Archinect - Harvard GSD M.Arch.I (Lian)

Live Blog - John David Todd, "Sometimes alone. Mostly with others" (M.Arch.I thesis)

2013-05-17T17:09:44-04:00

Hi Archinect,

Last session of the day. John Todd, advised by Toshiko Mori.

4:30: JT: "We live in a post-utopian world...Meaning is not created from a transcendent source but emerges from around us [through an immanence]...

The idea of individual vs. collective is a false dialectic. We are not isolated subjects; we exist mostly outside ourselves. Tokyo is a city of "foam," in Peter Sloterdijk's terms; an aggregation of cells...

4:48: Mimi Hoang: The result is curiously that of a commune or enclave. ...Or can it sneak itself more insiduously into the urban form?

JT: The intent was that around its contexts, the buildings change in height in relation to its surroundings. The housing around it acts as a buffer between the inside--the public space you stumble upon--and the outside.

Emmanuel Petit: I think you haven't done Foam City, but Collage City...but a very formally interesting one at that.

JT: The idea wasn't just to replicate Sloterdijk's idea of a city....

Live Blog - M.Arch.I thesis reviews...pictures

2013-05-17T16:36:04-04:00

Hi Archinect,

Just a few scenes from the GSD this afternoon, our last day as M.Arch.I students...

Thanks for looking!

Lian

Live Blog - Ceri Edmunds, "Consolidation: The suburban shopping mall as a paradigm of public space."

2013-05-17T14:01:56-04:00

Hi Archinect,

1:10: Ceri Edmunds is presenting.

"This project places the shopping mall into anatagonism with the suburban residential. This project seeks consolidation..."

At the bottom level are loading docks and parking; the loading docks service the three voids. Above this are the shopping layers, parks, and a mat layer of housing at the top layer. The park is mostly open to the air.

IR: On the one hand you started being critical of the mall space. How far have you challenged that vision?

CE: Obviously it's kind of a legal issue and not only an architectural one. But my intention was to create an environment that was so unpalatable to be entirely privatized that it would create a precedent--

WJ: You mean, financially unpalatable? Why couldn't it just be a gated community? To me, there's a lot of volume enclosed; why does the whole thing have to become architecture--why couldn't you just put a suburb on the shopping mall roof; that is, why do you need this to...

Live Blog - Trey Kirk, "King Country Courthouse - Seattle, Washington"

2013-05-17T13:15:56-04:00

Hi Archinect,

Okay, we're only an hour behind schedule.

12:00: Trey Kirk begins, describing Mies' seminal courtroom design, with a cell off of each courtroom; and a typology of courtrooms since then. In the internal programming for courtrooms, double-height courtrooms and single height judges' chambers often creates a great deal of vertical poché space. The "worst culprit" is Vinoly's building, with five secure cores to keep prisoners from...from..

Jeff Kipnis: from getting free--

TK: from interacting with the public, yes.

TK: If we go to Mies, he has two typological spaces; the thickened corridor and the main lobby which is the open space that is rarely activated. ...For a new construction, we still have the issue of the poché, the 12' of nothing-space. The idea is [to stack the spaces differently and to allow different strategies that relate to each courtroom type--family, tax, criminal].

...So there's two games being played, the courthouse access and the distributed...

Live Blog - Drew Cowdrey, "Contemporary Asylum" (M.Arch.I Thesis Review)

2013-05-17T11:19:32-04:00

Hi Archinect,

10:44: Drew begins.

The focus here moves from the adaptation of self to the adjustment of nature...For centuries, architects have attempted to [cure] the self through what I'll term 'environmental modification.' In contrast there is biological modification, as in the film Equilibrium (2002), in which feelings are illegal and medicated against.

With modernity, we turned closer to biological modification over environmental modification.

...For all this difference [in contemporary buildings], it just looks different. It's difference for difference's sake. The premise of my thesis is to find architectural agency...through a return to history. Before media, drugs, wifi, and modernity. I stumbled across the notion of the total institution--Erving Goffman wrote about it--prisons, monasteries.

