> 'Broadacre City' (1932-1958) by Frank Lloyd Wright was the antithesis of the city. It's 'organic' and decentralised organisation meant that it formed a continious sprawling landscape rather than the monumental, highly densified, rationally distributed 'Ville Contemporaine' (Le Corbusier).
> Yet a grid of any sort flies into the face of that idea. A grid in plan reminds us of a city because the idea of a modern city is a city built using a grid.
> Grids mean things are easily and equally devidable, buildable, leasable, stackable, shiftable, multiplyable and so on.
> A grid suggests repetition, a pattern. The city grid is something that is mirrored in less dense areas as well. Sprawling suburbs which follow the same typology establish a pattern, creating a grid.
> Patterns are found in nature yet from what I've seen they rarely take the shape of a grid.
> Grids also suggest division rather then inclusion. Grids are used to divide and sort things into their different types, uses, forms, colours or flavours.
> Grids are evil...
Showing posts with label Ramblings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ramblings. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Yo!
After reading what Hejduk had to say about my character I dug a little deeper into the topic of Albrecht Dürer. The path I started to go down on in terms of research was the right one after all. After sifting through some incredibly dry historical stuff on Dürer I've found a couple of interesting things that I'd like to pick up on in the development of my character and his house(s):
> Dürer, like most Renaissance painters was obsessed with the mathematical rules of proportion and beauty. He even wrote 8 books about it; 4 about measurement and another 4 on human proportion.
> His artwork is laden with Christian and Renaissance symbolism and iconography. Yet three works stand out. They are St. Jerome in His Study, The Knight, Death and the Devil, and most famously Melancolia I. Wikipedia tells me art historians often refer to them as Dürer's Meisterstiche, "masterworks".
> In fact, it is said that his self-portrait, probably his most famous work, is an ellaborate exercise on how to paint a beautiful person using the Renaissance rules on beauty and proportion, rather than depicting Albrecht Dürer.
> I find the idea of a supreme ever-present all-governing rule intriguing and I can see how one could obsess about such a topic for a lifetime. People have and still do. It was proportion in the Renaissance, a modern example is the '23 Enigma'.
> I would like to explore this further by tweaking my character a little. I have hinted already that my character has some sort of obsession, but an updated version will follow soon... ish.
> I have also taken cues from Dürer's studies of drapery, one in particular which I have already posted earlier. I have this idea that an obsessive investigation about anything can be metaphorically represented by this cloth, cloaking the everyday life that's beneath, smothering it.
> The folds and creases can be seen as a metaphor for the constant cross-relating and doubling-back of thought that goes on when someone is seriously obsessed with something. For the person everything seems to revolve around and relate back to the obsessed about topic, but in fact I see it more as an additional layer. Like a draped cloth with folds and the spaces between.
> And so somehow I have ended up learning about mathematics from Donald Duck. I think I have lots of things to work with and go off on tangents from. I'm feeling like maths, algorithms, codes, iconography and symbolism are things that can very easily be related to an architectural idea and serve as a stimulus for it.
Over and out!
> Dürer, like most Renaissance painters was obsessed with the mathematical rules of proportion and beauty. He even wrote 8 books about it; 4 about measurement and another 4 on human proportion.
> His artwork is laden with Christian and Renaissance symbolism and iconography. Yet three works stand out. They are St. Jerome in His Study, The Knight, Death and the Devil, and most famously Melancolia I. Wikipedia tells me art historians often refer to them as Dürer's Meisterstiche, "masterworks".
> In fact, it is said that his self-portrait, probably his most famous work, is an ellaborate exercise on how to paint a beautiful person using the Renaissance rules on beauty and proportion, rather than depicting Albrecht Dürer.
> I find the idea of a supreme ever-present all-governing rule intriguing and I can see how one could obsess about such a topic for a lifetime. People have and still do. It was proportion in the Renaissance, a modern example is the '23 Enigma'.
> I would like to explore this further by tweaking my character a little. I have hinted already that my character has some sort of obsession, but an updated version will follow soon... ish.
> I have also taken cues from Dürer's studies of drapery, one in particular which I have already posted earlier. I have this idea that an obsessive investigation about anything can be metaphorically represented by this cloth, cloaking the everyday life that's beneath, smothering it.
> The folds and creases can be seen as a metaphor for the constant cross-relating and doubling-back of thought that goes on when someone is seriously obsessed with something. For the person everything seems to revolve around and relate back to the obsessed about topic, but in fact I see it more as an additional layer. Like a draped cloth with folds and the spaces between.
> And so somehow I have ended up learning about mathematics from Donald Duck. I think I have lots of things to work with and go off on tangents from. I'm feeling like maths, algorithms, codes, iconography and symbolism are things that can very easily be related to an architectural idea and serve as a stimulus for it.
Over and out!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
#43 - Dürer
> my number is 43
> my corresponding "character" is Dürer - Dürer's structure
> the character is from something called "Berlin Night"
> Berlin Night is a publication by John Hejduk
> Hejduk has created a large body of theoretical work: publications such as Mask of Medusa, Lancaster / Hanover Masque and Vladivostock.Berlin Night is one these publications.
> Part of these publications are collections of vignette sketches (characters) each with their respective number (43) and name (Dürer - Dürer's structure).
"It's like a puzzle. I like puzzles...."
> my corresponding "character" is Dürer - Dürer's structure
> the character is from something called "Berlin Night"
> Berlin Night is a publication by John Hejduk
> Hejduk has created a large body of theoretical work: publications such as Mask of Medusa, Lancaster / Hanover Masque and Vladivostock.Berlin Night is one these publications.
> Part of these publications are collections of vignette sketches (characters) each with their respective number (43) and name (Dürer - Dürer's structure).
"It's like a puzzle. I like puzzles...."
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