Archinect - Sleepless in Shenzhen

AI and I

2023-08-14T18:04:00-04:00

Ecumenopolis © OA

I just made friends with AI’s abilities to generate images of my lofty speculations regarding the bleak but fascinating environs of the future. As someone I respect said, “Midjourney is only fun when you take it to its limits to hallucinate. It's not a tool (yet).” I agree with his assessment. I got my Microsoft Bing AI. A more everyday version of machine-generated images that are based on text prompts.

Ecumenopolis of the near joyless
I did refer to dystopia with its toxic waters, sulphuric rains, and blackened industrial landscapes of abandoned factories, roads and towns. Places where the people lived in giant settlements of highly technological constructs by a single agency as everything else was. In order to build and inhibit, people destroyed more and more of their earth and its resources. At one point, nothing was left for humans outside of these giant pods of interiority and gray exteriors. There were no days, nights, and hours anymore. The time collapsed onto...

EOM (Eric Owen Moss)

2023-03-23T11:11:50-04:00

A

personal take on EOM:

context > the one Eric has in his mind.
building concept > the one Eric has in his mind.
building design > the one Eric has in his mind.
end user > market rate.
theory > the one he says.
sensationalism gage > now you are talking, it always explodes as some painting trend.
currency > Hayden Tract banknotes.
was Philip Johnson right in saying "Eric Moss is a jeweler of junk" > a pretty good nickname.
does he care? > he is beyond that kind of stuff.
is he a good teacher in school? > he is a good one to challenge as a student, he plays. yes, he is good.

more later...:)))

ANATOMY OF CUTTING EDGE: SCI-Arc’s Original Curriculum (Pt 4)

2022-07-30T16:51:16-04:00

Evaluations, Degree Requirements and Classes:

ANATOMY OF CUTTING EDGE: SCI-Arc’s Original Curriculum (Pt 3)

2022-07-30T16:40:49-04:00

Names:

Part 4: Evaluations, Degree Requirements, and Classes

ANATOMY OF CUTTING EDGE: SCI-Arc’s Original Curriculum (Pt 2)

2022-07-30T16:26:13-04:00

Decision Making, Fees:

Part 3: Names

ANATOMY OF CUTTING EDGE: SCI-Arc’s Original Curriculum (Pt 1)

2022-07-30T16:17:00-04:00

Introduction:

SCI-ARC was radical. Back then, in 1972 when it all started, when the way of thinking was fresh, revolutionary, and accessible. In a warehouse, now mostly gone industrial part of Santa Monica where forward-thinking people from all walks of life students and educators alike, manifested that the architectural school should teach things that matter.

This was no art district, no gentrification zone, no marketing, no nothing but everybody showed up. The architecture of important things mattered to people, future communities, and their environments. This was the idea. The school was set, and the curriculum was co-operatively designed and offered by the faculty and the students. It was shaped by its ideals, with a new way of teaching and learning architecture. It was a go. It happened. No ifs and buts, it happened. Full speed and alive. They talked the talk and walked the walk. Even 50 years later, it is up and ahead.

This is an important glimpse into where SCI Arc came from. ...

Illuminating Times with Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

2022-07-18T20:50:00-04:00

Claes Oldenburg had a special place in my formative years as an architecture student. In 1980, our traveling SciArc - New York studio and our instructor John Knight visited his house studio in SoHo where he was living with his wife and great collaborator Coosje van Bruggen. She and I got into a conversation about politics and missed most of his studio talk on the upper floor. In the end, he gifted each one of us a book about his large-scale projects and sent us to the steel shop where they were fabricating the Las Vegas "Flashlight." He was particularly influential on urban design, siting projects, and pop art. I feel very privileged to have met such great artists in my fourth year in architecture school.
Rest in peace Coosje and Claes and thank you for your wonderful influence on my grasp of art and architecture.

The Guardian Obituary
Flashlight

Homeboy on Tupperville

2022-05-22T23:40:01-04:00

Photographs: Michael Rotondi
Story and arrangement: Orhan Ayyüce

Also,

Homeboy travels far and edges on

Housecleaning For Architecture

2020-07-04T21:20:00-04:00

Dear architects,

it is clear, purely form making centered architecture is over now. It was fun for a while to get everyone out of their coffin and there are truly talented memorabilia left behind. It should be over long time ago but it was rescued by corporate identity makers who brought in architects to design icons. And they did, they are talented, sort of.

