15 January 2007

coa goa - week one

we started classes on wednesday morning: architecture history with stephano, field studies with virginia, and studio with stephano. our project will be a mixed-use housing facility and our site is a mountain side on the city's edge with a view down to the valley and into the harbor. the horizon is an infinite ocean. we had to hike up the mountain via a paved road to be able to appreciate the views from the site, but it was worthwhile. the graffiti on the retaining walls was vivid and brilliant, energizing the roadway which would otherwise be bordered by a massive concrete sheer wall.

i have a primo spot in the studio by a window with a view de la mere. my back is against the wall and my desk faces everyone else, so no one can see what i am working on unless they are standing right next to me. privacy is a luxury in this place and i will savor what little isolation i can find.

i plugged my computer power strip into the outlet wed night and tripped several circuits in the villa. there was popping and then no illumination - on two floors. the internet went out, too. we got the problem fixed - that is, my computer would remain without power for the time being. i needed to track down several more adapters to accommodate the monitor, cpu, and external harddrive. ron suggested an electronics store at the bottom of the funicular, so clint, averett, and I took the mountain-bus down into the city. the path from the villa to the funicular is lovingly called the "stairway to heaven" because the stairs are an almost straight run of about 250 treads. i will post a picture of this cruelty, but you can not feel my pain unless you actually climb these damn things. we joke that we will all have calves of steel by semester's end. at the bottom of the train ride, we exited and found the store, which didn't have a damn thing we needed. the only adapter he could offer me was from a german plug to and italian one. i refuse to play a game of telephone with my computer's power supply, so i declined the german adapter. he gave me an address for another electronics store that might carry the proper equipment.

i had trouble going to sleep thursday night so i started to read "the architecture of happiness" by alain de botton ( thanks beezer ) and it was quite delightful. i am about two-thirds through the text and will finish it up sometime this weekend for sure. i am finding i have a lot of spare time when there isn't a television or radio around. ill post the highlights of the book upon completion.

my only complaint about the villa is that there are no comfortable chairs to curl up in and read. we have a couch, but it can hold only a couple of people. one or two leather chairs somewhere, especially in the library, would be much appreciated.

07 January 2007

interview with kenneth frampton

excerpts from architecture austrailia, september 2004 :

What is very interesting about [Glenn] Murcutt’s work is the extent to which it has an internal consistency and precise energy. The work engages a series of ideas and constructional tropes that are carried over from one project to another and are transformed in the process. So his language continually evolves. While it doesn’t evolve with every project to the same degree, this evolutionary aspect is extremely important.

Good criticism is hard to find and also hard to write. In the 1950s there was a habit of publishing buildings with a critical essay attached. This has also occurred more recently, in Italian magazines such as Domus or Casabella, and even in The Architectural Review under Peter Davey. But in general it’s regrettable that magazines are not very selective about the buildings they publish. In general today’s editors don’t seem to be very willing to commit themselves to the extensive publication of any building, not even when they think it’s worth publishing. They feel compelled to cover the entire field and you get the longstanding phenomenon of many different leading magazines publishing exactly the same material.

At some point, I stopped lecturing on critical regionalism because students in the US would respond by saying, there is no regionalism here. So, although that position could be argued with, I began to focus on the question of tectonics and on the “poetics of construction” in order to formulate a more specifically resistant attitude to the tendency for architecture to be dominated by fashion and spectacular images and by the spectacle in general. Through readdressing the specificity of the construction I thought one would be able to keep the fashionable image at a distance.

03 January 2007

krob architectural delineation competition

from clemson university website:

clemson graduate student michael ward was named a finalist in the 32nd annual ken roberts (krob) memorial delineation competition. open to architecture students and professionals, krob is the longest-running delineation competition in the world. ward's proposal for a swimming facility on the hudson river in new york city was done in a 5th year graduate level studio led by professor doug hecker and is available for viewing on the competition website at http://krob06.com/index.asp. the image was generated in rhino, rendered with flamingo and manipulated in adobe photoshop.