I'm not dismissing the educational process; far from it. I said those things are part of the discourse, meaning part of the discipline.
I mean, it's likely a distinction without a difference, because architecture and all the design disciplines are so overlapping and fuzzy right now, and becoming moreso, but I've decided, for the moment, to to plant that flag and see what happens.
threadkilla that's a plan. It's a representation of a piece of architecture. Of course it's a critical part of the architecture discipline and history. But there's a pretty significant difference between looking at those lines and moving your body through a material object. Architects of course are very well-trained at understanding the spatial implications of those lines. But a plan is not a building.
The practice of architecture within the meaning and intent of this chapter is defined as offering or performing, or being in responsible control of, professional services which require the skills of an architect in the planning of sites, and the design, in whole or in part, of buildings, or groups of buildings and structures.
(b)
Architects’ professional services may include any or all of the following:
(1)
Investigation, evaluation, consultation, and advice.
(2)
Planning, schematic and preliminary studies, designs, working drawings, and specifications.
(3)
Coordination of the work of technical and special consultants.
(4)
Compliance with generally applicable codes and regulations, and assistance in the governmental review process.
(5)
Technical assistance in the preparation of bid documents and agreements between clients and contractors.
(6)
Contract administration.
(7)
Construction observation.
(c)
As a condition for licensure, architects shall demonstrate a basic level of competence in the professional services listed in subdivision (b) in examinations administered under this chapter.
Hi, I am an architect. I practice daily the items listed in Calcs post. I have never under any circumstance ever created a diagram for the purposes of developing a design. I prefer to imagine the space, the materials, the lighting, and the human activity. When you consider all these things together the solutions tend to evolve fairly quickly and a plan and section are often nothing more than communication.........................so you ask Chris, based on your limited portfolio posted on the interweb, nothing you do requires a diagram, its all small potatoes. I agree, most of what I do as listed in Calcs post requires me to think about reality and observe the nature of water and air infiltration, building code, cost, construction techniques and methodologies, and zoning.....oh wait I have done a diagram or two - Zoning Diagram (NYC DOB form ZD-1)...............you still say , but Chris your projects look small and may not necissitate a diagram to bring it all together,I mean anyone can do a highly detailed millwork piece..........this one time I laid out 500 hundred apartments, developer requested ratio of studios to 1 bedrooms to 2 bedrooms, 20k sqft commercial in an old hospital in 1 hour! then I paid a former student (a good wage for anyone out of school) to spend 80 hours tweaking it - nothing changed....................I like how Orhan can make a simple observation turn into the next big shit fest of heckling on Archinect. note he did say all the other age old methods of architecture praxis would remain relevant to the process, just leave the diagram out of it............the brick sure as hell does not want to be a diagram.
i call dreams Faux Memories....or call it Imagination.....a represention of a dream is what? if I dream up architecture and then make a drawing of it, then what is that? dreams are very real to the mind...........but i think to be technically precise a represention of architecture is actally NOT architecture. a repsentation of an architecture that does not yet exist is NOT architecture, its the vision or the imagination of architecture to come.....
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. A diagram doesn't justify a building, it only serves to explain an aspect of it in a clear matter. It has the potential to explain the benefit of an idea/design, but it can also be used to reveal some inherent flaw in the idea. Diagrams should be used as tools for analysis, explanation, and reaction, and they should be revised when they idea changes (hopefully for the better). Just because you have a diagram of an idea doesn't mean that idea is worth a damn...I would communicate that to the students.
I think BIG's early diagrams (thinking about VM and Mountain Housing) were affective at explaining/justifying why things that appeared unconventional might be reasonable in some strange way ("every floor plan is unique...a terrace for everyone!). Unfortunately, many of their current diagrams (2 WTC) seem to be about simply telling you what the thing is instead of explaining why it should be that way ("we're stacking boxes!"). When I was in school, I remember being excited about seeing diagrams for the former as they helped make sense of that weird looking building. With the latter, I just feel kind of indifferent about the whole project.