Dear architects, it is over, the stuff made it to architecture school juke boxes, it played over and over. While not questioning why and for whom it was made and with what, students enjoyed the spin. Their instructors too. In school you are innocent, kind of, but who knew the practice was infected?

Now, create a new series of conditions a building must qualify to be architecture. Let the humanism in for the humanity of it. Let go the selfish sculpting of buildings. Start from humanity. Kill your heroes in schools and in magazines. Kill quasi theories written by the privileged and for the chosen. They don’t deserve you....

Request for an AIA 2020 Field Manual

2020-05-13T13:53:00-04:00

An Archinect blogger’s brief response to “AIA approves updated five-year Strategic Plan for 2021-2025” (AIA strategy in bold.)

Climate Action: To have the AIA and the profession focus on real action that mitigates climate change.
Of course, who wouldn’t? Anything less than that would be a public suicide by AIA. Now, how do we act is totally another thing. Do we define “green washing” clearly and simply? Do we warn people who spend a lot of carbon footprints on structures and their publicity bombarding the bandwidths and printing press? Yes, that ultra minimalist lakeside getaway house from it all that regular folks will never have?
The Role of the Architect: To elevate awareness and understanding to help society see who architects really are, that architects collaboratively help to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.
I smell a couple of expensive tv ads here and I hope I am wrong this time. But before we go public on the subje...

Towards an Art Theme Park

2020-04-09T12:33:00-04:00

Photo, Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

I have been maintaining the idea that the architect Peter Zumthor's LA County Museum’s design will have the whole park it sits on breathe better. This, now well known photograph from LA Times capturing the demolition of LACMA, revealing the unearthing of Bruce Goff's Japanese art pavilion in the background, showing the changes I am talking about. The new curved museum will make all the buildings a medium-degree more important, if not bringing out their intended beauty.
Dotted by archaeological digs of pre historic life, and, kind of out there sliced by Michael Heizer’s levitating and spectacular chunk of sharp-ish rock, if one starts to walk from the tarpits museum to Japanese art pavilion, in between, new outdoor space remodel competition winner, and, "the new love it or hate it - I am doing it anyway County Museum," hovering before the Renzo Piano land, and, Chris Burden’s sensationally sited urban light poles, further, behind the old a...

URBAN ARCHEOLOGY huh? wow!

2019-05-26T20:06:00-04:00

“Urban archaeology" is both archaeology “in the city” and “of the city.” Archaeology in the city studies a wide range of prehistoric, eigteenth- and nineteenth-century and, (twentyfirst century, added by the blogger) sites which, because of their urban environment, are partially disturbed by more recent building or are buried by the dynamic process of building and rebuilding, depositing fills and redepositing fills which characterize the city. Archaeology of the city studies the process of urban growth and the ethnic or social histories of individuals and families who lived and died in the city. Urban Archaeology requires the experience and expertise to recognize the importance, or lack of importance, of urban features when they are exposed.”

It’s not uncommon to demolish some buildings due to whatever and discover a desirable view of the building behind it. Something was not possible to see before now in its full beauty. Huh?

Three level parking structure was demolished making this...

An Unimportant World Without Architecture

2018-03-29T21:00:00-04:00

“Realistically, the rest of the world just doesn’t see architecture as being as important as architects do” – Anonymous

The real worrisome emptiness in these kind of statements is not the usual lamentation of the profession itself but the world’s failure to understand what architecture is. If the society can afford to see architecture as unimportant, the city, spatial experience, well being, culture, infrastructure, politics, social science technology, economics and growth.., then, are they unimportant? What is important? A dead society sucking on reality shows everywhere?

Realistically, the rest of the world should be just so goddamn grateful that at least architects think architecture is important.

Frank inhaled, a FOGgy memory...

