if i may chime in.
most academic papers and prof. writings i can't read. it makes me feel cloustrophobic, like i want to jump out from the article and run away.
but if it is good and once you pass that set up stage patiently, it starts to open up and once you start to see the level of reason in them, they become addictive. still not for me though.

imo, if you want to bring style into the writing, you have to take risks, tell the truth of your heart and set things in motion, slow or fast, your choice...

just a tid bit for now.. interesting thread.

thanks O!

hmm- has sans aspiration been changing usernames? a few threads ago, they seemed to be 'über œuvred e suicidal'- and before that something else... so will you please help jog my failing memory?



one of my favorite passages from the soon to be published Infrastructure of the Void:

The California of 20th century sprawl and rampant development is missing from Owens Valley. When you cross the town limits and pass through the adjacent Indian reservations crowded with billboard, you are immediately back in a rural landscape. The 20th century armature of infrastructure holds together the sage scrub of the valley floor with its scattered farms and rangeland; while up on the mountainsides are the scars of the mining and failed prospecting. The scenic drama of the adjacent mountains and deserts supports the valley’s tourism economy - one that would not have existed without the preservation of open space by the Los Angeles Aqueduct. There are no outlaying truck stops that adorn the interstate throughout America, no checkerboard housing developments, or other sprawl in the valley. There is only infrastructure, open space, and history.

This apparent 19th century relic landscape is in stark contrast to the other side of the mountains in the San Joaquin Valley and the Fresno metropolitan area. On that side of the mountains, the once verdant wetlands and sloughs that were drained to be the nations vegetable garden have rapidly been bulldozed for tract housing and commercial strips. That other side of the mountains, only separated by a 20-mile gap in the roads in Sequoia National Park, lays one of the most rapidly urbanizing regions in the country, yet the Owens Valley is worlds away.

this is a great thread. hope it gets more participation.

i got my undergraduate degree in english. i learned to write before i could design. the transition to architecture, and particularly architectural theory with its butchering of the language, was difficult. the first architectural writers i began to appreciate were the postmodernists: jencks and venturi. their gift for writing probably set me back design-wise a good few years. they present their ideas very clearly; and in fact, language became integral to design.

despite some background in comparative literature, it wasn't until i had a very good architectural theory professor spoon feed my hegel, heidegger, derrida, etc. that any continental literary theory made any sense to me, but once i could see the history/evolution of the line of thought and how it had been appropriated by architecture could i see its worth.

interesting you're writing on LA. one of my favorite architectural historians/observers is rayner banham. his prose are precise, thoughtful, yet full of life and humor.

guess this post was sort of all over the map, a few random thoughts on the topic.

barry congratulations on the opportunity. I'm supposed to be writing a paper to be presented on a MoMA exhibition on modernism in the Caribbean.

I haven't started writing, yet.

I think it is the curse of the architect to want to paint a full picture of things we are writing. It is the nature of the profession.

I was lucky enough to have a art/writer as a lecturer in grad school, whose advice was simple. Write it, then write it again - the second time trying to write through memory only the essence of the first

that's funny, techno, i always write better in the first pass. i think it has to do with whether you're a better verbalizer or a better writer--i'm a much, much better verbalizer, whereas when i actually sit down to deface the blank page i do markedly worse. it's one reason i actually write decently clearly on this webpage--because the form is a conversation rather than thoughtfully crafted paragraphs.

a good friend of mine and i used to say that architecture is communication.

myriam, he must have been a postmodernist;)

ha ha ha, far from it...

great sagely advice. I more or less did that with my thesis to reach what is shared above. But I did cut-n-paste the facts, since I like being anally precise with my numbers - if I'm going to discuss a towns population in 1914, I'd rather say 7,243 people (and cite the US census) then say seven thousand people with no citation. guess I don't want my house of cards to fall down with the proper mortar holding the ideas together. Well the editor hasn't commented on my obsession with long footnotes, so until I see the final galleys they seem to be in.

I agree with archi, the art of writing is really the art of re-writing. Seeing a good paper come together is as exciting as building a good model for me, it is a design process.

My last four jobs involved writing/editing, all from an architectural point of view. my style is crouching squirrel.

An English major turned architect friend says that there are no good architectural writers (stylistically). I do not completely agree with that, but then again I ain't never was an English major.

I think that one of the problems is that a lot of the texts we read are translated, and what sounds right in Italian, German, or French just does not translate well into English. For example, reading Heidgger can give me a headache quickly. A friend and I concluded that he does not want you to understand the writing but rather experience as if it was phenomena. Tafuri can also be very difficult. I have enjoyed reading Bernard Rudofsky, Venturi-Scott Brown, Christian Norberg Schulz, Michael Sorkin, and a few others whose names escape me now.

how? seems like a good skill to have in archinect ;)

what is less honest than memory?

i once told a professor I wanted to turn this paper into a book and he asked, "Are you writing for you? Or are you writing for posterity?"

What he was getting at was, writing for one's self is selfish, whereas writing to contribute an idea to humanity is selfless.... opens you up to more criticism of course, but if people criticize, then essentially, the initial ideas you put forward can serve as a basis for an idea that might be hashed out by others...

so my advice to writers is always write selflessly....

i was being poetic in the manner of "to live outside the law, you must be honest"

i also think being honest is not a build in requirement for writing. there are a lot of beauties out there that has nothing to do with honesty but other truths, such as your plot.

the truth is over rated and underappreciated.

really, afterall, i now think it is best to stay away from honesty, truth and other paraphernalia. look what happened to bible.

über-

you're making me wish I hadn't slept through roman architecture in history... pornography, nymphomania, suicide - wow, those garden villas are potent.


Ok, now I'm thinking that über œuvred e suicidal and sans aspirations are alternate accounts of the same archinecteur- do I dare ask for confirmation of this hunch?

"to live outside the law, you must be honest"

- where's that from, vado? I like that.

in the name of clarity, i, like piranesi once did, have lately taken to labeling all of our plans in latin. since the switch, our office has seen a marked rise in rfis.

Got the major edits and rewrites done - yeay! now I get to sit back till my editor takes another look and tells me what else needs work.



its very different to write a piece for a book then to write a term paper. then blogging and archinecting don't really prepare you for either.

book launch @ Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, March 6th, 2008