Archinect - News

The Blind Design Paradox

2013-01-07T00:33:00-05:00

Those outside the design industry may often wonder what makes for good architectural design. Most laypeople would say good design is aesthetically pleasing and unique, but their assessment would likely end there.

On the Aesthetic Potential of Sustainability

2012-06-04T13:45:00-04:00

So, to re-pose the question: what is the radical aesthetic consequence of the cultural desire for sustainable performance? Is it something that expresses itself in a set of formal rules, like the Modern response to the development of the steel frame? Or is it something — because it is essentially about performance — requiring entirely different means to fruition? Well, as with uncharted territory: here there be dragons.

In his latest essay for Places, David Heymann asks, "What is the 'radical aesthetic potential of sustainable design?" Drawing on examples from Leonardo to Duchamp to Peter Zumthor, Heymann explores the still unmet challenge — the "uncharted territory" — of developing a new aesthetic ideal inspired by the evolving technologies of sustainability.

Editor's Picks #266

2012-05-28T20:14:00-04:00

In Still Ugly After All These Years: A Close Reading of Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center, Alexander Maymind argued the center's "grid-based diagrams instantiate disestablishment effects[2]...hinge on a particular aesthetic reading of architectural ugliness." 18x32 responded "I like where you've gone with the 'Ugly' here, but I don't think this building offers the best example. Nothing about Wexner is viscerally repellant, abhorrent or disgusting."

Alexander Maymind shared his essay Still Ugly After All These Years: A Close Reading of Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center, recently published in One: Twelve Issue 4, April 2012. Therein he begins by suggesting how the center's "grid-based diagrams instantiate disestablishment effects[2] related to the aims of a contemporary art institution sited in a traditional neoclassical campus plan. These effects; critical, discursive and haptic, hinge on a particular aesthetic reading of architectural ugliness."

18x32 responded "I like where you've gone with the 'Ugly' here, but I don't think this building offers the best example. Nothing about Wexner is viscerally repellant, abhorrent or disgusting. Everything is too clean, too precise, too clinical, too withdrawn, too intentional to be grotesque. The 'Uncanny' might be a more accurate descriptor and be more in line with Eisenman's own position (see, for example, his comments on Moneo's Town Hall in Logroño in discussion with Christopher Al...