dot, in 'recent' times , much before eric owen moss,
the first person who 'questioned' as to 'what is architecture' and even suggested an answer was the German poet, novelist, dramatist and garden enthusiast Johan Wolfgang Goethe.
1749 --1832
to clarify, eomoss was the moderator of the forum, and it was his choice what the question/topic would be. to say he was the only one to recognize the rediculousness of the question is ironic because he initiated the topic. wasn't saying he was the first to ask this question. i doubt goethe was either.
so koolhaas wasn't so original? damn the devil, i'm sure he did it on purpose, sending students looking for space in waste bins. diabolical.
here's frank's:
"No, I know that architecture is life; or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived. So architecture I know to be a Great Spirit....
"Architecture is that great living creative spirit which from generation to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man, and his circumstances as they change. That is really architecture."
—Frank Lloyd Wright, from In the Realm of Ideas, edited by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer and Gerald Nordland
The answer to this question will clarify for us what building, understood by way of the nature of dwelling, really is. We limit ourselves to building in the sense of constructing things and inquire: what is a built thing? A bridge may serve as an example for our reflections.
The bridge swings over the stream "with case and power. It does not just connect banks that are already there. The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream. The bridge designedly causes them to lie across from each other. One side is set off against the other by the bridge. Nor do the banks stretch along the stream as indifferent border strips of the dry land. With the banks, the bridge brings to the stream the one and the other expanse of the landscape lying behind them. It brings stream and bank and land into each other's neighborhood. The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream. Thus it guides and attends the stream through the meadows. Resting upright in the stream's bed, the bridge-piers bear the swing of the arches that leave the stream's waters to run their course. The waters may wander on quiet and gay, the sky's floods from storm or thaw may shoot past the piers in torrential waves-the bridge is ready for the sky's weather and its fickle nature. Even where the bridge covers the stream, it holds its flow up to the sky by taking it for a moment under the vaulted gateway and then setting it free once more.
The bridge lets the stream run its course and at the same time grants their way to mortals so that they may come and go from shore to shore. Bridges lead in many ways. The city bridge leads from the precincts of the castle to the cathedral square; the river bridge near the country town brings wagons and horse teams to the surrounding villages. The old stone bridge's humble brook crossing gives to the harvest wagon its passage from the fields into the village and carries the lumber cart from the field path to the road. The highway bridge is tied into the network of long-distance traffic, paced as calculated for maximum yield. Always and ever differently the bridge escorts the lingering and hastening ways of men to and from, so that they may get to other banks and in the end, as mortals, to the other side. Now in a high arch, now in a low, the bridge vaults over glen and stream-whether mortals keep in mind this vaulting of the bridge's course or forget that they, always themselves on their way to the last bridge, are actually striving to surmount all that is common and unsound in them in order to bring themselves before the haleness of the divinities. The bridge gathers, as a passage that crosses, before the divinities-whether we explicitly think of, and visibly give thanks for, their presence, as in the figure of the saint of the bridge, or whether that divine presence is obstructed or even pushed wholly aside.
The bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals.
Gathering or assembly, by an ancient word of our language, is called "thing." The bridge is a thing-and, indeed, it is such as the gathering of the fourfold which we have described. To be sure, people think of the bridge as primarily and really merely a bridge; after that, and occasionally, it might possibly express much else besides; and as such an expression it would then become a symbol, for instance ,t symbol of those things we mentioned before. But the bridge, if it is a true bridge, is never first of all a mere bridge and then afterward a symbol. And just as little is the bridge in the first place exclusively a symbol, in the sense that it expresses something that strictly speaking does not belong to it. If we take the bridge strictly as such, it never appears as an expression. The bridge is a thing and only that. Only? As this thing it gathers the fourfold.
Our thinking has of course long been accustomed to understate the nature of the thing. The consequence, in the course of Western thought, has been that the thing is represented as an unknown X to which perceptible properties are attached. From this point of view, everything that already belongs to the gathering nature of this thing does, of course, appear as something that is afterward read into it. Yet the bridge would never be a mere bridge if it were not a thing.
To be sure, the bridge is a thing of its own kind; for it gathers the fourfold in such a way that it allows a site for it. But only something that is itself a location can make space for a site. The location is not already there before the bridge is. Before the bridge stands, there are of course many spots along the stream that can be occupied by something. One of them proves to be a location, and does so because of the bridge. Thus the bridge does not first come to a location to stand in it; rather, a location comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge. The bridge is a thing; it gathers the fourfold, but in such a way that it allows a site for the fourfold. By this site are determined the localities and ways by which a space is provided for.
Only things that are locations in this manner allow for spaces.
The friendship example is only an absurd conclusion drawn from a solely pragmatic perspective on everything in life. In that sense, I don't understand your question. Why should architecture be occupying be posed as an analogy to friendship as relating? Can it not also be that architecture be about building as friendship is about interacting? I think it would be hard to argue that one can be friends yet not have a relationship. The concept of friend already presuppose some relationship.
