From time to time, I found myself thinking about some unbuilt projects and how they could impact our vision of architecture. I'm particularly curious about Terragni's Danteum, Oma's Agadir Hotel & convention Center in Morocco or Oma bibliòtheque in Paris or Sant'Elia's Citta Nouva. Do you recognize this feeling?
a book of projects by lars lerup from the late '80s, 'planned assaults', first made me understand the narrative and 'content' potential of architecture. through a series of design proposals in which he walks the reader through a subversive series of typological manipulations and analyses of americans' cultural baggage, he crafts a rollicking send-up of the suburban house. blew me away when i was in first year.
these projects were full-on fictions. would i want to see any of them built? absolutely not. for one, a lot of their charm is in lerup's distorted renderings. if you squared 'em up and followed the conventions of architecture, they'd be horrible. and they'd probably come off as postmodern dreck.
but i still pull the book out occasionally, and it still captures my imagionation. the operations lerup goes through: erasure, mirroring, shadowing, translating the standard ranchburger through ideas borrowed from duchamp...it's magic.
They might not be that great, it's just that they all represent a lot of work and painful efforts to me and just seeing one of those projects getting built would be such an amazing feeling...
Jun 10, 05 2:48 pm ·
·
Manu Bar, with regard to the two OMA projects you like, look very closely now at Le Corbusier's Palais des Congres a Strasbourg, 1964 (unexecuted) for the true inspiration for both these projects.
I built a computer model of the Palais in 1990 and I/Arcadia - Architectural CAD Services published slides and drawings in 1991--Harvard's Loeb Library purchased both. I think Koolhaas subsequently saw this stuff there.
how about Hugh Ferris' stuff.
I've always been attracted to libeskinds drawings as well, though I don't know how much this qualifies as an unbuilt work.
King Henry VI's original 1441 plan for King's College, Cambridge. He also founded Eton College, near Windsor. All that was built of Henry VI's Will at Cambridge was the Chapel. The latter was originally devised by the king to have dimensions in the ratio of 20:45:144 (40' x 90' x 288'). When it was completed about a hundred years later it was 40:80:289. Henry was an ineffectual king, murdered at the age of 50, I think, but a genius in creating the two sublime Foundations. King's still seems incomplete, the addition of the baroque Fellows' Building in the 1720s notwithstanding.
doberman what you say is proberly more true than what most in archinect would ever realise --- see I have one book about architecture my sort of "bible" ,with the title "Pioniere der sowjetischen Architectur". A heavy brick that deal with the real hero's in modern architecture --- take any newbuild works since the past 40 years and look it up in that book ,then you will find that some russian engineer allready 1920 produced just that. If you check for unbuild works in the same book you will find everything from freedom tower to just any architectural icon , but projected back 1915 or 1932 by one of these real visionary russian architects.
Realy you need no other book about architecture to know it all to know the copy to know where they "borrowed" it.
Hi
Sorry driftwood this was not intirely what I mean refering Pioniere im sowjetischen architecture --- there are way to many softcake Stalin pets in that, maby a third or even less are the sort of constructivism I prefere.
Still why bother driftwood , if you could be another usenet fanatic in conetticut ,someone without a clue about architecture who couldn't care less about what happen at a archutecture site ?
Would you even know the wonders that are refered in the text of your link but only in glimps show their pover in the impressive blueprints.
Realy driftwood knowing the real sowjet pioniere tell if you even deal with architecture ,Bauhaus , Le Corb aso.
The graphics at that site only reflect what Stalin would want, --- that you shuld know.