The representation is the architecture. Architecture is litterally creating a plan or a system to be carried out by others...the idea on paper (or any medium that can convey the idea) is the architecture....the building is just the result...
We can look at plans drawn by Dead architects and build them...
To say Architecture is what is built Is very black white thinking... to seperate the drawing from the building is odd...To me they are different "phases" of the same thing...For instance, Drawings are like potential energy and buildings are like kinetic energy...
jla-x I do like that phrasing that they are "different phases of the same thing". I don't feel like I'm actually being black/white about this; like I said above I'm exploring this position for now to see what results.
But even with our excellent abilities to imagine space and material, we can't really understand and evaluate a project until it's built. I think there's s difference there.
potentialadjective having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future.
In other words potential isn't something. When it has developed into something it is no longer potential. Also kinetic refers to movement, so all around I'd say that's a poor metaphor.
But there is a silver lining ... a bad unbuilt design (among other things) could be described as impotential.
"Since the inception of Western architecture in classical Greece, the architect has not 'made' the buildings; rather he or she has made the mediating artifacts that make significant buildings possible." Albert Perez-Gomez
there's a reason why everything done is school is architecture. architects create the idea and instruction, not the physical building. this seems like a pretty simple concept. to say otherwise as a practicing architect nullifies literally everything you do; CDs, client meetings, model making all become a means to building, rather than "doing architecture." by donna and miles' definition, the builder is really the architect.
we all know that once a building is complete it is out of the hands of the architect: social, environmental, temporal, and a host of other forces begin to act on the building completely separate, in many cases, from the architect's intent. we can ABSOLUTELY, however, evaluate the potential of a building before it is built, and it is what the entire educational process and subsequent professional design process is founded upon. the dichotomy of "real world" vs. education or built work vs. not built dumbs the conversation down to a set of binary conditions that excludes the potential of powerful work. to believe that what students are doing in studio isn't architecture is baffling and a disservice to those students.
is the publication written by the scientist both before and after physical research not science? are the notes scribbled in a journal by an author not an embedded part of the novel? do the countless hours spent training for the world cup become physically manifested in the athletes during the "real game"?
we are a profession justifiably obsessed with process, and to hear professionals exclude it from the definition of architecture is fantastically strange, although maybe telling.
"a plan is not a building." you're right; it's architecture.
^ by that logic an architect does not create architecture...Builders do. So who is the architect of the Roosevelt Memorial? Kahn was long dead by the time it was built.
Buildings are 1:1 scale models of architecture. The drawings store and convey the architecture...sometimes across centuries...
if the architect designs buildings, he needs to know how buildings are built, and draw his buildings in a build-able manner; for example, lebbeus woods was (imho) a much better designer than zaha hadid and frank gehry combined , but he never ventured to have one of his designs built, why?
and then, how many architects are working at nasa to build in mars?
that's a lot of untapped potential energy, but we are bound by what we know, and architects usually come at the rear of all technological innovations, just to utilize what scientists and artists have distilled. To feel that what you are doing is worth something, at least I need to touch it and experience it beyond a piece of paper or a vr simulator.
Boulee's cenotaph may have not directly become a building, but it certainly found its way into the minds of others who then transfered some of its ideas into built form...whats the difference then? Whether the work is directly transfered from paper to brick, or indirectly through other designers that it inspires, it is still eventually transfered into built form in part or in whole. So to say Boulee's work is paper architecture is to suggest that its ideas never left the paper... which is false...Heduk or Woods probably have shaped more "built" works than your typical practicing architect...So, in my opinion, the architect does not create buildings, he/she creates ideas for buildings in a concrete or abstract way, on some media. The building is the physical result of the design...
No the builder is not the architect, alrightalright. I never said anything close to that. I never said anything about the architect at all.
I'm saying that physical objects that exist in the world as nothing other than themselves are different from drawings/models/various other objects that exist in the world as representations of something else.