"Just a note--I'm going to say things that are obviously offensive today, but I'll be using the historic terminology..." Panoptic prisons, pavilion hospitals, Kirkbride Asyl...

Live Blog - Fareez Giga, "Nonsense" (M.Arch.I thesis review)

2013-05-17T09:37:33-04:00

Hi Archinect!

Second day of M.Arch.I thesis reviews at the GSD.

9:30 am: Fareez Giga begins presenting "Nonsense." Advisor: P. Scott Cohen.

"This all began with Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." ...Reality is a construct, a fiction. To confront the real is to...understand this fiction.

The project is based on the Kennedy Center in Washington DC; typically accessed by car. Fareez quotes Ada Louise Huxtable on the building:

The style of the Kennedy Center is Washington superscale, but just a little bit bigger. Albert Speer would have approved . . . What it has in size, it lacks in distinction. Its character is aggrandized posh. It is an embarrassment to have it stand as a symbol of American artistic achievement before the nation and the world. . . . The emperor, unfortunately, is wearing clothes. And the world is looking . . . The building is a national tragedy. It is a cross between a concrete candy box and a marble sarcophagus in which the art of archite...

Live Blog - Cathleen McGuigan, "Women and the Changing World of Architecture"

2013-05-10T19:41:00-04:00

Hi Archinect!

Studio reviews are over at the GSD. I'm finishing up a few papers--my last school assignments ever--and helping some friends with thesis. I'm also excited for tonight's lecture, from the editor-in-chief at Architectural Record, Cathleen McGuigan.

From the GSD website: "Cathleen McGuigan...who is the second woman to serve as editor in chief, was named to the post in 2011. ...She also serves as editorial director of GreenSource, an award-winning sustainable design magazine launched in 2006, and SNAP, a products publication that debuted in 2009. ...McGuigan, a former Newsweek architecture critic and arts editor, has more than three decades of cultural journalism experience. A Michigan native, she holds a BA degree in English, with a minor in art history, from Brown University. In 1992-93, she was a Loeb Fellow at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard.

Besides her career at Newsweek, where she was on staff from 1977 to 2008, McGuigan has worked as a consulta...

Iñaki Ábalos appointed Chair of Architecture at Harvard GSD

2013-04-25T16:37:00-04:00

Hi Archinect,

At long last, Jose Ignacio Ábalos Vazquez has been announced as the incoming chair of architecture at the GSD. This has been widely rumored for over a year around school, but only now has been made official and public.

The announcement was low-key and almost content-free: Dean Mohsen sent an email to the school this morning, asking us to meet with him in the "pit" for an announcement at 12:45. Dean Mohsen loves to set up these kinds of encounters, prioritizing intimacy and excitement over, say, seating, egress, and (though not a problem in the Pit) ventilation. But it was a quick, warm, and fun moment. (See my live blog from a small talk Ábalos gave last semester.)

[Dean Mohsen]

[our incoming chair of architecture, Iñaki Ábalos]

From Dean Mohsen's follow-up email:

"I am pleased to announce the appointment of Iñaki Ábalos as Chair of the Department of Architecture as of July 1, 2013. As Professor in Residence of Architecture at the GSD, he leads option ...

Live Blog - Preston Scott Cohen, "Successive Architecture"

2013-04-23T18:41:00-04:00

Hi Archinect,

We're in full Piper tonight for a historic event, the Walter Gropius Lecture, delivered by our Chair of Architecture, Preston Scott Cohen. [I'll add a link to the video when it's posted; this blog post is just the low-budget teaser for a must-watch blockbuster film.]

[Photo op with a succession: Gerald McCue, Harry Cobb, Rafael Moneo, Mack Scogin, Jorge Silvetti, Toshiko Mori, Preston Scott Cohen]

[Black on black on black]

6:41: Dean Mohsen calls things to order. "As you've already witnessed, this is an emotional occasion, a family occasion, a moment of intimacy and friendship and...it's hard to make this introduction."