Apparently (from what I have read here) a lot of well-known architects are either very witty or quite eloquent in their opinion that it is undoubtedly "me!" (them)
- And who's to question it (not me), most well known architects are good at using words. 'Architecture' is after all just a word.
In my opinion the AIA would better serve the built environment by asking: 'Who SEES what Architecture is?'
(you might get a little less glib answer out of some of them anyway)
I SEE what architecture is now and then out the corner of my eye - when I am not really looking. Soon as I look, I'm screwed!
a rationalist approach: architecture is that which is produced by architects.
On one hand we complain that the profession is being diluted and destabilized and on the other we argue that everything is architecture, and everyones an architect...
Seems that, "who says what architecture is" is a bit like asking, "who says what what happiness is"; It's part personal, part cultural, and a lot about what's been marketed as what "whatever" is....
dot - do you think eric owen was moss being serious? if he did think the question was silly, then that's really f-ing cynical on his part (and a waste of a supposedly professional forum).
wow- i had no idea that he was the one who posed the question in the first place... i just thought because of his sarcastic answer (or maybe you added the sarcasm)...
had to be there i guess. wasn't a total waste bc there were some interesting tangents i.e. 'rejection of established knowledge' from j. inaba.
eomoss however was the moderator and spent more time answering his own question than did any of the panelist. hence the sarcasm.
i'm not supposing there is a singular answer, or that one group is in better position to answer this question than others than others. just offering discussion.
the thing is, architecture cannot be everything. thats about as good as saying its nothing. imho architecture has meaning only if it can be tied to something specific. what is that fundamental thing that seperates architecture from say art?
there may be interdisciplinary practice, that is very interesting, but there are some things when you speak that are architectural, and some things that are tangents. that's not to say that architects deal only with architecture, but there are things that we can point to and say "thats not architecture, it may be interesting, but its something else" or "thats architecture behaving like something else" architecture thats on the brink of industrial design or urban planning, or landscape..." but being vague is kindof pointless.
trying to define it is hopeless. it means many things to many people. i hope one day architects would talk about "their architecture" rather than trying to fool everybody into thinking we should all do it the same way.
Who says what Architecture is?
ummm eric owen moss was the one that posed the original question. maybe he did think it was ridiculous which may be why he asked it.
dot, in 'recent' times , much before eric owen moss,
the first person who 'questioned' as to 'what is architecture' and even suggested an answer was the German poet, novelist, dramatist and garden enthusiast Johan Wolfgang Goethe.
1749 --1832
He said that "architecture is frozen music"
to clarify, eomoss was the moderator of the forum, and it was his choice what the question/topic would be. to say he was the only one to recognize the rediculousness of the question is ironic because he initiated the topic. wasn't saying he was the first to ask this question. i doubt goethe was either.
dot..im just sharing some knowledge.
"Architecture is the art of wasting space" pj
so koolhaas wasn't so original? damn the devil, i'm sure he did it on purpose, sending students looking for space in waste bins. diabolical.
here's frank's:
"No, I know that architecture is life; or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived. So architecture I know to be a Great Spirit....
"Architecture is that great living creative spirit which from generation to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man, and his circumstances as they change. That is really architecture."
—Frank Lloyd Wright, from In the Realm of Ideas, edited by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer and Gerald Nordland
very whitman, huh?
without the covert references to sperm that is.
"By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator!
Putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows"
-Song of Myself
thanks for that link dot...
In what way does building belong to dwelling?about "the bridge", heidegger...
The answer to this question will clarify for us what building, understood by way of the nature of dwelling, really is. We limit ourselves to building in the sense of constructing things and inquire: what is a built thing? A bridge may serve as an example for our reflections.
The bridge swings over the stream "with case and power. It does not just connect banks that are already there. The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream. The bridge designedly causes them to lie across from each other. One side is set off against the other by the bridge. Nor do the banks stretch along the stream as indifferent border strips of the dry land. With the banks, the bridge brings to the stream the one and the other expanse of the landscape lying behind them. It brings stream and bank and land into each other's neighborhood. The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream. Thus it guides and attends the stream through the meadows. Resting upright in the stream's bed, the bridge-piers bear the swing of the arches that leave the stream's waters to run their course. The waters may wander on quiet and gay, the sky's floods from storm or thaw may shoot past the piers in torrential waves-the bridge is ready for the sky's weather and its fickle nature. Even where the bridge covers the stream, it holds its flow up to the sky by taking it for a moment under the vaulted gateway and then setting it free once more.
The bridge lets the stream run its course and at the same time grants their way to mortals so that they may come and go from shore to shore. Bridges lead in many ways. The city bridge leads from the precincts of the castle to the cathedral square; the river bridge near the country town brings wagons and horse teams to the surrounding villages. The old stone bridge's humble brook crossing gives to the harvest wagon its passage from the fields into the village and carries the lumber cart from the field path to the road. The highway bridge is tied into the network of long-distance traffic, paced as calculated for maximum yield. Always and ever differently the bridge escorts the lingering and hastening ways of men to and from, so that they may get to other banks and in the end, as mortals, to the other side. Now in a high arch, now in a low, the bridge vaults over glen and stream-whether mortals keep in mind this vaulting of the bridge's course or forget that they, always themselves on their way to the last bridge, are actually striving to surmount all that is common and unsound in them in order to bring themselves before the haleness of the divinities. The bridge gathers, as a passage that crosses, before the divinities-whether we explicitly think of, and visibly give thanks for, their presence, as in the figure of the saint of the bridge, or whether that divine presence is obstructed or even pushed wholly aside.
The bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals.
Gathering or assembly, by an ancient word of our language, is called "thing." The bridge is a thing-and, indeed, it is such as the gathering of the fourfold which we have described. To be sure, people think of the bridge as primarily and really merely a bridge; after that, and occasionally, it might possibly express much else besides; and as such an expression it would then become a symbol, for instance ,t symbol of those things we mentioned before. But the bridge, if it is a true bridge, is never first of all a mere bridge and then afterward a symbol. And just as little is the bridge in the first place exclusively a symbol, in the sense that it expresses something that strictly speaking does not belong to it. If we take the bridge strictly as such, it never appears as an expression. The bridge is a thing and only that. Only? As this thing it gathers the fourfold.
Our thinking has of course long been accustomed to understate the nature of the thing. The consequence, in the course of Western thought, has been that the thing is represented as an unknown X to which perceptible properties are attached. From this point of view, everything that already belongs to the gathering nature of this thing does, of course, appear as something that is afterward read into it. Yet the bridge would never be a mere bridge if it were not a thing.
To be sure, the bridge is a thing of its own kind; for it gathers the fourfold in such a way that it allows a site for it. But only something that is itself a location can make space for a site. The location is not already there before the bridge is. Before the bridge stands, there are of course many spots along the stream that can be occupied by something. One of them proves to be a location, and does so because of the bridge. Thus the bridge does not first come to a location to stand in it; rather, a location comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge. The bridge is a thing; it gathers the fourfold, but in such a way that it allows a site for the fourfold. By this site are determined the localities and ways by which a space is provided for.
Only things that are locations in this manner allow for spaces.
is architecture the making of places through spaces?
BE:
Is architecture about occupying in the way that friendship is about relating? Can you really be friends and not have a relationship?
bRink,
The friendship example is only an absurd conclusion drawn from a solely pragmatic perspective on everything in life. In that sense, I don't understand your question. Why should architecture be occupying be posed as an analogy to friendship as relating? Can it not also be that architecture be about building as friendship is about interacting? I think it would be hard to argue that one can be friends yet not have a relationship. The concept of friend already presuppose some relationship.
that depends on what your definition of is, is. - Bill Clinton
'Who says what Architecture is?' - ?
Apparently (from what I have read here) a lot of well-known architects are either very witty or quite eloquent in their opinion that it is undoubtedly "me!" (them)
- And who's to question it (not me), most well known architects are good at using words. 'Architecture' is after all just a word.
In my opinion the AIA would better serve the built environment by asking: 'Who SEES what Architecture is?'
(you might get a little less glib answer out of some of them anyway)
I SEE what architecture is now and then out the corner of my eye - when I am not really looking. Soon as I look, I'm screwed!
a rationalist approach: architecture is that which is produced by architects.
On one hand we complain that the profession is being diluted and destabilized and on the other we argue that everything is architecture, and everyones an architect...
The correct answer is 'historians' - but no one wants to go there . . .
to the victor go the spoils...
I don't think architecture can exist without an idea of occupant. Without the occupant, building something is just art.
and you cant have friendship without a relationship? you can interact and not be friends.
Seems that, "who says what architecture is" is a bit like asking, "who says what what happiness is"; It's part personal, part cultural, and a lot about what's been marketed as what "whatever" is....
dot - do you think eric owen was moss being serious? if he did think the question was silly, then that's really f-ing cynical on his part (and a waste of a supposedly professional forum).
wow- i had no idea that he was the one who posed the question in the first place... i just thought because of his sarcastic answer (or maybe you added the sarcasm)...
-to
had to be there i guess. wasn't a total waste bc there were some interesting tangents i.e. 'rejection of established knowledge' from j. inaba.
eomoss however was the moderator and spent more time answering his own question than did any of the panelist. hence the sarcasm.
i'm not supposing there is a singular answer, or that one group is in better position to answer this question than others than others. just offering discussion.
the thing is, architecture cannot be everything. thats about as good as saying its nothing. imho architecture has meaning only if it can be tied to something specific. what is that fundamental thing that seperates architecture from say art?
there may be interdisciplinary practice, that is very interesting, but there are some things when you speak that are architectural, and some things that are tangents. that's not to say that architects deal only with architecture, but there are things that we can point to and say "thats not architecture, it may be interesting, but its something else" or "thats architecture behaving like something else" architecture thats on the brink of industrial design or urban planning, or landscape..." but being vague is kindof pointless.
so i think its a valid question.
trying to define it is hopeless. it means many things to many people. i hope one day architects would talk about "their architecture" rather than trying to fool everybody into thinking we should all do it the same way.
Damn good point!
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