To feel that what you are doing is worth something, at least I need to touch it and experience it beyond a piece of paper or a vr simulator.
a regular doubting thomas.
agreed, jla-x. is not this act of inspiring others in architectural ideas just as valuable as the built work? in fact one could argue the built work would never had existed without the inspiration.
creating strict definitions where one must satisfy x y and z avoids the difficult and meaningful questions of defining nuanced things. it's in that place that great architecture happens. avoiding the questions leads to walmart.
donna, i was responding to your response to the image of the plan: "But a plan is not a building."
a portrait is created from the living thing; it is not the potential of the living thing. the living thing existed before the portrait did. a sketch of the building afterwards is more similar to what you are arguing. a more appropriate analogy would be to exam the cells that eventually become the person.
here's another more interesting question: when you talked to your friend on skype the other day, did you see them? i believe this is more relevant to the conversation we are having.
is it even possible to design a building with no process? how exactly does one design a building without the "tool" of process? that's the equivalent of denying privilege or attempting to assemble a rocket engine with no education training or instructions. again, walmart.
not only that, but every "tool" has a very real implications in the way we work. in the most rudimentary sense, a pencil creates a very different drawing than a pen. an example with more real consequences would be digital modeling vs. hand modeling; to deny their implications in built work is to reduce things like process to an optional "tool."
Historically, master builders produced some of the world's greatest buildings including cathedrals across Europe and temples across Asia. Renaissance "architects" were sculptors, artists, engineers, goldsmiths, etc., rigorously trained in practical arts and trades.
They were certainly not architects in the present sense.
"practical" is a taboo term in the world of a present day architect - especially a student. I believe its use was banned from my College of Architecture.
The world becomes singularly meaningful, without being “symbolical.” Objects and colors do not point to other realms, signs say what they have to and fall silent. Conventional associations fall away: a flag against the sky does not conjure a stream of patriotic images – soldiers, funerals, moonwalks – like some TV documentary, but contains in its luminosity and sharp flapping a distilled significance unique to the actual sight and sound of it. We are not conscious (“Ah, this means that…) of reference, allusion, or instruction. These processes become transparent as their material carriers either disappear, like words, or, like bells and old trees, collapse upon themselves to become crisp and real and, somehow, more the things they are.
Such experiences, such privileged moments, can be profoundly moving; and precisely from such moments, I believe, we build our best and necessary sense of an independent yet meaningful reality. I should like to call them direct aesthetic experiences of the real and to suggest the following: in our media-saturated times it falls to architecture to have the direct esthetic experience of the real at the center of its concerns.
This is the difference between architecture and representations of architecture. A drawing of a building (or plan, diagram, model) can never exist not in reference to something else, whether that something else exists or not.
My favorite architecture drawing is Mies' glass tower:
It's absolutely a representation of something else (a building) but when you see the object itself it is also absolutely charcoal on paper, the charcoal at varying thicknesses both represents the reflectivity of glass (two of the most diametrically opposed materials in existence!) and conveys its own materiality as a powder. But it's not just charcoal on paper: the charcoal and paper object references some other object, in this case something that never existed (though Lake Point Tower is a very successful homage to it).
is it even possible to design a building with no process?
I'm understanding "process" to represent a teaching methodology that expresses as much interest in HOW the design got to where it did as WHAT the design ended up being. That emphasis is reflected on and discussed in a teaching environment. The work environment may or may not be philosophical about the way in which the designer arrived at the proposed design.
So, yes, actually designing a building with no process is possible and done all the time.