"We just had a photo of the chairs of architecture. I'm of course delighted to be making this introduction, but also sad. Preston Scott Cohen is the Gerald McCue Professor of Architecture, and we're honored that Gerry is also here. Scott was the first chair that I appointed here, and I've known him since...almost his student days. He m...

Live Blog - Techniques: James Carpenter and TriPyramid, "Extending Collaboration"

2013-04-08T15:37:00-04:00

Hi Archinect,

I'm in Stubbins (a small room at the GSD) for James Carpenter and Michael Mulhern, a founding partner at TriPyramid Structures. Martin Bechthold made the introductions.

JC: "Michael just informed me that we've completed over 60 projects together."

MM: We build widgets, at the end of the day. Not systems--curtain walls or anything--but purpose-built parts to solve specific problems. Often for architecture or also for [yachts and other industries]. It's a high level of engineering and fabrication: in 1996, someone would take $25k, roughly, to take a pound out of the top of a sailboat mast. But you'd lose that premium if the mast fell off, into the water. So we were working with those kinds of premiums, and when we moved to architecture, you dial it back a little, but at the same time remember those roots.

Projects like the glass cube at Apple, in New York, where there's almost no hardware, are difficult--which is where the teamwork comes in. People come ...

Live Blog - Rahul Mehrotra, KUMBH MELA: Mapping the Ephemeral City

2013-04-01T18:38:00-04:00

Hi Archinect!

Tonight's event is one that I've been (peripherally) involved in, as this project is one that we've been discussing in the context of an urban planning and design seminar that I'm taking led by Rahul Mehrotra, called "Kinetic City." (Full video available at here.) From the website:

The GSD Urban India project invites the community to participate of the event “KUMBH MELA: Mapping the Ephemeral City. Presentation of a work in progress"...The presentation will include the many schools and teams from Harvard University that participated in the interdisciplinary mapping project at the Kumbh Mela 2013. Diana L. Eck (HDS), Gregg Greenough (HSPH), Satchit Balsari (HSPH), Tarun Khanna (HBS) and the GSD Urban India team led by Rahul Mehrotra (GSD)...

The research analyzes this ephemeral city from different perspectives. Being the biggest public gathering in the world , the Kumbh Mela deploys a pop-up city comprising of roads, pontoon bridges, tents of different sizes and...

PETITION: Recognize Denise Scott Brown for her work in Robert Venturi's 1991 Prize

2013-04-01T16:47:00-04:00

Hi Archinect,

You might have seen that Denise Scott Brown has asked to be recognized by the Pritzker committee. As Dezeen reports,

"At the time the prize was awarded, Scott Brown had been a partner at the couple's practice Venturi Scott Brown and Associates for 22 years and had co-authored with Venturi the seminal 1970s text Learning From Las Vegas, which celebrated the garish iconography of the city's sprawling strip and confirmed the pair as leading theorists of postmodernism."

Denise Scott Brown is quoted there as saying:

"There are as many women as men in the early stages of architectural practice, but as they move up the ladder, the glass ceiling really hits."

"I say to young women today, don’t cast out your feminist awareness. When the glass ceiling hits you, you will think it is your fault unless you know a bit about feminism, and it will destroy you."

Some of my GSD colleagues, headed up by Arielle Assouline-Lichten, have started a petition at change.org to sup...

Me-moji.com: an online photobooth and gallery to share your emoji (emoticon) faces!

2013-03-12T20:36:00-04:00

Hi Archinect,

I love emoji faces. I love to send them, I love to receive them, and I love to make little scenes with them. So does my boyfriend, Drew Harry. So much so that we've been working on a little side project called me-moji.com. It's a website where you can browse people's attempts at making emoji (emoticon) faces, then try your own and add them to the gallery.