2017-12-24T01:46:00-05:00

This reminded me the story. People still won't believe me when I admiringly say Frank inhaled. I did too, and four-five of my classmates inhaled as well. We all smoked a joint together at the Gund Hall. I do have living witnesses. Year was 1980, when the true bad boy then, Frank Gehry, was teaching a shopping mall studio to sober Harvard students who thought their school was the most important place in American Architecture. We were a group of students from SCI Arc, a leaky corrugated metal building in Santa Monica where the legend says they made LSD. Cambridge was our short stop driving a big American car from New York, where we were for a semester. It involved a spontaneously arranged meeting to participate in a day long discussions with Frank's students, see some low-end architecture in poor neighborhoods, and to put down some east coast booze. Those days Gehry still had a bit of truck driver in him and the reefer was his. We were wild and those were the west coast years in Ameri...

Wayfarers Chapel, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr.

2017-11-12T21:08:16-05:00

Photo by Ioana Ruxandra

By the time I arrived to the building above Portuguese Point, Pacific Ocean already prepared me to talk with architecture of Wayfarers Chapel. Inside, I looked up and saw the architecture of timber and glass made a tree drawing, and outside, the structure ghosted into the background of redwoods and the sky. I thought that was a great job from a building who knew how to appear and disappear. That was it. People who were there to attend a wedding, also said "oh my God."

Photo by Ioana Ruxandra

OA, Palos Verdes, CA

Rancho Mixer

2017-03-15T15:04:00-04:00

Another competition I have lost knowingly and plus 80 bucks, also knowingly.

Why?

Well, the competition presented itself as the last chance to build a house in Hollywood Hills just below the beloved and heavily known real estate sign later cropped to today’s iconic status. In LA, the view of the Hollywood sign from your land surely adds some considerable cash value to the dream’s worth.

Obnoxiously exciting as it is, the competition gave me an idea to poke the hyper property market with some free falling commentary veiled in an actual design.

The proposal is a rotating ranch house where the pornoreal lives are openly hosted around the clock, a low budget version of high end, top of the hill lifestyle choice. A house constantly causing hyperventilation for the nearby stakeholders.

The final ranch in the foothills unleashes the possibilities of indoor-outdoor living with market rate accommodations.

Design Team: Orhan Ayyüce, Jose Torres

Announcement: IRVING J. GILL: SIMPLICITY AND REFORM

2016-09-02T22:09:19-04:00

IRVING J. GILL: SIMPLICITY AND REFORM

Irving J. Gill (1870–1936) created a distinctive architecture in Southern California, using a refined and abstracted architectural vocabulary which he described as “the straight line, the cube, the arch, and the circle.” This exhibition examines Gill’s architectural language and his experiments with materials and construction. The roots of his idealistic achievement are traced to the social concerns of the Progressive era and the Arts and Crafts movement, and the influence of Chicago architectLouis Sullivan (1856–1924), who argued for a “new architecture in America,” unaffected by the past and based on a transcendental view of nature.

EVENT DATE: Saturday, September 10, 2016 to Sunday, December 4, 2016

EVENT DATE DETAILS: Opening Reception September 23, 2016 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm

ART, DESIGN, & ARCHITECTURE MUSEUM
UC Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-7130

MUSEUM HOURS
Wed–Sun: 12:00pm–5:00pm
Thursday open until 8:00pm

Admission is free.
Directions to t...

An Incomplete Poem For Brief Synopsis Of New Currency in Architecture

2016-08-17T13:47:33-04:00

Has the poor become so unbearable that the haves don't want them around anymore? Sure, there is a tiny percentage of low-income units required in the permitting process, but not even close to dodge housing crisis and provide something for the thousands spread around the city living in cardboard boxes, and now, in tents. Semi-homeless living in extended stay hotels.

Then, the heads barely under a roof working class residents with low paying jobs.

As we go up gradually, we have, young professional class driving up the market for the real estate industry of agents, loan specialists, with built in and profit driven socio-cultural terminologies like house flippers, lifestyle factor, wall to wall glass, etc.

Urban design went what Dwelldesign did for stylish homes and produced crass developments, cities went thriving and boosted, went gentrified, went art districts, etc.

Architecture went phenomenological as if it was not before, renderings went shiny and everything, then it went back to bas...

Istanbul Community Market Ideas Competition: Honorable Mention

2015-08-10T12:56:00-04:00

At the end of June this year myself and team of architects gathered in Woodbury University's WUHO space and worked on a competition project for ten continuous days producing the work for Istanbul Community Market Ideas Competition hosted by Ctrl+Space. We are pleased to share with Archinect readers what we have set out to do and accomplished at the end.

