Ive had this notion for a while that new ideas, new memes, find themselves harvested from the world by writers and artists, anyone with new eyes, and then become processed, labeled, and disseminated through general culture. Im sure scientists, lawyers, everyday people contribute to this flow as well, but I feel like the most fundamental, bedrock changes in perspective always seem to come through art.
Maybe it starts with writers? Im not sure. But it does seem, for whatever reason, that architects in particular find themselves at a difficult crux. I think because of the balance required by budgets and committees and programs, weve become one of the key fields for translation new ideas into new ways of life.
Im being too fluty. I can tell.
I wanted to talk about a few movies Ive seen recently, and the absolutely ground-twisting ideas they carry.
Chunking Express - I know this is a few years back now, but I only just recently saw it. Fucking fantastic. I mean its simple, just a noodles-joint and a pair of couples that eat there, but layered through it you discover this strangely indefinable relationship between the two pairs. Its dislocated from place, from the characteristics of their lives, their names and identities, but in some strange way you become aware that these are related, maybe even at some fundemental level just different apects of the same people. There is this bizarre pathological confusion about movement and place, between love and the consumption of food. It isnt a perfect film, but it does seem to be seminal point for so many great movies, that themselves never seemed to quite capture as much as the original.
Last Days - This has got to be one of the most underrated movies in the last few years. I mean its difficult. I think alot of people just found those long shots agonizing, but Van Sants process! He just does these things by the seat of his pants, everything is improvised, he collects these real people and pours thier real lives in this weird cocktail of fiction and authenticity. The whole thing feels so visceral, but mixed in are these exceptional little moments, almost unnoticed impossible events and little miracles surrounding his life. His mumbling becomes like glossolalia. Its like your whole vocabulary of implied meanings behind the images you see every day starts to melt away from you.
Again, not perfect, but getting closer.
Mulholland Drive - This has to be the of the most genius movies in the last 10 years. I'll admit, the first time I saw it I hadnt a fucking clue what was going on. For the first 2/3 of the movie I was sure it was possibly the worst film ever made. But from the moment she opens that box, you just find your whole head turned inside out. The confusion between identity, the Act, the space around us are so pathologically intertwined even now I strain to unravel it. You look away with that 'Memento' feeling, but its not just the faith you put in memory thats been unsettled, but the whole fabric of how you define yourself.
Is it self-deception? Maya? What is this thing I can see but cant put words to? I tried, killed myself to capture it in school but my attempts seem feeble. Mathew Barney has done it, I think in some ways Koolhaas tried early on, Eisenman maybe? But for whatever reason it seems so much more difficult with architecture. I feel like the medium of film provides a such an easy medium to convey this thing. You have this freedom in a 2d moving medium to delaminate things in a way that is much more difficult in a largely static 3d medium. Its easier to conceil things, you can inject and manipulate characters in a way we cant.
Is it even possible? Or is it just a matter of focus?
sounds like you're into movies concerned with complex character relationships / postmodern plot structures etc.... have you watched anything else by Wong-Kar Wai? I think In the Mood for Love and 2046 would be right up your alley. I love them for their incredible cinematography / visual appeal, but the characters / acting are amazing in these films.
Cache' and We Don't Live Here Anymore also deal with intertwined relationships....you've probably seen them.
The relationship between film and arch. is something i'm quite interested in. I think the similarities between the two offer a lot of possibility, mutually. The idea of a narrative (film) applied to architecture could be interpreted so many ways.
You were probing into why film is easier to wrap your brain around than arch...i think it has to do with time/timelines. Films end. Architecture doesn't necessarily have a finite timeline, which makes drawing conclusions difficult. i believe you could approach design with a timeline concept, it's something i've been exploring a lot recently.
For a moment then, I thought it was going to be another one of those threads where people try and find films with architects in them - almost as a quest for approval of the profession through media...
Is architecture fiction or non-fiction?
The idea of the narrative applies in some senses to the overall design and building process, but also in terms of the experience of the building - but like anything, this tends to be a one-liner and I dont know how many people have the time or inclination to invest in the idea of an experiential approach to a building. There have been some approaches made - Terragni's unbuilt Danteum for example, Casa Malaparte, etc, but these are scarce and generally built for an audience of 1.