These are emoji:

And here is the me-moji.com gallery:

When you click on "add your face," you go to the photo booth, where you can take your picture. (You need to be on a computer with a webcam. Sorry, this part doesn't work on iPhones or iPads.)

Play around with the photos! You always have the option to retake (i.e. discard) or share (approve) the photo, before it's added to the gallery. So don't be shy.

If you do a full run of all 19 emoji faces, you are rewarded with a souvenir...

Check it out! And let us know what you think.

Thanks for reading!

Lian

P.S. Shout out to some of our...

Co-Host 'ARCHITECT Live' with Stephen Chung, AIA

2013-03-12T16:25:26-04:00

Hi Archinect,

Did you see this? Until March 29, you can submit a 2-minute video audition for a chance to be a co-host of "ARCHITECT Live" at the 2013 AIA National Convention in Denver at the end of June. The AIA flies you to Denver, puts you up, and pays you $75 a day (hey, it's still architecture, after all) to share the stage with Chung as you talk with "leading thinkers, experts, and industry watchers live from the expo floor."

Enjoy.

Lian

Live Blog - Zaha Hadid

2013-03-06T20:43:00-05:00

Hi Archinect,

You can watch the full video of this event at the GSD's YouTube Channel.

6:29: Zaha's in the house tonight. There was a huge line in the lobby--she's obviously one of the few architects who attracts such large non-architect audiences. The lecture is apparently untitled. It's already kinda warm in here...and there are what look like two bottles of Evian water on the podium.

6:32: Patrik Schumacher and Zaha Hadid just came in with Mohsen. Excitement.

6:34: Mohsen: "Good evening; it seems to be a really good mood. I'm happy you're all here and particularly happy that Zaha is here. It's been some time since she's been here so it's great she's back." He's commenting that it's been quite a week with Marina Abramović here earlier, as Abramović and Hadid have "liberated their fields." Construction was in a completely different state [before Hadid came on the scene].

"I'm so happy she's my friend; we have known each other since the very first day of school, which...

Live Blog - GSD Alternative Careers Panel

2013-02-22T18:38:00-05:00

Hi Archinect!

6:35 pm. Judy Sue Fulton and Lauren Kim, two M.Arch.I students in my class, are hosting a panel on alternative design careers. There will be short introductions and then some conversation with individual panelists around tables.

Bryan Boyer: says he's a "confused" professional. "I'm interested in how we can make government work more effectively." He believes that an iterative design process can really work in this space--but he just left his job at Sitra so is a bit at loose ends.

Rosamond Fletcher: Transportation and urban life at the Design Trust.

Dr. Beth Altringer: the intersection of psychology and design. "Designing for people who design for people," and expanding our understanding of this beyond the sole-innovator model. How do groups collaborate?

Evan Sharp: One of the co-founders of Pinterest. He was at GSAPP doing an M.Arch., and dropped out to work at Facebook, "so technically I'm not sure if I'm qualified to be on this panel, though I worked ...

Defending Your Life--and other stuff

2013-02-15T23:00:19-05:00

Hello Archinect!

So...I finished my thesis but still have a few classes to wrap up this semester. I'm taking a statistics class with Michael Hooper, an independent study research project with Jay Wickersham (as a professional practice elective), and a seminar with Rahul Mehrotra on the "Kinetic City."

[Image by Photo by Felipe Vera, nabbed from the Harvard Gazette]

For "Kinetic City": Prof. Mehrotra argues that we shouldn't talk about the "informal" in urban spaces because this notion sets up a false binary between "formal" and "informal," and it's not as if "informal" spaces don't have a form. So he proposes the notion of a "Kinetic City" instead, that looks at ephemerality and change over time. It's a research seminar with a series of case studies. The central case study, occupying about 1/3 of the class, is a study of the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious festival that takes place once every three years (in one of four locations, in rotation) that is known as the largest hum...