The City Above

The Ground Below:

Failures and success stories have never been so disproportionate and close to one another at any other time in Istanbul’s long past. Urban transformation projects have been negotiating the city violently and un- advantageously from the perspective of social equity and urban design issues.

The city above is hardly connected to urban history below. Below are the suffocated stories needing to breathe, to connect and to be appreciated. Above is the abandonment and eventual removal by heavy machinery which demolishes, scoops and flattens everything in sight. Truckloads of Is...

Gropius and Breuer’s Martini Signals

2015-04-20T01:21:00-04:00

Based on a true story told by Ise Gropius herself in 1980.

It was a long day towards the end of the summer at the Graduate School of Design. 1940 was a tough year. The horrific war was well underway and the news from Europe wasn’t so good. Though, none of this would upset Walter as much if it wasn’t for constant war talk by his fascist student Philip Johnson, he would care less and continue his day as if nothing happened and look forward to cocktail hour with his neighbor, Marcel Breuer who just built a house of his own a stone throw away.

Driving home on the beautiful country road near Cambridge, listening the radio instead of getting upset to dandy-man PJ. It was just the right sunset just the right music, his alter ego Glen Miller on the radio, Tuxedo Junction, and the winding road. Martini hour with Lajkó, aka Marcel was ahead.

Walter pulled into the driveway, stopped the engine, got out of the car, entered the house and said something like “scheisse” to Ise, and proceeded to t...

MAX

2015-02-28T04:23:29-05:00

We are now entering MAX, it stands for Maximum Analog XIR. Whatever it is to you, it means the whole world to the occupant. In it, all conceptions of minimalist bourgeoisie stop. The longer you are superconscious, as a clean liner, and primping yourself, XIR aka MAX the maximum analog, is adding more. And what's wrong with that you selfish mirror breaking housekeeper dependent piece of purex?

Nature Everywhere Part II

2014-12-23T01:53:00-05:00

If you are questioning what is so personal about these images and what a poor way to observe the nature, read on (some images are from Mars.)

Since my birth, living mostly and if not all in urban centers I became accustomed to detect and appreciate their nature. Sure, there are exceptionally idyllic places everywhere but I am happier when I can read the ordinary.

When detected, as if they are the architecture of everything, they unfold in surprising ways, the city becomes the image and one can start to notice nature everywhere.

Nature Everywhere

2014-10-22T18:15:00-04:00

My doctor told me I should walk more often since I am not a sports person other than occasionally betting on European soccer games. He told me to walk exercise as much as possible and enjoy the nature. I was pleasantly surprised when I start to walk every day and be with the nature that surround us everywhere. You can't miss it.

Nature Everywhere part II

Learning From Michael Asher

2014-09-21T23:51:00-04:00

Haus Lange installation, Michael Asher, 1982 (photo from the exhibition catalog)

LEARNING FROM MICHAEL ASHER

Michael Asher died almost two years ago in October 2012. When he was alive his work was mostly unknown to architects except somebody like Frank Gehry who was his good friend. In the art world, he was a hero and mentor to many art students with highly creative, fully engaging works and intensely figured out in-situ art installations. His teaching at Cal Arts was legendary. As an architecture student, I was introduced to his work by his lifelong friend and fellow artist John Knight, whom I studied under at SCI Arc from 1979 to 1981.

As Duchamp did with his readymades, Michael Asher also sought to connect art with people. In Asher's case they were decidedly more direct interdependencies between art and architecture.

What made Michael Asher extremely relevant to architecture has to do with his work in its spatial concerns and their contextual narratives, particularly site specifi...

This Your Father's License

2014-02-03T03:38:00-05:00

THIS IS YOUR FATHER'S LICENSE

Architects are highly intelligent people. They are the members of a noble profession who in dictionaries referred as master builders.

They are taught and talk a specialized language, they have skills to design and visualize three dimensionally, and intern long years to be called as “architects” after passing series of examinations in order to legally practice “architecture.”

I am an architect, thanks to membership fee paying institution I work for, an AIA member, and over the years I have gone through all those rigorous checkpoints to get there.

I can legally design any building from houses to skyscrapers, sign and seal the drawings of those buildings, taking full responsibility of their design.

