Damn.

You let the French drop a few bombs on Africa, and next thing you have is Roche's testicles in your cereal bowl.

Maybe Frankie misplaced his green crayons?

In any case. It's not a tantrum. He said so himself in "Shakespearean mayonnaise".

Any arrogant, ignorant Sci-Arc staffer want to add to this story?

I just rolled my eyes so hard I gave myself vertigo and then vomited.

reading that was almost as annoying as their website...

"your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberry."

"is there someone else we could talk to?"

Sci-Arc clearly dodged a bullet with this guy. That lecture would have been unintelligible anyway.

He's taking his cues from Odd Future.

it's at least as readable as the published writings.

I imagine that this is really about SCI-Arc not wanting to pay for his poodle to fly first class.

I still don't understand it... which is the reason they cancelled the lecture?

Is Sci-Arc mixed with Gaddafi as well? (remember, his son bought his PhD at the London School of Economics).

I misread the environment - it's a rochattack!. I like the work of R&Sie, and barbed letters like these are sometimes necessary, in the same spirit of Voltaire.

You may remember his criticisms of the French architectural scene: http://www.new-territories.com/vous%20avez%20dit.htm
http://www.new-territories.com/pav%20Suisse.htm

That film school sci-arc is got to be feeling overly traditional and out of touch...
Go Roche.

"Our works and attitudes are toxic, animal, dangerous, regressive, politic and computational."

What a nonsense of series of adjectives!!!



How can something or some one be toxic, animal, dangerous and at the same time regressive, politic and computational?

Aren't the characters, regressive, politic and computational, only applied to human being but not to animal?
I would like to see any animal that is regressive, politic and computational.

It's a Google Translate™ manifesto.

WIN!

all good, he would have just tried to hypnotize them.

"Our works and attitudes are toxic, animal, dangerous, regressive, politic and computational."

lol i did giggle.
and i think i have a brain tumor now.

I understood that letter about as much as I understood him in my review two years ago-which means I still have no clue.

note the only words in french are misspelled.

do architects have to be good writers to polemicize their work?

are we seeing a trend of practitioners with phd's? I can think of a few, but they are singular, and not a model - I don't even think they are both at the same time.

It does seem that an increasing fraction of the increasingly small fraction of the profession that pursues "architecture as art" are now starting to carry doctoral credentials after their names. But with the so-called crisis in architectural theory rendering complicated polemics about form increasingly irrelevant, I wonder to what end?

"do architects have to be good writers to polemicize their work?"

I agree with you. Architects don't need to be a good writer.

However, I don't think he is a practitioner either.
Moreover, if he is a theorist. the more critical issue here is not about being a good writer but about how well he is understanding the contemporary as a theorist.

Unlike many people's prejudice, contemporary philosophies are really rigor and consistent. Only the reason that people think contemporary philosophies are "capricious" is because they don't have comprehensive understanding about that.

The reason I brought the issue about "non-sense of series of adjectives" is to show how superficial his understanding about contemporary philosophies is.

I think some architect's being theoretical is good for the whole architecture to achieve professional depths.

But, if they are going to insist on being a theorist they have to be good enough at theory and philosophy and need to stop being pretentious.

i think it's possible to take a theoretical position through design. roche has done enough interesting, coherent-enough design proposals that i'm almost willing to forgive his gobbledygook, even though it drives me nuts.

it seems to me that this 'dispute' is just another academic provocation, though...

I'm sure it just has something to do with insurance.

What passes for "theory" in Architecture is really just ideology.

Please don't confuse the two. :-)

Desalienate ? Maybe that has something to do with the pool . . .

I'm only here for the mayonnaise.

Didn't this dude lecture at sci-arc... maybe 5-6 years ago? I distinctly remember some skinny french dude dressed in black who was lecturing/presenting all this maya/blob stuff. Seemed to fit right in with what was going on at sci-arc. Hernan did the intro... I think. Whatever, he didn't seem like that much of a bad-ass at the time.

Anyway, it's good controversy (even if it's not clear just what the hell is being controverted), no doubt both sci-arc and r&sie could use the publicity.

Fuck it, instead of a lecture, they should have a debate! R&Sie dude plus a couple of his homies vs. .... well E.O.M. (of course) and... i dunno Juan Azulay? and Ed Keller? (I have no idea if they'd agree or disagree because I still don't have a clue what R&Sie's beef is... maybe they'd all agree on everything and then hug and kiss).

Priority 1: somebody decipher that letter!

here: +33(0)142060669
somebody who speaks french (and archi-babble) call that dude and get the story. report back!

they call me "thread-killer"...
No, really. How did this excellent thread peter out?
Speaking of peter, here's some more food for thought (fuel for the fire) from Sir P.Cook himself: http://thefunambulist.net/2011/03/24/politics-francois-roche-cancels-at-sci-arc-manifesto-for-speculative-laboratories/#comment-378

something else is going on, Roche posts that letter then walk down the street to teach at USC, which some would say is a wannabe sci-arc. i wouldnt route for him.

Mission St,Thanks for that link - Peter Cook has always been refreshing for his frank assessments. To one particularly nasty juror (KR). 'You've fucked up this review, so why don't you fuck off"

5.5 years later. That link to the Peter Cook comment seems broken somehow.

snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20150318062946/http://thefunambulist.net/2011/03/24/politics-francois-roche-cancels-at-sci-arc-manifesto-for-speculative-laboratories/