Thesis FINISHED! (Drawn out: performances of mundane inhabitation)

2013-02-03T22:42:00-05:00

Hi Archinect,

Well, I'm very happy to say that I presented my thesis just over a week ago, and it went well. I gave the following very short preamble:

And here was what I said:

There’s a termite in the southern hemisphere that lives in a colony, that builds a mound, that acts as an external lung. The mound—which, after all, is a pile of dirt—manages gas exchange for all the termites in the colony. A single termite cannot live without either its or colony or its mound; for this reason, physiological ecologists such as J. Scott Turner have argued that the termite is socially, physiologically, and cognitively extended in a way that makes it impossible to say where the organism ends and where its environment begins.
As humans, our tools are more complex, but they’re also so inherent to our everyday lives that we often take them for granted.

For example: A person moves differently if they are wearing shoes or barefoot. Of course, the shoes we make depend on the surfaces we cre...

Thesis: Drawn out: performances of mundane inhabitation

2013-01-18T13:08:00-05:00

Hi Archinect,

My thesis project has been keeping me from live blogging lately, but I wanted to share some clips of my thesis work in progress. I'm calling the project "Drawn out: performances of mundane inhabitation."

It's not a design project, but an essay in the form of a video, exploring the reciprocal relationship between the built environment and our bodily states and experience. How do our surroundings draw out responses and actions from us in our everyday lives, and vice versa? How can video be used to show our immersion or extension in our built environment, rather than objectified views of buildings as designed objects (and of people as "entourage" or props)?

The video's techniques, certainly, are subjective. The project isn't aiming to be scientific or prescriptive; it's not as if I'm developing techniques that I think can be universally used to study or design the built environment. It's been an experiment, and a way for me to think about some questions that inter...

Comment: I know that Steve Jobs wasn’t God: That’s the whole point

2012-11-13T12:26:00-05:00

Hi Archinect,

[Note: A year ago, after Steve Jobs died and a public debate played out over whether or not he deserved to be mourned--a fine designer and astute businessman, but surely no saint--I wrote this essay. It argues that there are different ways to give back to the world, and that most of them don’t look like godliness. I was thinking about the destructively unrealistic expectations that we have for leaders and public figures in this country, but also about a criticism that is often implicitly aimed at architects and other designers: our work doesn't seem to cure cancer, end poverty, or create world peace. Yes, some projects make great strides (or at least wave their arms a lot) in these directions, but more often than not the impact of our profession on these major social concerns is indirect and nearly invisible. Most of us have probably had moments of doubt when we're photoshopping pictures of trees at 4 am and wondering why, if we're working so hard, we're not direct...

Video - GSD Conference on Design I: Liminal Objects - Design and the Museum

2012-11-01T14:00:00-04:00

Hi Archinect,

If you're in areas affected by the storm, or have loved ones who are, all the best to you. To everyone else: back to work! Storm day is over.

It has been said within our school that furniture, interiors, and design thinking--and dealing with these issues in a serious intellectual way as well as in a creative and productive one--are questions that may become more integral to the GSD's agenda in the coming years.

Our school recently hosted a series of panel discussions and roundtables on this question, and here are the videos. I recommend them as explorations of possible future directions for this institution.

(I haven't actually had a chance to see these yet, so do let me know what you think.)

thanks for watching!

Lian

Live Blog - Iñaki Ábalos, 'Thermodynamism and Architecture'

2012-10-31T22:44:00-04:00

Hi Archinect!

I'm in Stubbins (a smaller room) tonight for a lecture by GSD Professor in Residence Iñaki Ábalos, widely rumored among students to be our next chair of Architecture. The lecture, entitled "Thermodynamics of mixed use high rise prototypes: theory and practice" will be introduced by professor Kiel Moe who will also present the recently formed Sustainable Design LAB.

6:37: Pre-introductions by student Carlos Cerezo, who is part of either the LatinGSD club and/or the GreenDesignGSD group, which are co-sponsoring the lecture.

