THE CRAFTED CITY ARCHIVES
PURIFICATION OF DESIGN
The design of things, the design of cities, are all required to go through their requisite 'purification'. But instead of a distillery's chromium piping, a city has code-enforced banality. The act of codifying what is 'good', as practiced in our administered system, renders our cities into something not awful. Yet something that is without character.
THE WRONG DECISION
The Architect's Newspaper:
"Details are sparse during the period of Zaha Hadid replacing Assemblage. First, over the two year span, Assemblage was never officially notified that they had lost the bid. Although, in private they knew they were frozen out of conversation. Second, leading Iraqi architectural critic Ihsan Fethi said there has been a veil of secrecy as he has tried several times to see the plan for the parliamentary building. Finally, the Iraqi Council of Representatives never had a chance to choose the winner selected by the RIBA judges."
NOT JUST BLING
I would imagine that there must be pressure from the other side, too. The great ones will get dissed by their own contingent to avoid giving folks the wrong idea that they are paying too much attention to context, and not enough to the art and theory of their work. Yet by accident or design, the work of the elite actually does contribute to improving a city. It's nice when it happens.
Here in Pasadena, Morphosis has pulled this off, on California Boulevard, on the CalTech campus.
KEEP OR TEAR DOWN
Witness the ongoing saga at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. With the acquisition of the American Folk Art Museum on West 53rd Street, came a crafted building praised by many critics. After some wavering on the issue, it was announced that this building would be torn down to make way for a new MoMA addition, throwing MoMA headlong into a classic preservation debate. Keep or Tear Down. Keep the quirky structure by the architects Tod Williams + Billie Tsein, with all of its accompanying issues mis-matched floor elevations and the like, or scrape it clean and start over.
A MORE USEFUL PARAMETRICISM
Current advanced thought in the architectural world and associated academia proclaims that computer design can take us to places in architectural form that past practice could only dream about, and it because it can done, it should be done.
Here's another idea…
APPROACHING THE DISNEY
Everything about moving up through the building helps to build the excitement. We'll start with the long and deep red space that houses the linear assent up from the parking garage. The zig and zag through the main lobby spaces, a sequence of unexpected volumes, all lined with the beautiful fir paneling, foretelling the concert hall inside. Working up to more intimate spaces that lead to the part of the hall you are headed towards. Free flowing and refined, adventurous and in good taste, with a sense of movement the whole time. Finally, the concert goer moves through a discreet portal and into the great concert space, the musical instrument in which you will experience the concert. Wonderful experience in site and sound. The very culmination of why the procession is so important in architecture. It places you in the right frame of mind to experience great art.
THE ECONOMICS OF CRAFT
The title of an interesting article about craft in the New York Times, by NPR correspondent Alan Davidson. Interesting to me, because I'm curious about the economic models that support crafts-people and how they compare with the economics of those who craft cities, and the value to those who support the craft.
CULTURE THAT INHIBITS CRAFT
I'll send this out to you: parallels can be drawn in how we imagine and build cities. The culture within the government, planning, and architectural communities can have their own way of inhibiting things. I offer a few examples for your reading pleasure, and you may have a few of your own. Here goes:
LINKS IN THE CRAFTED CITY
"Guenther Demnig is the artist and sculptor behind the stumbling stones (shown in the photo in the link). Here, he installs new bricks in Berlin. He says formal memorials are too abstract. Not so with the stumbling stones. 'Suddenly they are there, right outside your front door, at your feet, in front of you,' he says."
LOVE VS THE REGULATIONS
Why is it that some things, designed as prescribed, are lifeless objects, a mis-appropriation of resources and effort, while others, outside of the code, regulation, or just plain illegal are filled with delight, a gem in the surrounding neighborhood.
The one-word answer is love.
GRAFFITI
I've certainly been disappointed and dismayed by crude and fresh spray paint on newly constructed walls or at scratched glass on a great old building. There is nothing redeeming about acts like those, and it's hard not to loose all sympathy for the back story that induced that behavior.
And the mostly young men who are in the middle of that culture? Of course they look at things differently. Graffiti is one of the few ways that they can express themselves besides physical violence that will be noticed by the outside world.
STYLE AND QUALITY AS COMPONENTS OF CRAFT
Architectural style has been assigned by the less thoughtful and those with a bias, as the primary character maker of a city.
Style, in the most basic and obvious way, deeply affects the way a city looks. But it quality really assumes the role of primary character maker.
ART VERSUS CRAFT
Art, in the common reasoning, is superior to craft, set apart for a higher purpose. Contrary to common reasoning, I believe that they are the same thing in ultimate effect. Only art is stripped of the practical constraints integral to craft, becoming a subset requirement of well considered craft.