Mar '10 - Apr '11
“What exactly do you do here?”
words by Jason Skibo
Well, we color a lot.
We provide visual stimulation, on 11x17 at a time.
We rotate virtual models for hours.
We draw with a mouse and a keyboard.
We photograph.
We design t-shirts, magazines and websites.
We learn how to talk so no one else can understand us.
We have created irrational bonds to our computer, and know its moods.
We are still trying to understand what tectonic means.
We provide the mood of a room.
We provide the mood of a city.
We go to museums, but not for the art (sometimes we go for the art).
We collect pens.
We spend hours talking about fonts.
We analyze. We over analyze. We over-analyze? We over analyze. We always make the same decision in the end.
We don’t have time.
We make deals with the local art supply stores.
We have grand schemes.
We have side projects.
We express our wildest dreams and desires through parti diagrams and building sections.
We construct temporary palaces made of cardboard and wood.
We don’t create rooms, we create spaces.
We haven’t left this building in 25 hours, and we’re not even thinking about leaving anytime soon.
We are never satisfied.
We think it should look more like this…
We are trying to figure this whole thing out.
We see invisible meaning.
We know that thirty years later, we will have just gotten started…
We understand the artistic potential of mass produced chairs.
We graffiti.
We know the difference between a portico and a vestibule.
We get into physical confrontations about wall thicknesses.
We wonder how everyone else does it.
We haven’t stopped thinking about designing since we started.
We’ve done more work than you have.
We think we have an ego problem…
We know about that obscure project in that small country in Eastern Europe by that firm with the strange name.
We’re all really just doing this so that when we build our own houses we can put a hot tub in our bedrooms.
We’re not impressed with their new stuff.
We still don’t know what we want to be when we grow up (but don’t tell anyone)
We have friends here, and they’re the only ones who really understand.
We are shaping the world through steel and concrete, brick and mortar, plastic, glass, and stone; through cities and neighborhoods, streets and sidewalks, gardens, parks and the occasional ambiguous art installation.
We are Wentworth Architecture, and we are at WAr.
WENTWORTH ARCHITECTURE REVIEW is a social project to invigorate and publicize Wentworth design. Through print and the web we aim to present and criticize what it is we do here at Wentworth.
The process has started. WAr First Edit
5 Comments
Great post! I wish I could say that we're at WAR at my school....
My favorite is the one about the hot tub.
Dig it.
Architects have been at war since Vitruvius said we should be tuning ballistas.
nice one...
Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms. I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no "sacred and primordial site." I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then "melt into air." I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor you can know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.
Woods, Lebbeus (2002). War and Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. pp. 1
Schweeet post and a nice quote by Lebbeus.
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