From: Brian Carroll
To: design-l
Subject: Re: venturi and koolhaas
Date: 2002.04.18 11:21
hi Ron, interesting, as i never saw the 'scale' issue of context/site- to - building. do have Iconography yet have been unable to read it through.
one thing where i thinkfeel we may differ in appraising Venturi's work/ideas, is that, as far as thinking about the built environment goes, (so, to hold back practice for only a moment), to me the writings have been inspiring in that the mundane aspects all around us, things that we have inherited (as architectural details), could become informative, in a way classical details once were in their appropriate era of representation and symbolism.
meaning, that a wall socket, a streetlight, a light bulb, if using these in unique ways, as a language or type of communication form, that these could do what POMO historicism cannot and could never do, and that is, add meaning where there is none, beyond the aesthetic of seeing.
not to go too much into it, but the electronic screen is just that, like a window (virilio, maybe venturi too, and a million other architectural messengers too) it is a new form to be integrated in a building. but it is the most visual, but not necessarily by any means iconographically the most interesting, potent, or the only option 4 details.
while someone may have a chunk of 10,000 USD marble imported on their floor, from another view, a 50 dollar antique light bulb (one of the big demo models from Westinghouse or whomever, GE, others) as a detail to focus on. as it re-presents the same idea as the screen, but much prior to its incarnation as an electronic screen, yet, one of the first details that became ubiquitous (and unnamed) in architecture, beyond its utilitarian factor. until 'meaning' is deciphered in these everyday details of the built environment, the screen-work is just that, and playing on the surface of e-iconography.
and it has been several decades of this, modernism trying to push its old materiality through the physical and mental doorstops, yet there is no rationale to make the modern discourse the modus-operandi for electronics/electricity/electromagnetism, as it is secondary, or several levels beyond that, from today.
brian
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