The key difference between film and architecture, is that in film the auter has control over the message, medium and audience. The audience also has investment in the film as an experience. There is depth and memory in film - we remember aspects of the experience that are emotionally charged. We see the film again and see more of what we didnt see before.
A building tends to be 'learned' quickly. There is not alot that it gives back as an experience. And then, what kind of experience is it providing? The experience of how building codes and standards are materialized, paint finishes, aluminium joinery...
"Another thought - watching the same film everyday will be more boring than visiting the same building everyday."
"A building tends to be 'learned' quickly"
i think, in absolute, both thoughts are irrelevant.
oe; i kinda see your point. i think that if we analogically reduce the comparison to two pictures, one intelligently capturing a pretty/ugly human face and the other a pretty/ugly building, there is an expected natural urge to linger longer over the face picture. of course, van sants camera would just as lovingly linger over the open terrain (gerry) or the sky (elephant), but if human involvment did not occur, in whatever manner, we would expectedly find it less interesting.
buildings are fundementally banal; i don't think a building, however much its architecture might be ground breaking or beautiful (in whatever 'apollonian manner you define that beauty) is in itself interesting. its indirect complex effects might be interesting, the process of realizing it might be interesting for those who care(ie conceptually,technologically..) but interest would only be one or more steps removed from the actual building. maybe, the polite vitruvian division made between shelter and architecture that students are first taught, is really quite pretentious, mythmaking and pompous. a building, in itself, is a shelter, a dead object ultimately (or primarily) uninteresting in itself. boring obviousness is implicit in any building, and those designs that are designed in an effort to undo that fatalistic boredom might be useful, might cause amusement, might seem kitsch in their effects (sliding walls, intelligent facades, twisty curvey)..but the building itself is deadly boring, always. Minimalism seemed, to some extent and in some of its instances, as opposed to its more gymnastic counterparts, much more ready to incorporate this sense of implicit boredom aesthetically, as opposed to rejecting it. Can you think of a more boring thing than the barcelona pavilion's little enclosed statue couryard? well..maybe a john pawson wall/cabinet.
on the other hand (and i share your fondness for van sant films) i think that whilst factually you might say van sant manipulates his actors into realizing the characters, his films are not character-driven. in a way, they're actually antithetical to the innumerous, naturalistic and naively-psychological character-driven films on tv all day and night long...characters that are hardly characturful, but redundant regurgitated moral tropes. there is something inexplicably poetic (it doesnt rise dialetically out of the narrative) in his films that i've seen that brings him closer to tarkovsky than to character/narrative driven scorcsese and coppola.
Ok, say you wake up in the morning, drive to the airport in the clothes you have on, buy a flight to where ever. At the arriving airport, you buy new cloths, change in the bathroom and throw out the clothes you started with. The next day you do the same thing, travel to a new city, buy new clothes, ware them for 24 hours, buy a new ticket, and so on. How many days before you started wearing your hair differently? Talking differently? Behaving differently? How long until your boredom drove you to stay at ultra-sketchy or ultra-fancy hotels just for the social exploration? A better question, how long would it take before you almost forgot who you used to be? After month or a year, do you think you would finally go back to being who you were? Or would your original apartment feel as empty as any of the other 'phony' personas you wore about?
I think I would disagree that buildings are fundamentally inert, but I know what you mean about minimalism. I think a shift in focus from technological gymnastics (boy does that sound familiar nowadays) to perception is key, but its still only the first step. You bring up the actors 'Mask'. But its worse than that. Even in our real lives we play a character in our own little melodrama. The suit and tie, the make-up, the dread-locks, those are our costume. But how do you escape that? Do you go all david bowie and 'reinvent' yourself? Arent the new people you pretend to be just their own fabricated little moral tropes?
Early Eisenman, just allowing people to react against an environment, Early Koolhaas, these pathological program injunctions, I think these were also good steps. But where does it lead? We never got beyond experiments in randomness. It seems like all of sudden computers changed the game and weve spent the last 15 years trying to figure out what to do about that. I think this resurgent love of Zumthor is something a shift in focus back to phenomenology (god I hate that word), but we are still arent critically analyzing social relationships, at least not to the level they have been in film.
Film and Architecture
Ive had this notion for a while that new ideas, new memes, find themselves harvested from the world by writers and artists, anyone with new eyes, and then become processed, labeled, and disseminated through general culture. Im sure scientists, lawyers, everyday people contribute to this flow as well, but I feel like the most fundamental, bedrock changes in perspective always seem to come through art.
