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what is the good source to study folding architecture?

newstreamlinedmodel

If you want to "fold space" you'll need to hire one of these guys http://pages.eidosnet.co.uk/jon4a/main/images/guild_navigator.jpg

for folding architecture try here:

http://www.palominorv.com/palomino/site/default.asp?page=foldingcampers

for filleted corners see Zaha.

Jan 20, 06 8:42 pm  · 
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bigness

aaaaaarrrrhhhh (makes homer simpsons sound) filleted corners...

quondam, when i read your posts, it reminds me that i don't need to be intellingent, because there is people like you keeping the ballance. thanks, you're maing my life a whole lot easier. and the universe and its entropy are safe.

Jan 20, 06 10:06 pm  · 
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trace™

I have always been, and continue to be, skeptical of theory being solely responsible for driving form.

The term 'folding', to me, refers to a formal strategy, not a movement. But then again, I did my best to avoid reading too much Deleuze (by that time, I was confident that these 'trends' were simply superficial over intellectualized bs, and as far as I can tell, I was right - but if it works for you, great).

Every movement has some interesting and worth while ideas. It's just when it becomes a 'movement' that it loses its potency. Zaha, for example, was never a Decon architect, but because she was avant garde at the time, she was lumped in there. It certainly helped her career, but she practiced nothing that defined the theoretical bs of Decon (we all remember Derrida, right? It just goes in circles).

When I think of folding, I think of people like Schindler, and how he used a plane to fold from horizontal, to vertical, back to horizontal. It was about a continuity of space - it was something that charged the space and was truly experiential. That's how I try to explore it and what I find fascinating, regardless if it's rectinlinear modernism, or truly sculptural (a la Frank Israel's last works).

But to each his own. I've always cared more about the form and the building than the words. After all, the only ones that care about the words are here, but the building and its form are experienced by everyone.

Jan 21, 06 10:57 am  · 
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French

Well, it looks like folding could mean anything from were the discussion is at. I don't know if it's helpful or not for jlxarchitect though, but it looks like a folidng technique is pretty much whatever you consider as being a fold. Therefore your all set, since you are probably already folding without knowing it...

Jan 21, 06 12:22 pm  · 
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abracadabra

i just saw this theory in a minimalist architect website. it is called folding song or return to fold or something.

Jan 21, 06 12:59 pm  · 
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abracadabra


get your kicks on route 66

Jan 21, 06 1:18 pm  · 
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abracadabra

jlxarchitect,
definately study r. m. shindler's work. he did it for light and space. below photos are from a book by august sarnitz.


Jan 21, 06 3:35 pm  · 
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bigness

ABRA, nl architects (from which you took the image of the folding skyline) are not THAT minimalist...

Jan 21, 06 3:57 pm  · 
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abracadabra

sometimes it was necessary to fold around rock croppings;
he folded and golded

sunday asked him
-if you were a foldee he'd be the foldier
-nextday
he said

rudy is the name
always remember ----{he}
no fold's the same----{told}
--------------------------{thus}
he from nobelax

*neither i am THAT poet..
but google makes you vulnarable..

Jan 21, 06 4:21 pm  · 
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silverlake

schindler was definitely one of the first to really break ground in 'folding'. part of the reason i feel the folding trend as of recent ran out of steam so fast because it came to popularity just as schindler's work was rediscovered, and people realized they were doing the same thing rm did in the 30's.

his warshaw house of 1936 set the precident for all those bad chamfers that are polluting the contempory scene now...


Jan 21, 06 5:02 pm  · 
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silverlake

more legible..



Jan 21, 06 5:04 pm  · 
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trace™

That, and any movement (at least from my limited knowledge) that is based solely on an over intellectualized interepretation of French philosopher's work is doomed from the start.

Thankfully, the theoretical agenda seems to be doing a 180 and starting to address qualities of architecture that actually relate to the building, the space, and the experience.

Schindler rocks. Look at Frank Israel's work too - he loved Schindler and has said that some of this work was a direct result of studying Schindler. The Dragger house is still one of my fav designs of all time.

