Archinect

Roger Williams University

  • Art saved my life [or] The comforting illusion of a rational thought

    By oe
    Dec 21, '04 3:19 AM EST

    Yours is a generation whos heros were dreamers.
    Mine is a generation whos heros were suicides.

    Must be morning. Im hungry.



    ~~~ ~~~

    I began with the intention of investigating free-will. Not in a scientific way, but as it is a phenomenological property of space. I began with all this crap about nanotech architecture, an endlessly expanding labyrinth of structural enclosures, some blocking light, some blocking air, growing by photosynthesizing air-born carbon to meet and adapt to our every desire's command. We shall be free! I had hoped. I began to imagine, as others have before, of ways in which tensegrity structures might suspend an infinitely adaptable volume of space above our cities”¦. etc”¦

    But that is not what free will means.


    I sat down with a painting, a favorite of mine, Manet's The Execution of Maximilian, currently in the MFA in Boston, and I began to play. In this flat arrangement of paint, there is space. In that space, there is freedom.

    image

    image

    image

    image


    How can this be? The composition is two-dimensional, the arrangement is static, and yet there is space.

    I began to play more: I decided to make a machine that produces a sunset. Now we have a 3 dimensional medium, air, and light, surrounding a globe, under the impulse of time. Perhaps then space and time can be translated in two dimensions?

    image

    I developed a translucent ribbon, stained as the sequence of spectrographic responses by air to light. It is folded and looped, first for the direct response of depth of air between source and viewer, next by the reflection off the earth, and finally for the diffraction as one is passed by the earth-shadow.

    image

    Space is not measured in three dimensions. It is a construct of our minds. Just a useful metaphor to help our bodies move around. I decided to work once again with art and space. I created an addition to the MFA which reconnects the impressionist wing with the 20th Century collection on the ground floor between the courtyards.

    image

    image

    I designed a transition using the work of three artists:

    First Monet's impressionism,

    image

    image

    image

    Second, Picasso's cubism,

    image

    image

    and Third, Sheeler's cubist realism.

    image

    image

    image

    Each exhibit, and the transitions between them, translate the technique in space applied by the artist, not just in literal image, but as an experience of a viewer passing through a space.

    image

    image

    With this understanding of space now laid, that freedom exists as a property of metaphysical “space”, whose form may be provided by the arrangement of perceptual influence, I began work on,”¦ well my originally assigned task”¦

    Air-rights development over the Mass-Pike corridor at Back Bay Station, Boston, Ma:
    ~3 Million sqft mixed use structure, consisting of ~500 units of residential housing, ~1 million sqft of commercial office space, a 1000-car parking garage with roof-park, ~1000000 sqft of retail, hotel, entertainment and service program.


    image
    That a playground for modern, urban tribes may be provided by not enslaving them to a functionalist machine, but rather by extruding the qualities of perceptual experience (Social contact, temperature, light, wind, hieght, wieght, etc) in endless combination and to the greatest intensity possible.


    image
    I investigated the meaning of landscape in urban environments, as an endless fluid condition of space, to which every location provides a unique relationship between person and environment. The residential tower features a continuous internal garden-cascade, linking a rooflevel preschool, pool, playground and daycare, to an underslung gym and spa.

    image

    A spiral extrusion of retail, restaurant and café space link street-level traffic, a Back Bay Plaza, and the commuter rail station to the three towers.
    image

    image

    The Entertainment tower, a 12 story housing for movie and Imax theaters, restaurants nightclubs and lounge space. Experience is perceived as distinct enclosures for the projection of media and ambient experience.
    image

    image

    image
    The office tower—large incised openings provide space accessible to multiple office levels with visceral relationship to the commercial skyscraper environ. A 200 room hotel encompasses the uppermost floors.

    image
    image


    There are also detailed drawings showing unit layouts, structure (roughly a dymaxian-tower system), circulation, mechanical, interior space, etc”¦

    My thesis is due in two days, so, well,. I haven't been arsed to scan them in,.. soon soon”¦.



    ~~~ ~~~


    Happy Solstice my babies,

    View full entry



  • When the homoludens go marching in

    By oe
    Dec 11, '04 5:59 PM EST

    to aphex twin's "shiny metal rods" View full entry



  • like an interstelar burst Im back to save the universe.

    By oe
    Dec 11, '04 4:01 PM EST

    Hey? What happened to my "come like the leaves?" entry? anyway: I have discovered recently that there is a difference between litterally 3d and actually 3d. um. more later Im sure. View full entry



  • "Come d’autunno si levan le foglie,"

    By oe
    Oct 10, '04 6:24 PM EST

    As, in the autumn, leaves detach themselves, first one and then the other, till the bough sees all its fallen garments on the ground, similarly, the seed of Adam descended from the shoreline one by one, when signaled, as a... View full entry



  • lived-through-sphere

    By oe
    Oct 4, '04 5:24 AM EST

    dialogues of a sphere: a) center to surface b) inside to outside c) itself to itself. Brought to you by:www.hoogerbrugge.com/ &www.hoogerbrugge.com/ml.html &www.hoteloscartangoecholima.com/splash.html#? View full entry



  • x

    By oe
    Sep 27, '04 2:06 AM EST

    What is Beethovens favorite fruit? Ba-na-na-naa jokes are invisible View full entry



  • Our lord and saviour Constant Nieuwenhuys,

    By oe
    Sep 15, '04 10:34 PM EST

    "8:15pm, December 20, 1960, Amsterdam. A packed room waits for the 40-year-old artist Constant Nieuwenhuys. A slide projector and a large tape recorder sit behind the audience. Constant enters, stands by the machines, and delivers a half-hour statement on 'unitary urbanism'. The tone is militant... View full entry



  • i die, you eat,

    By oe
    Sep 10, '04 7:41 PM EST

    I know where I am, but I dont seem to be where I find myself. yeah. Architecture has eaten me for supper like a woman. Frankenstien monsters with arms of a thousand corpse arms and eyes of a thousand corpse eyes bleeding from the fingers knash thier thousand corpse teeth and consume eachother... View full entry



  • dear mummy:

    By oe
    Sep 7, '04 6:30 PM EST

    'We each play the protagonist in our own self-written melodrama.' -Errol Morris " I find I have this predisposition towards doing things that are rather dark. Lots of darkness building to little pirouettes of joy. I don't know why.“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the... View full entry



  • Old dogs on the porch:

    By oe
    Sep 5, '04 7:53 PM EST

    ****A landscape adaptation on Gooseberry Island, a spit of land sticking into the Atlantic near Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts. The Island is famous for 3 historical absurdities: First, that FDR was known to visit the island, being carried down the beach in a wheel-barrel as he suffered from polio... View full entry



  • Notice to the public: Beware of Daleks

    By oe
    Aug 31, '04 2:21 PM EST

    Today Made some eggs. Good lessons on temporally linear objects and differential settlement of frying pans. I cant work like this. I am an artist!Tomorrow Down to the big jocks vs weaklings party in NYC to distribute psychological warfare leaflets as follows: [1] [2] [3]The Day After Tomorrow... View full entry



  • ×Search in:
 

Affiliated with:

Authored by:

  • oe

Recent Entries