I've been thinking and wanting to write something about scale.
In architecture school we are trained to think in terms of scale. This translates into buildings as detail.
However, just because something is built well, and by well I mean accurately and with precision care and perhaps even passion doesn't necessarily translate back as architecture.
If you pick up wood working magazines. You see projects that are built so incredibly well. With complex joinery. Fancy details and often you are left asking yourself why would someone build that? Its just so damn ugly, or unnecessary or some combination of both. But man those details are great.
Then you have another situation where you might be in a building where the construction of what you are shown is literally in a different language than the construction of what isn't shown. What is hidden from view.
This reminds me of when I was little kid and my mom would want me to clean my room. I would start with a drawer and make everything neat in the drawer before I would start with the room. As a kid it never made sense to me have a clean room and messy drawers.
As an architect it doesn't have sense to have craft without design. i.e. scale that becomes architectural detail in buildings.
Or perhaps another way of saying this is that everything matters.
Elephants / Infrastructure Balance / structure Change / time
“We are all part of the continuum of humanity and life. We will have lived our brief span and either helped or hurt that continuum and the earth that sustains all life. It’s that simple. Ray Anderson july 28, 1934-August 10 2011.
Elephants:
(Images of Elephants, suburban infrastructure, BP's Deepwater Horizon on fire in gulf of Mexico, Louis Kahn circulation drawing for Philadelphia Plan)
+ Are everywhere
+ Once you see them you can't see anything else
+ The practice of architecture has become expert at ignoring the elephants.
+ For architecture to have meaning it needs to recognize elephants.
Balance / structure
(image of Philippe Petite walking across WTC)
+ What are we seeing?
+ What aren't we seeing?
+ Are we looking at perfect balance or perfect structure?
+ Can structure be reduced to a line that holds only the human foot?
What aren't we seeing?
+ How do you have impossible dreams?
+ How do you give yourself permission to have a dream like this?
+ How do you go about realizing it?
+ How do you dream when you are awake?
What are we seeing?
+This is not a man walking fearfully, rather the human spirit is dancing on a line on a structure.
+ He didn't just walk across trying to get to the other side. He went back and forth and lay down. He danced on this rope, on this suspended structure above the ground
Change:
(Images of undeveloped Malibu, limestone lines at Hoover Dam showing water scale change, boat on street in aftermath of Japanese tsunami, second plane flying into WTC)
+ Change is constant.
+ Change is linked to time.
+ TIme has different scales.
+ There is human time…what we count in seconds, minutes, hours, days etc…
+ There are time scales that are less understood. When change happens from these we call them natural disasters
+ Change also comes from human actions. Please refer back to elephants.
written by Harris Silver:
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking and wanting to write something about scale.
In architecture school we are trained to think in terms of scale. This translates into buildings as detail.
However, just because something is built well, and by well I mean accurately and with precision care and perhaps even passion doesn't necessarily translate back as architecture.
If you pick up wood working magazines. You see projects that are built so incredibly well. With complex joinery. Fancy details and often you are left asking yourself why would someone build that? Its just so damn ugly, or unnecessary or some combination of both. But man those details are great.
Then you have another situation where you might be in a building where the construction of what you are shown is literally in a different language than the construction of what isn't shown. What is hidden from view.
This reminds me of when I was little kid and my mom would want me to clean my room. I would start with a drawer and make everything neat in the drawer before I would start with the room. As a kid it never made sense to me have a clean room and messy drawers.
As an architect it doesn't have sense to have craft without design. i.e. scale that becomes architectural detail in buildings.
Or perhaps another way of saying this is that everything matters.
Elephants / Infrastructure
ReplyDeleteBalance / structure
Change / time
“We are all part of the continuum of humanity and life. We will have lived our brief span and either helped or hurt that continuum and the earth that sustains all life. It’s that simple. Ray Anderson july 28, 1934-August 10 2011.
Elephants:
(Images of Elephants, suburban infrastructure, BP's Deepwater Horizon on fire in gulf of Mexico, Louis Kahn circulation drawing for Philadelphia Plan)
+ Are everywhere
+ Once you see them you can't see anything else
+ The practice of architecture has become expert at ignoring the elephants.
+ For architecture to have meaning it needs to recognize elephants.
Balance / structure
(image of Philippe Petite walking across WTC)
+ What are we seeing?
+ What aren't we seeing?
+ Are we looking at perfect balance or perfect structure?
+ Can structure be reduced to a line that holds only the human foot?
What aren't we seeing?
+ How do you have impossible dreams?
+ How do you give yourself permission to have a dream like this?
+ How do you go about realizing it?
+ How do you dream when you are awake?
What are we seeing?
+This is not a man walking fearfully, rather the human spirit is dancing on a line on a structure.
+ He didn't just walk across trying to get to the other side. He went back and forth and lay down. He danced on this rope, on this suspended structure above the ground
Change:
(Images of undeveloped Malibu, limestone lines at Hoover Dam showing water scale change, boat on street in aftermath of Japanese tsunami, second plane flying into WTC)
+ Change is constant.
+ Change is linked to time.
+ TIme has different scales.
+ There is human time…what we count in seconds, minutes, hours, days etc…
+ There are time scales that are less understood. When change happens from these we call them natural disasters
+ Change also comes from human actions. Please refer back to elephants.
//end.