Jan 21, 06 6:06 pm  · 
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newstreamlinedmodel

Reducing Deleuze to a justification for a “formal strategy” (excuse to chamfer corners) is under-intellectualizing, not over-intellectualizing and a bunch of fools talking jive doesn’t get any of us off the hook for having to be intelligent, or doing our reading. This kind of aestheticizing of spatial metaphors in philosophy was cooked up by the post-modernists do defend reactionary architectural practices from radical theory. It is in it’s self anti-theoretical.

I like chamfered corners sometimes and there is whole semiotic register of nice things with chamfered corners that have utopian associations to me. That the “theoretical basis” for chamfered corners in my mind.

Jan 22, 06 12:14 am  · 
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French

That's something I've never understood about american architecture... The renewal of modernism in the 50's california architecture would never have happened without over intellectual european architects(including schindler of course, Neutra and many others...), you are fascinated by by Koolhass who's the most over intellectualizing architect of all time, and yet you consider that any attempt of form justification that is not self centered is bound to fail. When I was in school at Gatech, everybody was focused on presentation and model making, but whenever somebody was trying to argue about the form from outside the form itself, all the faces where looking like question marks.
To consider that the deconstructivist where only influenced by post structural French philosophy is either a misunderstanding of this period or an over simplification to proove a point. The name speaks for itself: it is almost a play of word between Derrida and Melnikov. To understand the verbal familiarity of this two influences is enough to understand where the decon mouvement as both failed and succeded, as I tried to say earlier in the discussion.
I believe that the history has prove the decon era to be a failure as much as it has proved wrong many things before (modernism, team ten, radical europeans, post mod, eighties Hi tech and so on...)
But I think it's important to look back at it and try to see where it succede and where it failed. And the attempt to justify the from neither from aesthetics nor technological argument is to me where it gets intersting.

Jan 22, 06 6:55 am  · 
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bigness

i've only recently realised that the effect of deleuze on deconstructivism actually extends beyond the fillet and the fold...on paper at least, deconstructivism challanges society's a priori laws, be them moral, ethical, political or aesthetic. in many ways that's what deleuze did (specially in the moral/political field, he was after all one the philosophers of the 68's movement)

obviously, Architecture has a tendency to oversimplify it's sources, and i think that is a natural process, since Architecture is bound to more concrete practical requirements that philosophy, and any movement sooner or later becomes the hollow simulacrum of itself, it happens in all th arts.

so...back to the criticism of folding Architecture...so what! i mean, strange how we are always compelled the accept the theoretical justifications of something we like aesthetically. the visual judgement happens always before the intellectual one, it's the gut feeling. it's an argument that could go on forever and never be won.

i think program and social impact are where it's at...i mean that is the only logical ground to judge a single building or a moement, and deconstructivism had a huge impact, and in many cases it led to the resuscitation of modernism, which it set out to destroy in the first place. so if it's folding, and it works, that's all that matters.

then it's all a game of postrationalization and justification of choices the architect made. theory is something that you need because sometimes in design you are faced with choices where there is no 1 right answer, and that's when theory helps. pure theoricians are dangerous people, in my opinion, they create a burden that all the other "practicing" architects have to bear...

i could go on forever, sorry. hope i made my point, the point being that judging Architecture on wheter it folds or not, on right angles on not, or on where it comes from theoretically is stupid and narrowminded. and it's damaging to the profession.

Jan 22, 06 9:30 am  · 
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bigness

and the profession needs saving!

:)

Jan 22, 06 9:33 am  · 
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PerCorell

Hi

I often wondered what a pattern language is and how it relate to architecture --- now I finaly found out it do relate to architecture ; computer programming that is ;

See it all here , a pattern language with rules for objects and classes ;

http://www.patternlanguage.com/leveltwo/caframe.htm?/leveltwo/../bios/designpatterns.htm

Jan 22, 06 10:55 am  · 
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vado retro

quit ripping me and my monads off...



Jan 22, 06 11:39 am  · 
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PerCorell

Hi
I hate hippies I think it is funny that the useless spaces in Liebskinds structures there are as much vaste volumes, as when you need a emty world to place patterns in, --- in other words words ae not well suited for building construction.
Not for theorie either it prove , ---- only the russians seem to know what it's about and sadly also this are atleast 60 years old, realy not part of the computer thing we have today rather 8 bit if not math. theorie , 8 bit forever ?
Saha btw made a splendid museum for the Soulage arts exebition, I changed my mind aafter speaking with someone working there , that shuld be a splendid exebition .