Micheal Benedict seems to be talking about directly appreciating something for what it is in its purest physical sense...free from human bias and from connotations/connections that our minds always try to make. A complaint made by Kirt Cobain came to mind when I read that...about how he hates when people ask what his songs are about. "they are just songs" he said...I'm not sure this is possible to achieve however. Nature does it all the time. The wind ruffling some trees dosent mean anything, it just is what it is..."a flag flapping in the wind however came to be consciously and its color, shape, etc is a product of history. Sure we can block out our "overthinking" minds and just absorb the basic essence of the physical thing, but the associations still exist on some level whether we see them or not. A baby can do this direct appreciation thing better than an adult Im sure...but the associations exist despite the babies ignorance.
anyway, a building is not the final manifestation of architecture...and it is certainly not eternal /timeless...it decays and weathers...its ruins tell a whole different story to future generations...it may actually be that its ruins are more important to some future people than it was when new...So, its physical reality may eventually take on traits unforeseeable by its architect...Is present Ankor Wat the "architecture" or past Ankor Wat? I would argue that its present form , covered in moss and over grown with roots and vines, is more important/beautiful/real to me than it was in the past. It is certainly not that same thing it once was, it became something else, something better, despite the concious act of an architect...Still it is architecture...My point is that the inverse from idea to built form is as loose as the relationship of built form to ruin...all are phases in the life of an architecture...all begin with the idea...and all eventually end as something else, but ultimatly rooted from the idea...The idea persists past the life of the original built form/function...
The idea is what we search for when discovering some ancient walls buried beneath the earth, and ironically, we take the information gathered from the ruins and use it to recreate drawings of what it once was...it ends where it all began... drawings!
jla-x that's very beautifully written and I don't disagree with you at all! But your last sentence IMO makes my point. The idea is one thing, but in architecture the idea *would not exist* except in response to a need for function. This is what makes art and architecture different. Art intentionally starts from a place of non-utility. Architecture always starts from the need for utility, so the drawings are always only representations.
...someone should link that Biber 100 proposals etc.. (on phone)....jla-x i do not think you are saying anything much different than anyone else other than the subtle point that an 'idea' is 'architecture'. an 'idea' can be architecture, but IS not architecture. At best it is a representation of what architecture can be............ this subtle point is a huge issue with the regard to the disconnect between practice and academia. in academia the idea of architecture is architecture and therefore reality or how the idea can become reality is not only ignored but even occasionally banned.....lets take the work of Peter Eisenman, unlike Bemedikt's point, Eisenman is all symbols and what is supposed to be representation of architecture becomes games of representation on paper. Benedikt's book cited by Donna has a cool list of architectures of games, reenactments, preenactments, illusion etc.....whats interesting though, if you run on over to Deleuze and Guatarri in a 1000 Plateaus is that the 'virtual' should be accepted to be as real as the real. In other words a 'myth' is indeed functionally real. or simply put - bullshit often has equal value to truth. eisenman's games did get built and are NOW real. but if you reach back to Tschumi's Manhattan transcripts you will find all those symbols in the game of Representation actually mean nothing to the person inhabiting the architecture (see Henri Lefebvre for this as well)
so if there is a process in architecture, I would propose it is the act of making an idea real, and connecting its representation to its inhabited experience and this among other reasons is why I would deny Parametricism as a style but accept it as a language.....perhaps a language that does not lose its represenational values when its represenations become real.
Are diagrams in architecture bullshit and ditto for process?
I'm not dismissing the educational process; far from it. I said those things are part of the discourse, meaning part of the discipline.
I mean, it's likely a distinction without a difference, because architecture and all the design disciplines are so overlapping and fuzzy right now, and becoming moreso, but I've decided, for the moment, to to plant that flag and see what happens.
only including built works dismisses the entire educational process, which is where imagination is free of constraints, in the most beautiful way.
My imagination is always free of constraints. And as far as I can see the entire architectural education process should be dismissed.
I'll side with Donna here: if it isn't eaten it's not a meal, if it isn't written it's not a book, if it isn't built it isn't architecture.
i agree!
If you don't think this ^^^ up there ^^^ is architecture, you SHOULD NOT be teaching architecture.
I am 100% serious about this, you should actually be banned from educational institutions of any sort.
Even if it's Mies.
§ 5500.1Practice of Architecture Defined
(a)
The practice of architecture within the meaning and intent of this chapter is defined as offering or performing, or being in responsible control of, professional services which require the skills of an architect in the planning of sites, and the design, in whole or in part, of buildings, or groups of buildings and structures.