6:38: Prof. Kiel Moe is introducing IA, who he describes as representing strengths in both theory and practice. If we follow IA's work--his technical and programmatic concerns, etc.--it becomes clear why he's interested in thermodynamics in buildings. IA and the options studios he's been teaching, represent an emerging research agenda within the school, with which KM will at times overlap. Evidence: the new book Thermodynamics applied to highr...

Live Blog - Toyo Ito, "What Was Metabolism? Reflections on the Life of Kiyonori Kikutake"

2012-10-16T18:52:00-04:00

Hi Archinect,

We're in full, full Piper tonight for Toyo Ito's lecture. (You can watch the full video at the GSD's YouTube Channel.)

From the GSD website:

The Metabolist Movement in the 1960s established the foundation from which contemporary architecture in Japan has emerged up to the present. Even today, the visionary architectural and urban projects created by the leading Metabolist Kiyonori Kikutake continue to shine brightly, according to Toyo Ito. In this lecture, he will consider Metabolism’s significance today through his rereading of Kikutake's works of that time.

Toyo Ito was born in Seoul; after graduating from the University of Tokyo, Department of Architecture, he worked at Kiyonori Kikutake Architects and Associates before establishing his own office, under the name Urban Robot, in 1971. With Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects since 1979, Ito has completed many notable projects, including the widely published Sendai Mediatheque (2000), Tower of Winds in Yokoha...

Live Blog - Aggregate and Ed Eigen

2012-10-12T15:07:00-04:00

Hi Archinect,

I haven't normally attended the GSD's "PhD Talks" as I'm not a PhD student here, but today the researchers collectively known as "Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative" are having a conversation wtih Ed Eigen, about a book that I admire very much called Governing by Design: Architecture, Economy, and Politics in the Twentieth Century (published earlier this year by Pittsburgh University Press). We're in one of Gund Hall's "portico" rooms which I think are among the nicest spaces in the building.

The members of Aggregate who are present today include Daniel Abramson, Lucia Allais, Arindam Dutta, John Harwood, Timothy Hyde, Pamela Karimi, Jonathan Massey, Ijlal Muzaffar, Michael Osman, and Meredith TenHoor.

3:08: Bryan Norwood, PhD student, makes introductions. "Aggregate...according to their website... is" [laughter] ...well, here, look for yourself. Bryan is introducing each speaker and cutely referring to each member of Aggregate as a "particulate."...

Live Blog - Kengo Kuma, "After March 11th"

2012-10-09T18:54:00-04:00

Hi Archinect,

Kengo Kuma in full Piper tonight! You can view the video at the GSD's YouTube channel.

I came in a little late, unfortunately, but just in time to see KK show a picture of a recent project in which "nothing happens"--there was no evidence of the project in this image of a hill, water, and a small antennae sticking up. He said that was his favorite picture of the project, but when he sent it out to magazines, they never used it.

Showing another project, he said: "And I understand that nature is strong; architecture cannot resist. All architecture can do is respect nature. So that was a lesson from that disaster."

6:50: In discussing what he sees as an ideal, gentle, approach towards nature, KK says something to the effect of 'architects like to design shapes, but this is not so important for Japanese' as an approach to architecture.

6:54: KK shows a box made by Bruno Taut, who had a shop in Ginza; his father had purchased it. "Whenever [my father] drank beer...

Live Blog - Günther Vogt, "City as Territory as Landscape"

2012-10-04T18:37:00-04:00

Hi Archinect!

I'm in Piper for Zürich-based landscape architect Günther Vogt's lecture. From the GSD website:

Günther Vogt will present a talk on the nature of outdoor spaces, making reference to his projects, which approach landscape in the context of the city and urbanization. Vogt has collaborated with notable architecture firms, including Herzog & de Meuron on the Tate Gallery of Modern Art and the Laban Dance Center in London, as well as the Allianz Arena, Munich; he worked with Gautschi Storrer on Zürich's Masoala Rain Forest Hall. [...]