Maybe it starts with writers? Im not sure. But it does seem, for whatever reason, that architects in particular find themselves at a difficult crux. I think because of the balance required by budgets and committees and programs, weve become one of the key fields for translation new ideas into new ways of life.
Im being too fluty. I can tell.
I wanted to talk about a few movies Ive seen recently, and the absolutely ground-twisting ideas they carry.
Chunking Express - I know this is a few years back now, but I only just recently saw it. Fucking fantastic. I mean its simple, just a noodles-joint and a pair of couples that eat there, but layered through it you discover this strangely indefinable relationship between the two pairs. Its dislocated from place, from the characteristics of their lives, their names and identities, but in some strange way you become aware that these are related, maybe even at some fundemental level just different apects of the same people. There is this bizarre pathological confusion about movement and place, between love and the consumption of food. It isnt a perfect film, but it does seem to be seminal point for so many great movies, that themselves never seemed to quite capture as much as the original.
Last Days - This has got to be one of the most underrated movies in the last few years. I mean its difficult. I think alot of people just found those long shots agonizing, but Van Sants process! He just does these things by the seat of his pants, everything is improvised, he collects these real people and pours thier real lives in this weird cocktail of fiction and authenticity. The whole thing feels so visceral, but mixed in are these exceptional little moments, almost unnoticed impossible events and little miracles surrounding his life. His mumbling becomes like glossolalia. Its like your whole vocabulary of implied meanings behind the images you see every day starts to melt away from you.
Again, not perfect, but getting closer.
Mulholland Drive - This has to be the of the most genius movies in the last 10 years. I'll admit, the first time I saw it I hadnt a fucking clue what was going on. For the first 2/3 of the movie I was sure it was possibly the worst film ever made. But from the moment she opens that box, you just find your whole head turned inside out. The confusion between identity, the Act, the space around us are so pathologically intertwined even now I strain to unravel it. You look away with that 'Memento' feeling, but its not just the faith you put in memory thats been unsettled, but the whole fabric of how you define yourself.
Is it self-deception? Maya? What is this thing I can see but cant put words to? I tried, killed myself to capture it in school but my attempts seem feeble. Mathew Barney has done it, I think in some ways Koolhaas tried early on, Eisenman maybe? But for whatever reason it seems so much more difficult with architecture. I feel like the medium of film provides a such an easy medium to convey this thing. You have this freedom in a 2d moving medium to delaminate things in a way that is much more difficult in a largely static 3d medium. Its easier to conceil things, you can inject and manipulate characters in a way we cant.
Is it even possible? Or is it just a matter of focus?
sounds like you're into movies concerned with complex character relationships / postmodern plot structures etc.... have you watched anything else by Wong-Kar Wai? I think In the Mood for Love and 2046 would be right up your alley. I love them for their incredible cinematography / visual appeal, but the characters / acting are amazing in these films.
Cache' and We Don't Live Here Anymore also deal with intertwined relationships....you've probably seen them.
The relationship between film and arch. is something i'm quite interested in. I think the similarities between the two offer a lot of possibility, mutually. The idea of a narrative (film) applied to architecture could be interpreted so many ways.
You were probing into why film is easier to wrap your brain around than arch...i think it has to do with time/timelines. Films end. Architecture doesn't necessarily have a finite timeline, which makes drawing conclusions difficult. i believe you could approach design with a timeline concept, it's something i've been exploring a lot recently.
what other films have you been watching lately
(i need to add more movies to my blockbuster queue!)
architecture IS time and memory and you don't need use film as analogy.
For a moment then, I thought it was going to be another one of those threads where people try and find films with architects in them - almost as a quest for approval of the profession through media...
Is architecture fiction or non-fiction?
The idea of the narrative applies in some senses to the overall design and building process, but also in terms of the experience of the building - but like anything, this tends to be a one-liner and I dont know how many people have the time or inclination to invest in the idea of an experiential approach to a building. There have been some approaches made - Terragni's unbuilt Danteum for example, Casa Malaparte, etc, but these are scarce and generally built for an audience of 1.