Per is absolutely correct on this one, at least in terms of Khan-Magomedov's scholarship regarding the Constructivist period in the early Soviet Union. "Pioniere der sowjetischen Architectur", perhaps better known in the U.S. (if at all) in it's 80's Rizzoli incarnation "Pioneers of Soviet Architecture: the Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s" is a remarkable compendium of the period. http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&qi=kcgqE.tYR8ssH0HcONZa,wHb.iA_5626064794_2:164:278
Exactly , and billy isn't it true that this book would be owned by any sucessfull architect since it was published ;))
My copy though are in german writing published in east germany as a reminder of what realy went on ,where the true artship was going on sure Stalin had to let some of these skillfull artists do atleast a tractor factory or another nessery building when so few artists by some reson was around, so also a number of build works shuld still be avaible --- now knowing that we talk about true icons ,then I wonder what efford is done preserving these wonders. ------- Anyway you got me there ,any wizard ofcaurse must keep a sample of that book . As I said realising what is there make you ask why everything the past many years been just revisiting what some russian engineer designed up untill the beginning of the 30'.
Also, Anatole Kopp's "Town and Revolution" is a good overview of some of this stuff. It is especially good on the organizational histories of Lenin- and Stalin-era architecture and urban planning.
Aside from the fact that seeing the word "Russian" in your post made me remember this link I had to the 1935 plan for the reconstruction of Moscow, my link has nothing to do with anything you said.
From your response, it's obvious that you didn't bother to do anything but look at the pictures and jump to conclusions. If you had, you would have noticed that the site doesn't have anything to do with constructivism. In fact, it clearly states on the very first page that this is about the "softcake Stalin pets," as you so intelligently and astutely put it.
Hi
No I read the words and know they was refering something else, that what to look for would only be reconised when you know where to look , this is an art to --- irony and beauty is what will save the world.
Which unbuilt project makes you fantasize?
From time to time, I found myself thinking about some unbuilt projects and how they could impact our vision of architecture. I'm particularly curious about Terragni's Danteum, Oma's Agadir Hotel & convention Center in Morocco or Oma bibliòtheque in Paris or Sant'Elia's Citta Nouva. Do you recognize this feeling?
a book of projects by lars lerup from the late '80s, 'planned assaults', first made me understand the narrative and 'content' potential of architecture. through a series of design proposals in which he walks the reader through a subversive series of typological manipulations and analyses of americans' cultural baggage, he crafts a rollicking send-up of the suburban house. blew me away when i was in first year.
these projects were full-on fictions. would i want to see any of them built? absolutely not. for one, a lot of their charm is in lerup's distorted renderings. if you squared 'em up and followed the conventions of architecture, they'd be horrible. and they'd probably come off as postmodern dreck.
but i still pull the book out occasionally, and it still captures my imagionation. the operations lerup goes through: erasure, mirroring, shadowing, translating the standard ranchburger through ideas borrowed from duchamp...it's magic.
i'm with you on oma's bilbliotheque, too. and i'd kind of like to see gropius' totaltheater.
on a scharoun tip today. hans did many beautiful sketches back in the early 1920s that are just beautiful and extremely fluid.
lebbeus
All of my lost competitions.
They might not be that great, it's just that they all represent a lot of work and painful efforts to me and just seeing one of those projects getting built would be such an amazing feeling...
Manu Bar, with regard to the two OMA projects you like, look very closely now at Le Corbusier's Palais des Congres a Strasbourg, 1964 (unexecuted) for the true inspiration for both these projects.
I built a computer model of the Palais in 1990 and I/Arcadia - Architectural CAD Services published slides and drawings in 1991--Harvard's Loeb Library purchased both. I think Koolhaas subsequently saw this stuff there.
You'll be able to read some more about the Palais des Congres and the Danteum as well in A Quondam Banquet of Virtual Sachlichkeit, forthcoming late summer 2005.
Again OMA paris library, Tatlins monument and Leonidovs stalin institute.
it would be interesting to see lebbeus' aerial paris
[img]http://www.arq.upv.es/lebbeus/Imagenes/ap138_.jpg
anything per correll designs gets me stiff....
...as in dying stiff?
how about Hugh Ferris' stuff.
I've always been attracted to libeskinds drawings as well, though I don't know how much this qualifies as an unbuilt work.
/edit the second one is boulee
Oooh. Yeah, Boullee's cenotaph proposal for Newton rocks my world pretty hard.
My best fantasies come from the unbuilt project that is my love life. There's this one...
Whew!!
What?
