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Sexual Architecture??

Gotan

Hi,
I am looking for precedents that would showcase, I guess, in a remotely abstract way...sensuality, sexyness, arousal, etc...

Any clues...? Pulsating lights, exhibisionism, transparency, ....
Thanks for the help!

 
Apr 29, 05 12:01 pm
buffalo fill



Check out Hejduk's Architectures in Love

Apr 29, 05 12:09 pm  · 
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buffalo fill

Also,

Corbu's Unité d'Habitation

img]http://www-gse.berkeley.edu/admin/publications/bel03a/p21c_LeCorbu.jpg[/img

isn't it sexy how those thighs, er, columns come together?

Apr 29, 05 12:17 pm  · 
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buffalo fill

oops




Apr 29, 05 12:17 pm  · 
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duke19_98



Jencks gives examples in this book

Apr 29, 05 12:21 pm  · 
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a tiny intercourse building
Apr 29, 05 12:21 pm  · 
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nervoussystem

ledoux's proposed plan for a brothel for chaux...

can't find a picture on the net

Apr 29, 05 12:55 pm  · 
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Ledoux's proposed plan for a brothel for chaux, which, in part, reenacts Piranesi's plan of the Bustun Augusti within the Ichnographia Campi Martii.

Apr 29, 05 12:59 pm  · 
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monkeyboy

Gotan,
I just emailed this to you:

I had this topic for my thesis ( my program was a Hedonistic Resort in San Francisco). I can recomend lots of readings and precedents.

Contact me if you would like it.. I wont be able to get to it till probably tomorrow.

Can i ask what this research is for?

Apr 29, 05 1:51 pm  · 
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Smokety Mc Smoke Smoke

Part flora, part fig, part reproductive organ????

Apr 29, 05 2:03 pm  · 
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Smokety Mc Smoke Smoke

I think this is Ledoux's oikema:

Apr 29, 05 2:11 pm  · 
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BOTS

It may not be sexy but there was is a post that showed varrious phalic buildings. Can't find it though, so you'll have to make do with this lovely painting of the Smurfit-Stone Building, Chicago!



It has been said that this phalic tower is infact an anti phalic symbol as the diamond treatment to the crown represents a female vagina. The Architect, Sid Epstein, denies it.

Apr 29, 05 2:12 pm  · 
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Luis Fraguada
Aaron Betsky: Building Sex
Apr 29, 05 2:30 pm  · 
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Medit

if we are talking phallic, the most famous examples in western Europe should be 30 St Mary Axe in London and the Agbar Tower in Barcelona, which some graphic designers have already used for their own works in this book, On Barcelona, like this one:



however the story of the Agbar has more to do with fractals, sacred mountains and Gaudinian forms than sex toys... as seen here, here and here... and its all metaphorically condensed here.. I did that after reading a Magritte book.. :)

Apr 29, 05 3:39 pm  · 
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French

You seem to know a lot about this project medit, are you part of the design team?

Apr 29, 05 3:48 pm  · 
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abracadabra

footprint of a sex worker engraved on the Harbor street, pointing towards the brothel. in the ancient city of
Ephesus
maybe it falls into sexual urban design catogory. there are also public baths across from the brothel. approx. 500 BC.

Apr 29, 05 4:02 pm  · 
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Medit

um, no, I'm not part of it.. Nouvel joined forces with a barcelonian firm called b720 Arquitectura (with principal Fermín Vázquez, who also are collaborating with David Chipperfield in another BCN project) to do the Agbart, but I'm not part of that firm either..

however, the tower and its conception has been published over and over in magazines, the internet and even general newspapers (made it to the first Contemporary Classics feature of the new european arch zine A10 too)...

... and it can pretty much be reduced to those 3 concepts: fractals (the concrete pixels of the exterior skin), that particular mountain, Montserrat, which is somewhere in the Barcelona province and a main symbol of the catalan iconography, and of course, Gaudí, which is an obligatory reference to take into account everytime an architect has to do a "landmark" in this city...
Nouvel itself, who is also doing four more projects in BCN, has extensively explained from where the big bullet comes from too..

Apr 29, 05 4:15 pm  · 
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BOTS

Stone relief - Khajuraho Temple, India






you get the idea...

Apr 29, 05 4:36 pm  · 
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French

Okay medit, you don't mind if I send the photomontage of nouvel and gaudi to the project manager then?

Apr 29, 05 4:42 pm  · 
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Medit

what project manager?
sure, you can do whatever you want with it... why are you interested? all four views were just a boring sunday afternoon playing with Photoshop...

Apr 29, 05 4:59 pm  · 
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Nice stuff Bots! Khajuraho Temple circa 1000AD happened chronosomatically when the plane of the present sliced through the ovaries, hence manifesting an architecture of high fertility. Can there still be an architecture where the fertile imagination is utilized with such profundity?

Apr 29, 05 5:04 pm  · 
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photomontage of nouvel and gaudi--nice stuff Medit!

Apr 29, 05 5:06 pm  · 
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heterarch

i don't know why no one has mentioned diller & scofidio (and whoever else they added recently) - exhibititionism, and SHOP - museum of sex. at least for contemporary iterations of the issue.