Jan 22, 06 1:43 pm  · 
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So the fold, as far as southern California is concerned, is a [bad?] reenactment of Schindler?

[Rediscovery of Schindler, 25 years ago:
When I saw how Shira G's thesis was developing, I thought she should definitely look at Schindler's Lovell Beach House, so I lent her my A+U (from the mid 1970s) on Schindler (which I've since sold on eBay). Shira was thrilled, as was Guida, who I'm pretty sure first studied architecture in southern California.]

Jan 22, 06 3:21 pm  · 
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vado retro

i may be deleuze-inal, but making a building look as though it is folded, has nothing to do with deleuze's concept of "the fold". this discussion needs alcohol...

Jan 22, 06 4:23 pm  · 
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dia

I Like J.Mayer.H's practical example:



Jan 22, 06 6:26 pm  · 
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garpike

diabase, that's one way to do it!

Jan 22, 06 6:33 pm  · 
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newstreamlinedmodel

French, Go away. Go read your Paul Virilio or look at some lovely Jean Nouvel project or take the old moped out for a spin.

All this is the Americans are embarrassing themselves in public again. Please in the name of Rock ‘n Roll and tail fins and hamburgers and all the good things we’ve done for the world, avert you eyes from our naked indignity.

Our country has a long history of having reactionary freaks dumped on us by the English, from the Calvinist puritans to the formalist puritans we try to muddle through their bad ideas and make sort of shelter to huddle under while we call out to our absent, yet presumably angry, God for personal attention.

Jan 22, 06 6:47 pm  · 
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newstreamlinedmodel

Oh, yes. Then there is Jurgen

That guy rocks.

Jan 22, 06 6:48 pm  · 
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French

newstreamlinedmodel
Sorry for my comment, I was on a tough deadline this week end and I guess it drove me hangry. Apologies to you and to others. I just don't know how to say it without sounding rude, but I really think there is a strange suspicion on the term intellectual in us architecture schools nowadays, and I don't think it's good for the profession.

Jan 23, 06 11:43 am  · 
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newstreamlinedmodel

I was kidding French. I’m jealous that you don’t have to deal with this situation as much in France.

Besides, aren’t the French the only people who have figured how to make rude sexy? Keep it up, we love it.

Jan 23, 06 1:42 pm  · 
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Gabrielle

Stumbled across this discussion in my research for my Thesis, which so happens to be on Folding in Architecture and theory and i must say im suprised no one has mentioned Frank Gehry??

i actually dissagree that Liebskin and Zaha are considered "folding architects" and would better classify them as deconstructivists. Something a lot of people misinterpret is that although folding is an offspring of deconstructivist architecture, it is indeed a "movement", practise or theory of its own.

It is impossible to understand what folding entails, whether it being theoretical or structural without gaining some insight to Deleuze's works. If you aim to design spaces that have a continuous flow, not only internally, but externally including the buildings relationship to its urban setting you need to have some understanding of how the fold works and what it truely means to fold.

I must admit i am not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes the understanding architectural theory, or any theory for that matter, but so far what i have included to be part of "folding in architecture" is (and these are a few of my chapters)

Folding as a Process (eisenmans distorted grids)
Folds that move - folding aims to created a sence of stationary motion
Folding in time and space (yet again eienman, and also includes a lot of Deleuze and Rajchmans theories also Elizabeth Grosz and Cache)
The Aesthetic Fold (who better to portray this than Gehry and his later works, Bilbao *faints*)

A big part of my thesis includes also a design project by which im aiming to discover and understand ways in which space can be folded

anyways i am completely procrastinating here and should get back to my research. Ps if anyone has any further ideas on folding that i could include in my thesis please let us know

[email protected]

thanks
Gabs

Nov 17, 06 9:45 pm  · 
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Gabrielle

i also forgot to include Lynns definition of Folding that to me makes the topic a lot easier to grasp

"Folding became the method by which the surface of a large homogenous volume could be differentiated while remaining continuous"

from Architectural Curvilinearity: The folded, the pliant and the supple.

Nov 17, 06 9:52 pm  · 
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