King Henry VI's original 1441 plan for King's College, Cambridge. He also founded Eton College, near Windsor. All that was built of Henry VI's Will at Cambridge was the Chapel. The latter was originally devised by the king to have dimensions in the ratio of 20:45:144 (40' x 90' x 288'). When it was completed about a hundred years later it was 40:80:289. Henry was an ineffectual king, murdered at the age of 50, I think, but a genius in creating the two sublime Foundations. King's still seems incomplete, the addition of the baroque Fellows' Building in the 1720s notwithstanding.
The skyscraper that Gaudi designed for New York.
And not to forget...Constant's New Babylon.
1. Superstudio's "Continuous Monument"
2. Archizoom's "No Stop City"
3. Lebbeus Woods' "Zagreb-Free Zone"
4. Archigram's "Suitaloon"
boullee's national library
archigram's walking city.
Zaha's Peak.
El Lissitzky's lenin tribune and more generally a lot of the Russian constructivists' stuff woould look amazing in the shape of built projects.
anything lebbeus has done would be incredible
doberman what you say is proberly more true than what most in archinect would ever realise --- see I have one book about architecture my sort of "bible" ,with the title "Pioniere der sowjetischen Architectur". A heavy brick that deal with the real hero's in modern architecture --- take any newbuild works since the past 40 years and look it up in that book ,then you will find that some russian engineer allready 1920 produced just that. If you check for unbuild works in the same book you will find everything from freedom tower to just any architectural icon , but projected back 1915 or 1932 by one of these real visionary russian architects.
Realy you need no other book about architecture to know it all to know the copy to know where they "borrowed" it.
Hi
Sorry driftwood this was not intirely what I mean refering Pioniere im sowjetischen architecture --- there are way to many softcake Stalin pets in that, maby a third or even less are the sort of constructivism I prefere.
Still why bother driftwood , if you could be another usenet fanatic in conetticut ,someone without a clue about architecture who couldn't care less about what happen at a archutecture site ?
Would you even know the wonders that are refered in the text of your link but only in glimps show their pover in the impressive blueprints.
Realy driftwood knowing the real sowjet pioniere tell if you even deal with architecture ,Bauhaus , Le Corb aso.
The graphics at that site only reflect what Stalin would want, --- that you shuld know.
Per is absolutely correct on this one, at least in terms of Khan-Magomedov's scholarship regarding the Constructivist period in the early Soviet Union. "Pioniere der sowjetischen Architectur", perhaps better known in the U.S. (if at all) in it's 80's Rizzoli incarnation "Pioneers of Soviet Architecture: the Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s" is a remarkable compendium of the period.
http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&qi=kcgqE.tYR8ssH0HcONZa,wHb.iA_5626064794_2:164:278
Exactly , and billy isn't it true that this book would be owned by any sucessfull architect since it was published ;))
My copy though are in german writing published in east germany as a reminder of what realy went on ,where the true artship was going on sure Stalin had to let some of these skillfull artists do atleast a tractor factory or another nessery building when so few artists by some reson was around, so also a number of build works shuld still be avaible --- now knowing that we talk about true icons ,then I wonder what efford is done preserving these wonders. ------- Anyway you got me there ,any wizard ofcaurse must keep a sample of that book . As I said realising what is there make you ask why everything the past many years been just revisiting what some russian engineer designed up untill the beginning of the 30'.
Also, Anatole Kopp's "Town and Revolution" is a good overview of some of this stuff. It is especially good on the organizational histories of Lenin- and Stalin-era architecture and urban planning.
Aside from the fact that seeing the word "Russian" in your post made me remember this link I had to the 1935 plan for the reconstruction of Moscow, my link has nothing to do with anything you said.
From your response, it's obvious that you didn't bother to do anything but look at the pictures and jump to conclusions. If you had, you would have noticed that the site doesn't have anything to do with constructivism. In fact, it clearly states on the very first page that this is about the "softcake Stalin pets," as you so intelligently and astutely put it.
Hi
No I read the words and know they was refering something else, that what to look for would only be reconised when you know where to look , this is an art to --- irony and beauty is what will save the world.
thats gaudi @ WTC
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.