and a range of moves within that particularity. Any transformation in this system can only be reflected in its kind. Difference in Degree in contrast, has no intrinsic meaning outside of its contextual relationship.  It is its relation to its neighbor that creates difference within the whole.  You can find zones within the overall that display different characteristics.  In the game of Go or Tension rods in meshwork, every piece is alike, but it is how they are formed together that creates the game or composes a space.

2.  Difference [Variety] Vs Self-similarity [Variation]

This chapter illustrates on how the sub systems of a larger structure are inherently different from each other but the system in large maintains its general coherence.  Behind even the most incoherent structures lies the coherence of building systems. In Architectural systems the separation, mono functionality of many individual elements is modulated with the system of construction or through other operations.

And through these non built projects drawn by Reiser+Umemoto gives a hint about how these spark can be more precisely used for architectural implement. It enriches the scope of architecture and as a pioneer to put the issue of computer age in advance.

[1] Legendre George, AA Files July (2007)

[2] Reiser, Jesse & Umemoto, Nanako, Atlas of Novel Tectonics (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006)

Kurt and Naj

Note_Skylar Tibbits: Can we make things that make themselves?

Actually, I always thinking about the architecture's two-dimensional conflict. In one hand, it's ART, it self-metaphor, it seeking for its profound meaning. In the other hand, it's an OBJECT, it put forward the idea of human society, from social, political to human advanced understanding about the world.
The conflict firstly reflect on the contemporary art in early twenty century when artist consider painting itself an object like Yves Klein, Richard Serra, Gerhard Richte, etc.

imgsource: http://www.glenwoodnyc.com/manhattan-living/richard-serra-drawing-met/
If architecture exceed its own esthetics and explorer architecture itself, what make architecture?
This video I found great potentiality to redefine the way we build and construct. Through the self-assembly to error correction, it challenge the logic of the term “build” which never change since we put on the first stone, trunk or twig to form the “shelter” until now.

source: http://www.ted.com/
Tibbits said there are four course to study to achieve the goal of new building technology(I keep the term build here).
Decoded assembly sequence
Programmability of parts
Energy for actuation
Error correction

Note_Two clips by John Cage

sublime piece.
John Cage_4'33" by David Tudor

John Cage_Water Walk

It do challenge the perspective of music, environment, notion and interface.

Note_A critical history_ch.4_Sturctural Rationalism and the influence of Viollet-le-Duc: Gaudi, Horta, Guimard and Berlage 1880-1910

Modern Architecture_a critical history
Kenneth Frampton
Ch.4 Sturctural Rationalism and the influence of Viollet-le-Duc: Gaudi, Horta, Guimard and Berlage 1880-1910
Viollet-le-Duc
1853_lecture in Ecole des Beaus-Art_Entretien
advocated a return to regional building.
anticipate the Art Nouveau would evolve from structural rationalism.
theoretically free architecture from the eclectic irrelevancies of historicism.

The idea spread into Europe and England.
England:
Sir George Gilbert Scott
Alfred Waterhouse
Norman Shaw
Europe:
Catalan Antoni Gaudi
Victor Horta
Hendrik Petrus Berlage
Gaudi culture background adopted from:
Viollet-le-duc
Ruskin
Richard Wagner
Gaudi archievement adopted from two antithetical impulses:
Revive indigenous architecture.
the compulsion to create totally new forms of expression.

Interior of Casa Vicens

Review_Andreas Gursky

Endless flatness…

Andreas deliver his thought of world through such sober, majestic image, employing panoramic view and digital aid and detailed like nineteenth-century landscape paintings. Easily attracted to the each meticulous details and finally exhausted by it as a whole.

Andreas Gursky born in Leipzig in 1955, about Gursky’s photography learning process, the most crucial period must be when he studied at Düsseldorf Kunstakademie under and influenced by conceptual photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. Becher’s ojective style, “They shot only on overcast days, so as to avoid shadows, and early in the morning during the seasons of spring and fall. Objects included barns, water towers, oal tipples, cooling towers, grain elevators, coal bunkers, coke ovens, oil refineries, blast furnaces, gas tanks, storage silos, and warehouses.”


image source http://coilhouse.net/2008/07/typography-from-typology/

Following Becher’s style, Andreas start with black and white photo and small image but in 1980s he employed colour film to make image of people in leisure, like hiking and swimming as tiny protagonists in a vast landscape. Since 1990s, he focuses on commerce and tourism, depict burgeoning market, factory to landscape, architecture influenced under globalization and industrialization. His work earn the representative of a contemporary zeitgeist. By using digital tool to alter the photo before printing, his images achieve a surreal sense that for me hardly to believe this is the world we live in.


image source http://www.moma.org
Andreas Gursky. Chromogenic color print.
6' 9 1/2" x 11' (207 x 337 cm)
©2001 Andreas Gursky.

Note_dispositif (apparatus)

The history of capitalism introduced by French philosopher Michel Foucault, is the following:

“…the problem that arises from the relation between politics and the economy is resolved by techniques and dispositifs that come from neither.”

Foucault use the term “dispositif” to describe the element of administrative, governmental institution working within the social entity.

Below is Foucault self-definition of the term in 1977 at the interview “The Confession of the Flesh”

"What I’m trying to pick out with this term is, firstly, a thoroughly heterogenous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions–in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the apparatus. The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements."

“The Confession of the Flesh” (1977) interview. In Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings (ed Colin Gordon), 1980: pp. 194-228. This interview was conducted by a round-table of historians.

Portfolio_Two defined city gates

The “S” form of the museum also creates two symbolic “city gates.” The two squares of the museum, one lively and one tranquil, are defined by the opening of these two gates.
One square is a lively platform that interprets the traditional
Taiwanese theatre in the shade of the museum. A sky stage is given by the building and the audience gathers there, sitting on the grass, to enjoy the theatre like in the old days.
The other square is a tranquil space in the form of a raised sculpture garden, hosting important Taiwanese sculptural work. Sculptures are exhibited here in the park and the forest, creating an open-air sculpture garden for visitors to stroll through, breathing in art and nature, the inseparable two.
The project of this museum, serving both Yingge and Sansia, creates a square, a platform, a bridge, a link, an arcade, a walkway: a place for the all citizens.

Portfolio_New Taipei Museum as a strategic architectural form respond to the city

The home of seven million inhabitants, metropolitan Taipei is composed of 29 districts based on grid configuration. There are not only a number of micro-cities created by infrastructure like highway, railway, etc., but also leftover areas caused by the city’s geographic condition, namely the mountains and rivers. The point of departure for our proposal refers to the site itself, where in fact two cities, Yingge city and Sansia, overlap. This overlap can be harnessed as a common space for the two cities.

The museum then is a strategic and precise volume that serves as an inhabitable extension of the two overlapping cities, at once defining their border and the glue that keeps them together. In order to address our interpretation of the site, the proposal refers to the strategic form embodied in the Capitoline Museums. In the same way as the Capitoline, the architecture defines two squares that face the adjacent cities, through the the form of unique S-shaped building. Two the squares are linked through the museum, as well as on the scale of the entire park by creating a free corridor in the middle, open to diverse programs. Rotating the “S” onto its side, the two squares benefit both cities by giving two distinct characteristics of a square. Rather than becoming the end of each of the two cities, the museum becomes the meeting point of the two.