The key difference between film and architecture, is that in film the auter has control over the message, medium and audience. The audience also has investment in the film as an experience. There is depth and memory in film - we remember aspects of the experience that are emotionally charged. We see the film again and see more of what we didnt see before.
A building tends to be 'learned' quickly. There is not alot that it gives back as an experience. And then, what kind of experience is it providing? The experience of how building codes and standards are materialized, paint finishes, aluminium joinery...
Another thought - watching the same film everyday will be more boring than visiting the same building everyday.
architecture is your time and someone else's money
"Another thought - watching the same film everyday will be more boring than visiting the same building everyday."
"A building tends to be 'learned' quickly"
i think, in absolute, both thoughts are irrelevant.
oe; i kinda see your point. i think that if we analogically reduce the comparison to two pictures, one intelligently capturing a pretty/ugly human face and the other a pretty/ugly building, there is an expected natural urge to linger longer over the face picture. of course, van sants camera would just as lovingly linger over the open terrain (gerry) or the sky (elephant), but if human involvment did not occur, in whatever manner, we would expectedly find it less interesting.
buildings are fundementally banal; i don't think a building, however much its architecture might be ground breaking or beautiful (in whatever 'apollonian manner you define that beauty) is in itself interesting. its indirect complex effects might be interesting, the process of realizing it might be interesting for those who care(ie conceptually,technologically..) but interest would only be one or more steps removed from the actual building. maybe, the polite vitruvian division made between shelter and architecture that students are first taught, is really quite pretentious, mythmaking and pompous. a building, in itself, is a shelter, a dead object ultimately (or primarily) uninteresting in itself. boring obviousness is implicit in any building, and those designs that are designed in an effort to undo that fatalistic boredom might be useful, might cause amusement, might seem kitsch in their effects (sliding walls, intelligent facades, twisty curvey)..but the building itself is deadly boring, always. Minimalism seemed, to some extent and in some of its instances, as opposed to its more gymnastic counterparts, much more ready to incorporate this sense of implicit boredom aesthetically, as opposed to rejecting it. Can you think of a more boring thing than the barcelona pavilion's little enclosed statue couryard? well..maybe a john pawson wall/cabinet.
on the other hand (and i share your fondness for van sant films) i think that whilst factually you might say van sant manipulates his actors into realizing the characters, his films are not character-driven. in a way, they're actually antithetical to the innumerous, naturalistic and naively-psychological character-driven films on tv all day and night long...characters that are hardly characturful, but redundant regurgitated moral tropes. there is something inexplicably poetic (it doesnt rise dialetically out of the narrative) in his films that i've seen that brings him closer to tarkovsky than to character/narrative driven scorcsese and coppola.
Ok, say you wake up in the morning, drive to the airport in the clothes you have on, buy a flight to where ever. At the arriving airport, you buy new cloths, change in the bathroom and throw out the clothes you started with. The next day you do the same thing, travel to a new city, buy new clothes, ware them for 24 hours, buy a new ticket, and so on. How many days before you started wearing your hair differently? Talking differently? Behaving differently? How long until your boredom drove you to stay at ultra-sketchy or ultra-fancy hotels just for the social exploration? A better question, how long would it take before you almost forgot who you used to be? After month or a year, do you think you would finally go back to being who you were? Or would your original apartment feel as empty as any of the other 'phony' personas you wore about?
I think I would disagree that buildings are fundamentally inert, but I know what you mean about minimalism. I think a shift in focus from technological gymnastics (boy does that sound familiar nowadays) to perception is key, but its still only the first step. You bring up the actors 'Mask'. But its worse than that. Even in our real lives we play a character in our own little melodrama. The suit and tie, the make-up, the dread-locks, those are our costume. But how do you escape that? Do you go all david bowie and 'reinvent' yourself? Arent the new people you pretend to be just their own fabricated little moral tropes?
Early Eisenman, just allowing people to react against an environment, Early Koolhaas, these pathological program injunctions, I think these were also good steps. But where does it lead? We never got beyond experiments in randomness. It seems like all of sudden computers changed the game and weve spent the last 15 years trying to figure out what to do about that. I think this resurgent love of Zumthor is something a shift in focus back to phenomenology (god I hate that word), but we are still arent critically analyzing social relationships, at least not to the level they have been in film.
Vediamo Altrove.mp4
link doesn't work b/c of spaces. just copy and paste
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