(b)
Architects’ professional services may include any or all of the following:
(1)
Investigation, evaluation, consultation, and advice.
(2)
Planning, schematic and preliminary studies, designs, working drawings, and specifications.
(3)
Coordination of the work of technical and special consultants.
(4)
Compliance with generally applicable codes and regulations, and assistance in the governmental review process.
(5)
Technical assistance in the preparation of bid documents and agreements between clients and contractors.
(6)
Contract administration.
(7)
Construction observation.
(c)
As a condition for licensure, architects shall demonstrate a basic level of competence in the professional services listed in subdivision (b) in examinations administered under this chapter.
so architecture is anything with an aspect of intellect? that doesn't make any sense. or you're saying less intellect makes it architecture?
architecture is anything as long as it represents a building (only iconic or monumental buildings, of course)
as long as you're thinking of a building or something built, then it counts as architecture?
is my can opener architecture? It's a pretty nice can opener
Hi, I am an architect. I practice daily the items listed in Calcs post. I have never under any circumstance ever created a diagram for the purposes of developing a design. I prefer to imagine the space, the materials, the lighting, and the human activity. When you consider all these things together the solutions tend to evolve fairly quickly and a plan and section are often nothing more than communication.........................so you ask Chris, based on your limited portfolio posted on the interweb, nothing you do requires a diagram, its all small potatoes. I agree, most of what I do as listed in Calcs post requires me to think about reality and observe the nature of water and air infiltration, building code, cost, construction techniques and methodologies, and zoning.....oh wait I have done a diagram or two - Zoning Diagram (NYC DOB form ZD-1)...............you still say , but Chris your projects look small and may not necissitate a diagram to bring it all together,I mean anyone can do a highly detailed millwork piece..........this one time I laid out 500 hundred apartments, developer requested ratio of studios to 1 bedrooms to 2 bedrooms, 20k sqft commercial in an old hospital in 1 hour! then I paid a former student (a good wage for anyone out of school) to spend 80 hours tweaking it - nothing changed....................I like how Orhan can make a simple observation turn into the next big shit fest of heckling on Archinect. note he did say all the other age old methods of architecture praxis would remain relevant to the process, just leave the diagram out of it............the brick sure as hell does not want to be a diagram.
"if it's not built it's not architecture"
"...that's a plan. It's a representation of a piece of architecture."
A representation is by definition NOT the thing it represents.
Yet, the plan was never built, thus it cannot represent architecture.
A representation does not require the thing it represents to exist.
Now I get it, less intellect is less intellect.
Thanks for providing a demonstration of that.
isn't a picture of santa clause a representation of santa clause?
i call dreams Faux Memories....or call it Imagination.....a represention of a dream is what? if I dream up architecture and then make a drawing of it, then what is that? dreams are very real to the mind...........but i think to be technically precise a represention of architecture is actally NOT architecture. a repsentation of an architecture that does not yet exist is NOT architecture, its the vision or the imagination of architecture to come.....
in othwr words, as an architect you should be imaging Architecture and not its representations.
Or drawing pictures of the Easter Bunny, the Golem, banana powered spacecraft, etc.
My 2 cents:
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. A diagram doesn't justify a building, it only serves to explain an aspect of it in a clear matter. It has the potential to explain the benefit of an idea/design, but it can also be used to reveal some inherent flaw in the idea. Diagrams should be used as tools for analysis, explanation, and reaction, and they should be revised when they idea changes (hopefully for the better). Just because you have a diagram of an idea doesn't mean that idea is worth a damn...I would communicate that to the students.
I think BIG's early diagrams (thinking about VM and Mountain Housing) were affective at explaining/justifying why things that appeared unconventional might be reasonable in some strange way ("every floor plan is unique...a terrace for everyone!). Unfortunately, many of their current diagrams (2 WTC) seem to be about simply telling you what the thing is instead of explaining why it should be that way ("we're stacking boxes!"). When I was in school, I remember being excited about seeing diagrams for the former as they helped make sense of that weird looking building. With the latter, I just feel kind of indifferent about the whole project.
The representation is the architecture. Architecture is litterally creating a plan or a system to be carried out by others...the idea on paper (or any medium that can convey the idea) is the architecture....the building is just the result...
We can look at plans drawn by Dead architects and build them...
To say Architecture is what is built Is very black white thinking... to seperate the drawing from the building is odd...To me they are different "phases" of the same thing...For instance, Drawings are like potential energy and buildings are like kinetic energy...
/\ yes (last sentence)
But even with our excellent abilities to imagine space and material, we can't really understand and evaluate a project until it's built. I think there's s difference there.
and potential energy is not kinetic energy.
potential adjective having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future.
In other words potential isn't something. When it has developed into something it is no longer potential. Also kinetic refers to movement, so all around I'd say that's a poor metaphor.
But there is a silver lining ... a bad unbuilt design (among other things) could be described as impotential.
second jla-x; very well said.
miles's comments are quite concerning.
"Since the inception of Western architecture in classical Greece, the architect has not 'made' the buildings; rather he or she has made the mediating artifacts that make significant buildings possible." Albert Perez-Gomez
there's a reason why everything done is school is architecture. architects create the idea and instruction, not the physical building. this seems like a pretty simple concept. to say otherwise as a practicing architect nullifies literally everything you do; CDs, client meetings, model making all become a means to building, rather than "doing architecture." by donna and miles' definition, the builder is really the architect.
we all know that once a building is complete it is out of the hands of the architect: social, environmental, temporal, and a host of other forces begin to act on the building completely separate, in many cases, from the architect's intent. we can ABSOLUTELY, however, evaluate the potential of a building before it is built, and it is what the entire educational process and subsequent professional design process is founded upon. the dichotomy of "real world" vs. education or built work vs. not built dumbs the conversation down to a set of binary conditions that excludes the potential of powerful work. to believe that what students are doing in studio isn't architecture is baffling and a disservice to those students.
is the publication written by the scientist both before and after physical research not science? are the notes scribbled in a journal by an author not an embedded part of the novel? do the countless hours spent training for the world cup become physically manifested in the athletes during the "real game"?
we are a profession justifiably obsessed with process, and to hear professionals exclude it from the definition of architecture is fantastically strange, although maybe telling.
"a plan is not a building." you're right; it's architecture.
^ by that logic an architect does not create architecture...Builders do. So who is the architect of the Roosevelt Memorial? Kahn was long dead by the time it was built.
Buildings are 1:1 scale models of architecture. The drawings store and convey the architecture...sometimes across centuries...
the builder is really the architect.
no, architects design buildings. nothing changes because of what donna or miles said.
miles, in this use it seems the kinetic and potential terms are physics terms. this definition would be more appropriate:
(poorly formatted website)
https://www.chem.wisc.edu/deptfiles/genchem/netorial/modules/thermodynamics/energy/energy2.htm
(or, even better, fun youtube video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5WJoup-RD8
potential energy is something, because if it wasn't, the balance of the universe would be upset.
if the architect designs buildings, he needs to know how buildings are built, and draw his buildings in a build-able manner; for example, lebbeus woods was (imho) a much better designer than zaha hadid and frank gehry combined , but he never ventured to have one of his designs built, why?
and then, how many architects are working at nasa to build in mars?
that's a lot of untapped potential energy, but we are bound by what we know, and architects usually come at the rear of all technological innovations, just to utilize what scientists and artists have distilled. To feel that what you are doing is worth something, at least I need to touch it and experience it beyond a piece of paper or a vr simulator.
yes; the fundamental law of conservation in physics is energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed.
indeed, miles, it serves as an apt metaphor for the practice of architecture.
