Apr '04 - Aug '07
First day of History/Theory... Michael Speaks was great! Slightly disorganized but full of architectural prowess -- and a little bit of himself, too. You have to admire him for being passionate about our architectural discourse. The title of the course was either changed or further defined:
Modern, Postmodern, Supermodern
The book he referred to, one of the only books required besides our reader, was Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalization. There are apparently two editions, the latter having a 9/11 postscript.
The crux of the course will center on three phases of modernity. Supermodernism refers to the period we are in right now, starting about 1994-1995 -- essentially, supermodernism is attempting to salvage some key issues of modernism wrapped in, not experiential architecture, but non-authentic, image-based, virtual reality. I may be off here a bit -- the notes I took today are a bit scattered. Today was just an intro, though we are supposed to order and start reading the above book along with "All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: the experience of modernity" pgs. 87-129. The lecture is once a week with take home mid-term and final (short essays).
This is the first year that Speaks will be involved with our program, and many people, including Hernan & Elena (our studio professors), keep saying how lucky we are to have him. He used to head the Graduate program here at SCI-Arc, and in his words, was "put in a corner". While things were settling down, Speaks popped off with a few funny annecdotes, including... The tent that used to housed SCI-Arc was the tent used for Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston's wedding.
Oh my god. How could I forget this! Speaks mentioned Archinect in our first day of discussion... haha. Kudos Paul and the rest of you hardcore Archinecters. The subject came up when we were talking about how connected we are with architecture. Our favorite buildings and if we've ever been to them or has 'image culture' shaped our experience of the space. What are our favorite magazines? How much do we know about Modernism/Post-Modernism? Are we familiar with Archinect? This rolled into a discussion about Peter Eisenman, the number 11, and Archinect's interview with him! I guess speaks used to be an editor at ANY magazine, a publication started by Eisenman. Anyway...
GOHHHHHHHHHHH ARCHINECT!
(That's about as collegiate as I'll be getting all semester... haha.)
5 Comments
hey...since Brad is learning now from Rem...seems u guys @ SCI-Arc r on the right track to architecture grial ! ;-)
speaks, what a great man!
MAD... either grail or fail. That's why I'm going to a school that actually pushes me to think.
"hey...since Brad is learning now from Rem"
wasn't he learning from Gehry??
yeah he was learning from Ghery too...but there r some pics in the forum of Brad & Rem...
Hey Steve... no pun intended... i reffered to ur school as a good school... i dunno i tried to make a joke....
And yes Speaks collaborated with Peter Eisenman...but i think ANY was more about a cylce of discussions and/or debates around certain points of architecture and urbanism, and they did like 9 books about that...and its pretty much over now....what is up now with them is LOG so check it out @ http://www.anycorp.com/
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