6:37: Landscape Chair Charles Waldheim calls things to order. "Over the course of the last decade or so, he and his colleagues have embarked on the production of an extraordinary array of public squares and spaces..." His work embodies a tangency between a tradition of landscape that draws on perception the senses, as well as an urbane sensibility. His projects have been at a range of scales. The first piece of his that CW saw was at t...

Thesis: is performance in architecture like the performance of a machine, or a theater?

2012-09-22T11:00:34-04:00

Hi Archinect!

This post goes along with this one where I shared two videos that started my work on thesis this semester. Here, I wanted to explain a bit about what I mean by "unaccomplished performances," which is the working title for the project:

I’m starting with the question: what do we mean when we talk about performance in architecture? As David Leatherbarrow writes, is this the kind of performance that we get out of a machine—like the efficiency of an engine—or is it the kind of performance that we watch unfold on a stage?

What is interesting to me about this question is that we could describe some of the main discourses in contemporary architecture through both kinds of performance: First there is the translation of data (about climate, intended program, demographics, structures, etc.) into built form. This is machine-like performance, because the building acts efficiently—often in terms of environmental controls, but also in the support of activities, use of materia...

Thesis: unaccomplished performances (video)

2012-09-21T16:49:00-04:00

Hi Archinect!

I’m in thesis this semester in the M.Arch.I program, and am being advised by my studio critic from first (!) semester, Danielle Etzler, as well as K. Michael Hays. We kicked off the semester with a pin-up in the first week of September, and a desk crit this past Monday. The working title of the project is “unaccomplished performances.” I’m starting with the question: what do we mean when we talk about performance in architecture? As David Leatherbarrow writes, is this the kind of performance that we get out of a machine—like the efficiency of an engine—or is it the kind of performance that we watch unfold on a stage?

You can read my initial thoughts on this topic here, but for now, I wanted to share two videos, which are the first things I’ve produced this semester: a time-lapse showing a process of inhabitation, and a stop-motion animated charcoal drawing based on it. Very much a work in progress, but that’s what this semester will be about.

Thanks for reading...

Live Blog - George Lakoff, "The Brain's Politics"

2012-09-11T17:06:00-04:00

Hi Archinect!

I'm at MIT for George Lakoff's talk,"The Brain's Politics: How Campaigns Are Framed and Why." The talk's blurb says:

Everything we learn, know and understand is physical — a matter of brain circuitry. This basic fact has deep implications for how politics is understood, how campaigns are framed, why conservatives and progressives talk past each other, and why progressives have more problems framing messages than conservatives do — and what they can do about it.

5:05: GL is starting with the notion of "metaphorical thought." In 1978 he was in a seminar at Berkeley. One day it was raining, as "it always rains," and one woman in the seminar came in crying. Though they tried to ignore the fact that she was crying, when it came to her turn to comment on the reading, she said "I'm sorry, I have a metaphor problem with my boyfriend"..."our relationship has hit a dead end street."

GL: "We started noticing that there were certain expressions about love using a travel ...

Live Blog - Jürgen Mayer H., "pre.text / vor.wand"

2012-09-06T18:38:00-04:00

Hi Archinect!

It looks like a cat sat on my keyboard, but "pre.text / vor.wand" is the title of Jürgen Mayer H.'s lecture tonight in Piper. This has been the first week of classes. (I'm in my thesis semester and second last semester of my M.Arch.I.--more on thesis soon.)

6:36pm: Scott Cohen makes introductions. PSC: It's like "welcoming a friend back." JMH has taught all over the world, and has won many awards; he has accomplished a lot in a short period of time, "most of it in the past ten years."

The 'metropol parasol' project in Seville is the largest (?) structure in the world in wood. Certainly it's monumental, and his most famous work. In it, he mastered the 'single surface' idiom. This project, and his buildings, are like (the future of the past? PSC mentions the 'Jetsons.') His 2D curves are 'shamelessly turned into graphics' and then extruded back into 3D form. He uses the fillet--a trope of our time. "Often his buildings seem to have no particular reason to be the ...