Apr 29, 05 5:10 pm  · 
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BOTS

Oudezijds Voorburgwal, Amsterdam

Apr 29, 05 5:26 pm  · 
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Medit

are there any quondam vignettes for the God Min?:

Apr 29, 05 5:29 pm  · 
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aml
sexuality and space
Apr 29, 05 5:55 pm  · 
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zoroaster

Not architecture, but there's always Georgia O'Keefe...

Apr 29, 05 9:13 pm  · 
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Bula




...and there's even a nudy beach nearby!

Apr 29, 05 10:37 pm  · 
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LenaV

hmm...aren't all buildings inherently sexual?
they are places we ENTER, or structures that we ERECT.

Apr 29, 05 10:37 pm  · 
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g-love

there was a translation by rudolphe el khoury of a french book (the name of which escapes me) almost a decade ago, but the book is a novel about the little homes outside paris that men used to use to seduce their mistresses. a great little read.

not much in his architecture, but some of the furniture that carlos mollino did was more than explicitly erotic. some heavy s&m themes going on with them...

Apr 29, 05 10:39 pm  · 
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vado retro

if u think im sexy
and you want my building
come on baby
let me know

Apr 29, 05 11:24 pm  · 
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French

medit
I'm interested because I think this montage is hilarious and because my girlfriend worked on the project, the PM being a very good friend of mine. I also did renderings for the project (which were not accepted by Nouvel unfortunately). I'm sure my buddy will love it. And my girlfriend too.

Apr 30, 05 5:26 am  · 
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Medit

lol.., ok French, tell me what they think of it! ... maybe the PM could send it to Nouvel himself, even if its through an anonymous e-mail! .. hehe..
I guess he must have some kind of sense of humour, if he let his bald shiny head to be filmed by the catalan filmmaker Bigas Luna in Barcelona (the film was exhibited at the Moritz beer factory, which Nouvel will rehabilitate as a cultural center), he would not mind being caricaturized as the black baby jEsus of La Moreneta of Montserrat... xD

though Nouvel has a weird face.. looks to me as one of those people you wouldn't want to meet in a narrow dirty street at night.. lol ..

Apr 30, 05 7:58 am  · 
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zoroaster

This image maybe? The original (which hasn't been cropped off) shows that the light is coming from the Rockefeller Center bldg, who has just walked into the room and found the two in "flagrant delit". It's on p.160 of the current Delirious New York edition.

Apr 30, 05 7:40 pm  · 
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e909
Khajuraho Temple

holy, yeah. finger on the spot in the sculpture

May 15, 05 2:45 am  · 
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e909

vr, edited:
if u think im sexy
and you want my
building
Construction Specifications Institute Project Resource Manual
come on baby
let me know

May 15, 05 2:58 am  · 
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e909

nice bedside lamp, zoroaster

looks like the lower sheet has an ear.

May 15, 05 3:01 am  · 
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billy

not an ear, of course, but a deflated goodyear blimp in lieu of a spent condom...

May 15, 05 6:57 pm  · 
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JeffS

If anyone remembers from the Robin Williams movie Patch Adams, theres a gynocology building where the entrance is in between a womans legs. Unfortunately I couldn't find it on the web.

May 16, 05 9:02 pm  · 
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brazil's Instituto de Estudos Orientais somehow overlooked the obvious when they decided on this design as their new logo:



due to all the attention that it created (or, perhaps, embarassment) they were forced to shut their entire website down

May 16, 05 9:45 pm  · 
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Manteno_Montenegro

Man, who's done that before!?!

May 17, 05 2:07 pm  · 
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whodamantom

I wrote a paper on Falic symbolism in architecture, and let me tell you, there are alot of resources.

May 17, 05 6:18 pm  · 
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whodamantom

While visitng the UMASS Dartmouth Campus by Paul Rudolph last year with a group of friends, a close friend commented on the tactility of the rough, deeply grooved concrete walls, and how sexy it all was...Id like to fuck this building, he exclaimed, implying the wall to be a source for some rough satisfaction. He was considering starting a website where he found places to stick it in buildings he liked, fortunately he hasnt.

May 17, 05 6:21 pm  · 
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whodamantom

Personally the process is very arrousing for me. Some girls start to look realy good int he middle of an all nighter....

May 17, 05 6:24 pm  · 
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Paul Rudolph may indeed be the progenitor of sado-masochistic architecture. I can just picture him in an all-leather get-up, especially with that severe buzzcut coif.

May 17, 05 6:38 pm  · 
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whodamantom

hahahaha!!

May 17, 05 6:40 pm  · 
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zoroaster

e909 and billy - I didn't realize it was a blimp at all!

The buildings outside are also looking in with shocked expressions on their faces (although it's kind of fuzzy). It kind of reminds me of a guest critic we sometimes had, who liked to wonder how it would be if buildings had no rooves on them, then you could look in and see everyone having sex. He somehow managed to work this into many different reviews.

May 18, 05 3:29 am  · 
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ether
hilarious
May 23, 05 10:52 am  · 
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