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Theory Part II - Doing What I Said I Would Do...
2007.03.28 12:10
He'll be sinkin', just ignore it all. Why should you be any different than everybody else? Although I am serious about the "convincing piece of architecture" being more virtual than anything else.
But going back to the original question of this thread, does theory today make better designers? Personally, I think teaching style and technique would make better designers, where theory applies to the various styles and techniques and not so much to forming a priori thought processes of the designer.
Most of my architecture teachers worked in Kahn's offices and/or were students of his studio at Penn.
Does Goldhagen mention Piranesi's Campo Marzio hanging over Kahn's office desk or the Gaudet volumes on the desk?
Naturally, his thinking has foundations in architectural history. As Joseph Esherick sees it, "There is a moral injunction and an ethical character about Kahn's pronouncements. It is familiar in the writings of Julien Gaudet, whose Éléments et Théorie de l'Architecture in four volumes (1870-1880) posits that the elements of architecture are not the ancient orders but they are windows, walls, floors, and light. The idea that a wall wants to be a wall and the idea of master spaces and slave spaces are both in Gaudet. I remember," Esherick adds, "that the prominent thing on Kahn's desk when I first went to meet him in the late 50s was a copy of Gaudet's old testament."
--C. Ray Smith, Supermannerism: New Attitudes in Post-Modern Architecture (1977), p. 82-3.
[note to self: Kahn reenacts both Piranesi and Gaudet.]
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