My professional training and expertise almost guarantees that they won't fail under most circumstances and I am the captain of the team consisting of many hardhat wearing professionals and builders who ask questions about the building under construction and look at m...

SHENZHEN

2013-12-30T17:51:00-05:00

SHENZHEN

I am sympathetic to Shenzhen from its occupation. A port city like the one I grew up in. I feel like I know its tricks, talents and aura, even if I am wrong. I don't know Shenzhen that much face to face, I know something in her DNA, which makes me more relaxed about exploring it.

It would have been a shame but almost left Shenzhen without seeing its urban core. Just as I was climbing the stairs and say goodbye to Value Factory where I start to get used to hanging out, watching people and enjoying americanos made by local coffee baristas in training, I finally ran into someone I knew, Gregers Thomsen of Superpool from Istanbul who was there to ran a workshop for MoMA with Constantin Petcou of Rhizomatic and Translocal Cultures. They were going to explore the urban core and the arts district of Shenzen with two architecture students from Macau, the former Portuguese colony and Las Vegas of the East. I joined them and explored the city's metro and neighborhoods takin...

On the Job; Words, Images and impressions from the Shenzhen Biennale

2013-12-26T11:05:00-05:00

Some of the familiar biennale exhibitions were handled by a second venue near Shenzhen Shekou Port Ferry Terminal named “Border Warehouse”.
There were some panel discussions on visible and invisible borders socially, physically, locally and economically. This subject was developed by the Curators/Academic Directors Li Xiangning and Jeffrey Johnson.
I just listened part of the discussion on the divides and took a single note when a speaker, Stefan Al, elaborated on the phrase “I-Slave” by talking about manufacturing border and the landscapes of production and landscapes of consumerism. In fact that was the real heart of the discussion or it should be if it wasn't. Global production and its consumption in the neo-liberal sense the real mass public border between rich and poor, liquid social positioning and ways to achieve good life where the architects come in. Can it be harvested so everyone benefits? How cannot the 'Salty Dog Bites the Hand?' Which is the cargo container cont...

A Brief Introduction to Shenzhen Biennale

2013-12-09T11:44:00-05:00

I am sleepless and I can't get used to the idea that I am in Shenzhen, China. I might as well be in Las Vegas hotel room with a gold leaf framed watercolor print hanging on the wall and a laptop with a spotty internet access.

This is my first time in China with a mission to attend and journal the opening of Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture a.k.a Shenzhen Biennale in a four day trip as the lone participant from Los Angeles. Normally I don't travel in the jet set manner but I was flown here by an invitation from the biennale's creative director Ole Bouman, a man of many talents and hats whom I interviewed for Archinect few years back and I couldn't refuse the offer.

Shenzhen is a port city, like my birthplace Izmir and it has graduated to its current importance as a global player from a small fishing village of 30,000 people just a few decades ago. It is a brand new home to 3.5 million Shenzeners who are made up from different nationalities, trading partners and ...

Archinect - Sleepless in Shenzhen

AI and I

EOM (Eric Owen Moss)

ANATOMY OF CUTTING EDGE: SCI-Arc’s Original Curriculum (Pt 4)

ANATOMY OF CUTTING EDGE: SCI-Arc’s Original Curriculum (Pt 3)

ANATOMY OF CUTTING EDGE: SCI-Arc’s Original Curriculum (Pt 2)

ANATOMY OF CUTTING EDGE: SCI-Arc’s Original Curriculum (Pt 1)

Illuminating Times​ with Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

Homeboy on Tupperville

Housecleaning For Architecture

Request for an AIA 2020 Field Manual

Towards an Art Theme Park

URBAN ARCHEOLOGY huh? wow!

An Unimportant World Without Architecture

Frank inhaled, a FOGgy memory...

Wayfarers Chapel, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr.

Rancho Mixer

Announcement: IRVING J. GILL: SIMPLICITY AND REFORM

An Incomplete Poem For Brief Synopsis Of New Currency in Architecture

Istanbul Community Market Ideas Competition: Honorable Mention

Gropius and Breuer’s Martini Signals

MAX

Nature Everywhere Part II

Nature Everywhere

Learning From Michael Asher

This Your Father's License

SHENZHEN

On the Job; Words, Images and impressions from the Shenzhen Biennale

A Brief Introduction to Shenzhen Biennale

Illuminating Times with Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen