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Why is Sanford Kwinter so popular???????????

coolboy96

i'd also be interested to hear a serious answer to this question. preferably from someone with some personal experience of kwinter.

i consider myself an ambitious reader of arch texts, but his are still mostly opaque to me - certainly not anything that can influence my thinking, since i only have a fuzzy idea of what's being proposed. i've tried one book, given up, only to buy another because i wasn't willing to accept that here was a celebrated architecture theorist from whom i could glean so little!

i expect that what is so murky to me in text form may be better comprehensible in dialogue? maybe as critic, professor, lecturer, his point-of-view becomes more clear?  

 
Jun 18, 17 12:46 pm
geezertect

I never heard of this guy, so I googled him and found this snippet regarding some book he wrote:

Tracing the transformation of twentieth-century epistemology to the rise of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, Kwinter explains how the demise of the concept of absolute time, and of the classical notion of space as a fixed background against which things occur, led to field theory and a physics of the "event."

I immediately started to laugh.  My gibberish detector was screaming off the wall.  This kind of pretentious junk is not worth a second of your time unless it's part of some course you have to pass in school.  Architects design and prepare documents to build buildings that perform a function, repel the weather, and don't fall down.  Hopefully, they look nice, too.  If you can do that, call it good.

As to why he is popular, it's because "intellectuals" don't want to admit to other "intellectuals" that they don't understand a word of it, so they nod knowingly and hope their own befuddlement isn't discovered.

This stuff is one of many reasons why the profession is declining into total irrelevance.

Jun 18, 17 2:22 pm  · 
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citizen

Amen.

Jun 18, 17 3:10 pm  · 
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citizen

"...here was a celebrated architecture theorist from whom i could glean so little."         

This is my new favorite phrase...  not directed at any one person, but at all who unfortunately qualify.

Jun 18, 17 3:09 pm  · 
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nn1993

Stop being to anti-intellectual.


And to @geezertect: No. I don't think architecture is just about "design and prepare documents to build buildings that perform a function, repel the weather, and don't fall down." What a depressing way to look at the world and architecture. Also, judging (unfairly and badly) an established theorist based on a snippet is shallow and arrogant.                             

Jun 19, 17 6:18 pm  · 
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geezertect

But those are the only aspects of architecture that you will get paid for. If you think clients value bullshit theories, you must have had a different professional experience than me.

Jun 19, 17 10:16 pm  · 
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Non Sequitur

http://archinect.com/forum/thr...

Jun 19, 17 6:57 pm  · 
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Thank you. Now I don't have to address the topic again.

Jun 19, 17 7:03 pm  · 
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So is coolboy96 a bot that just plagiarized one of Steven Ward's comments from 2011 and added some question marks to the title of the post that it was plagiarized from ... or did I miss something here?

Jun 19, 17 7:43 pm  · 
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geezertect

Yup, that looks about accurate.

Jun 19, 17 10:20 pm  · 
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carryhaddis

who is this and wh you so obsessed with this guy?

Jun 22, 17 12:01 pm  · 
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geezertect

who's obsessed?

Jun 22, 17 12:50 pm  · 
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shellarchitect

never heard of him

Jun 22, 17 2:21 pm  · 
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citizen

Poor Sanford K. Winter...  He's been gone a long time, and folks are still getting his name wrong!

Jun 22, 17 4:25 pm  · 
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archinine
He's a master of pseudo intellectual bullfuckery with the ability to write and talk endlessly about nothing. It's an academia wet dream.
Jun 22, 17 8:18 pm  · 
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archinine
Also, having met him, regardless of substance, he is sincerely charming which is very important for making connections/getting things published/garnering notoriety
Jun 22, 17 8:20 pm  · 
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gruen
He helped me remove some gutters once.
Jun 23, 17 9:45 pm  · 
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geezertect

One of the Kardashians of Architecture.

Jun 24, 17 1:57 pm  · 
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citizen

Ouch! But his name does start with a K, so he kwalifies...

Jun 24, 17 3:15 pm  · 
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randomised

So you made a profile to ask that one single question???????????

Jun 25, 17 7:36 am  · 
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libnyfranciscopacheco

Sanford Kwinter is the guy that brought a proper theoretical and philosophical backbone to a movement that started in the early 90s: Reiser Umemoto, Greg Lynn, FOA and UNStudio. These 4 offices together with Jeff Kipnis were the first to implement ideas of complexity and left leaning ideas, using computers. The whole idea of the fold, of the diagram, of making Deleuze applicable to architecture (The Hammer and The Song) which are traits of this group's architecture comes from Kwinter.

Part of the agenda of this group is or was to push forward the agenda of autonomy in architecture (an immediate inheritance from Eisenman). Specially the diagram (as explained by Deleuze) helped with this.

Basically, Kwinter has always been giving forward thinking to the architectural discipline. In "A Conversation Between Sanford Kwitner and Jason Payne", in the book "From Control To Design", you can get a better idea of Kwinter's value to the discipline.

Kwinter's theoretical or philosophical project, is being quite consistent, in comparison with Kipnis, that as he himself said it, is a "rock ´n roll philosopher and very much just talks about whatever is in vogue.

Oct 22, 17 5:00 am  · 
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randomised

Is it really you Sanford?

Oct 22, 17 6:15 am  · 
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sameolddoctor

"Part of the agenda of this group is or was to push forward the agenda of autonomy in architecture" - i.e. the agenda of BULLSHIT in architecture

Oct 23, 17 10:04 pm  · 
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citizen

Sanford and Son (then), my preference.


Sanford and Son (now)


Oct 22, 17 10:57 am  · 
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arch76

he was a collaborative writer in "mutations" book with rem koolhaas. tried to find his essay or contribution in the book but couldn't. the book does have some great photos and diagrams. good sunday morning book.

Oct 22, 17 11:59 am  · 
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won and done williams

I consider myself an ambitious reader of arch texts, but his are still mostly opaque to me - certainly not anything that can influence my thinking, since I only have a fuzzy idea of what's being proposed. I've tried one book, given up, only to buy another because i wasn't willing to accept that here was a celebrated architecture theorist from whom I could glean so little!

I expect that what is so murky to me in text form may be better comprehensible in dialogue? maybe as critic, professor, lecturer, his point-of-view becomes more clear?  

Oct 23, 17 9:08 am  · 
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randomised

@archinect, what's up with simonelectric, why's this account still active?

Oct 23, 17 11:32 pm  · 
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randomised

But check the comments, literally carbon copies of other people's comments in those particular threads, passing them off as their own. Ah well, that's where the ignore button comes in handy I guess.

Oct 25, 17 3:25 am  · 
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Concerned Cad

anybody got the spark notes?

Oct 24, 17 12:51 am  · 
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