Boulee's cenotaph may have not directly become a building, but it certainly found its way into the minds of others who then transfered some of its ideas into built form...whats the difference then? Whether the work is directly transfered from paper to brick, or indirectly through other designers that it inspires, it is still eventually transfered into built form in part or in whole. So to say Boulee's work is paper architecture is to suggest that its ideas never left the paper... which is false...Heduk or Woods probably have shaped more "built" works than your typical practicing architect...So, in my opinion, the architect does not create buildings, he/she creates ideas for buildings in a concrete or abstract way, on some media. The building is the physical result of the design...
No the builder is not the architect, alrightalright. I never said anything close to that. I never said anything about the architect at all.
I'm saying that physical objects that exist in the world as nothing other than themselves are different from drawings/models/various other objects that exist in the world as representations of something else.
A portrait isn't a person, does that help?
To feel that what you are doing is worth something, at least I need to touch it and experience it beyond a piece of paper or a vr simulator.
a regular doubting thomas.
agreed, jla-x. is not this act of inspiring others in architectural ideas just as valuable as the built work? in fact one could argue the built work would never had existed without the inspiration.
creating strict definitions where one must satisfy x y and z avoids the difficult and meaningful questions of defining nuanced things. it's in that place that great architecture happens. avoiding the questions leads to walmart.
sorry...basically repeated what alright was saying...his post beat me to it...
donna, i was responding to your response to the image of the plan: "But a plan is not a building."
a portrait is created from the living thing; it is not the potential of the living thing. the living thing existed before the portrait did. a sketch of the building afterwards is more similar to what you are arguing. a more appropriate analogy would be to exam the cells that eventually become the person.
here's another more interesting question: when you talked to your friend on skype the other day, did you see them? i believe this is more relevant to the conversation we are having.
alrightalright, that was JLC you quoted above...not me...
a regular doubting thomas.
Absolutely, I wasn't given the gift of blind faith.
apologies, i was confusing in my response. i was intentionally quoting jlc and agreeing with your other post simultaneously.
diagrams & process are just tools, no more
use them or don't use them
create a different teaching agenda
is it even possible to design a building with no process? how exactly does one design a building without the "tool" of process? that's the equivalent of denying privilege or attempting to assemble a rocket engine with no education training or instructions. again, walmart.
not only that, but every "tool" has a very real implications in the way we work. in the most rudimentary sense, a pencil creates a very different drawing than a pen. an example with more real consequences would be digital modeling vs. hand modeling; to deny their implications in built work is to reduce things like process to an optional "tool."
Historically, master builders produced some of the world's greatest buildings including cathedrals across Europe and temples across Asia. Renaissance "architects" were sculptors, artists, engineers, goldsmiths, etc., rigorously trained in practical arts and trades.
They were certainly not architects in the present sense.
"practical" is a taboo term in the world of a present day architect - especially a student. I believe its use was banned from my College of Architecture.
the treachery of images
Famous passage from Michael Benedikt's For An Architecture Of Reality:
The world becomes singularly meaningful, without being “symbolical.” Objects and colors do not point to other realms, signs say what they have to and fall silent. Conventional associations fall away: a flag against the sky does not conjure a stream of patriotic images – soldiers, funerals, moonwalks – like some TV documentary, but contains in its luminosity and sharp flapping a distilled significance unique to the actual sight and sound of it. We are not conscious (“Ah, this means that…) of reference, allusion, or instruction. These processes become transparent as their material carriers either disappear, like words, or, like bells and old trees, collapse upon themselves to become crisp and real and, somehow, more the things they are.
Such experiences, such privileged moments, can be profoundly moving; and precisely from such moments, I believe, we build our best and necessary sense of an independent yet meaningful reality. I should like to call them direct aesthetic experiences of the real and to suggest the following: in our media-saturated times it falls to architecture to have the direct esthetic experience of the real at the center of its concerns.
This is the difference between architecture and representations of architecture. A drawing of a building (or plan, diagram, model) can never exist not in reference to something else, whether that something else exists or not.
My favorite architecture drawing is Mies' glass tower:
It's absolutely a representation of something else (a building) but when you see the object itself it is also absolutely charcoal on paper, the charcoal at varying thicknesses both represents the reflectivity of glass (two of the most diametrically opposed materials in existence!) and conveys its own materiality as a powder. But it's not just charcoal on paper: the charcoal and paper object references some other object, in this case something that never existed (though Lake Point Tower is a very successful homage to it).
is it even possible to design a building with no process?
I'm understanding "process" to represent a teaching methodology that expresses as much interest in HOW the design got to where it did as WHAT the design ended up being. That emphasis is reflected on and discussed in a teaching environment. The work environment may or may not be philosophical about the way in which the designer arrived at the proposed design.
So, yes, actually designing a building with no process is possible and done all the time.
is it even possible to design a building with no process?
No, as process is required in one form or another for any result. Even if cerebral, accidental or magical.
So, yes, actually designing a building with no process is possible and done all the time.
No, but it sure looks like it is done all the time.
Micheal Benedict seems to be talking about directly appreciating something for what it is in its purest physical sense...free from human bias and from connotations/connections that our minds always try to make. A complaint made by Kirt Cobain came to mind when I read that...about how he hates when people ask what his songs are about. "they are just songs" he said...I'm not sure this is possible to achieve however. Nature does it all the time. The wind ruffling some trees dosent mean anything, it just is what it is..."a flag flapping in the wind however came to be consciously and its color, shape, etc is a product of history. Sure we can block out our "overthinking" minds and just absorb the basic essence of the physical thing, but the associations still exist on some level whether we see them or not. A baby can do this direct appreciation thing better than an adult Im sure...but the associations exist despite the babies ignorance.
anyway, a building is not the final manifestation of architecture...and it is certainly not eternal /timeless...it decays and weathers...its ruins tell a whole different story to future generations...it may actually be that its ruins are more important to some future people than it was when new...So, its physical reality may eventually take on traits unforeseeable by its architect...Is present Ankor Wat the "architecture" or past Ankor Wat? I would argue that its present form , covered in moss and over grown with roots and vines, is more important/beautiful/real to me than it was in the past. It is certainly not that same thing it once was, it became something else, something better, despite the concious act of an architect...Still it is architecture...My point is that the inverse from idea to built form is as loose as the relationship of built form to ruin...all are phases in the life of an architecture...all begin with the idea...and all eventually end as something else, but ultimatly rooted from the idea...The idea persists past the life of the original built form/function...
The idea is what we search for when discovering some ancient walls buried beneath the earth, and ironically, we take the information gathered from the ruins and use it to recreate drawings of what it once was...it ends where it all began... drawings!
...someone should link that Biber 100 proposals etc.. (on phone)....jla-x i do not think you are saying anything much different than anyone else other than the subtle point that an 'idea' is 'architecture'. an 'idea' can be architecture, but IS not architecture. At best it is a representation of what architecture can be............ this subtle point is a huge issue with the regard to the disconnect between practice and academia. in academia the idea of architecture is architecture and therefore reality or how the idea can become reality is not only ignored but even occasionally banned.....lets take the work of Peter Eisenman, unlike Bemedikt's point, Eisenman is all symbols and what is supposed to be representation of architecture becomes games of representation on paper. Benedikt's book cited by Donna has a cool list of architectures of games, reenactments, preenactments, illusion etc.....whats interesting though, if you run on over to Deleuze and Guatarri in a 1000 Plateaus is that the 'virtual' should be accepted to be as real as the real. In other words a 'myth' is indeed functionally real. or simply put - bullshit often has equal value to truth. eisenman's games did get built and are NOW real. but if you reach back to Tschumi's Manhattan transcripts you will find all those symbols in the game of Representation actually mean nothing to the person inhabiting the architecture (see Henri Lefebvre for this as well)
so if there is a process in architecture, I would propose it is the act of making an idea real, and connecting its representation to its inhabited experience and this among other reasons is why I would deny Parametricism as a style but accept it as a language.....perhaps a language that does not lose its represenational values when its represenations become real.
quondam, there is a good chance those plans represent reality very well.....
there's a good chance my seeing them all simultaneously is an architectural experience
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