Re: virtual (museum) dialogue
1999.01.12 10:58
...how virtual/unbuilt buildings are dealt with at Quondam and how they thus contend within the "grand narrative" of architecture. Quondam's collection of 3d cad models is more than an act of documentation and/or preservation in that a cad model facilitates literally infinite illustrative and investigative possibilities, therefore a virtual museum like Quondam offers a wholly new paradigm in terms of establishing a truly unlimited collection.
What I gleam from contemporary texts regarding architecture and the virtual realm is that all of today's "virtual" designers / thinkers / critics are oblivious to the long history of architecture's relationship with the virtual. My personal favorite example of an architectural virtual environment is the emperor Hadrian's villa at Tivoli built in the early 2nd century--different sections of the villa were designed to evoke Hadrian's favorite places within the Roman Empire--a true virtual reality in the making. There is no question that today's computer /electronic technology is rightly responsible for bringing virtual architecture to the fore, but it is also a serious mistake for architects and designers to remain unmindful of the virtual realities of architecture that have absolutely nothing to do with computers.
I have already from time to time entertained the idea of "building" a 3d model of/for Quondam, and the truth of the matter is that I am nowhere near convinced that the creation of an illusory museum is necessary for Quondam to fulfill its museum operations. Furthermore, and on the other hand, Quondam can already stand firm in the conviction that each of the "buildings" in its collection represents a virtual museum of architecture, and thus sets forth the notion that a truly virtual museum is indeed an institution that can readily be any building and/or any number of buildings. In either case, the illusion /incorporation of halls, stairs, rooms, etc. would demonstrate an "untruthfulness to materials" because Quondam utilizes the structural system of HTML and web browsers rather than architecture's traditional "building blocks".
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Re: the dead end of urbanism as we know it
2003.01.12 13:56
John wrote:
Just about any large city today, is part farcical staged phony history [etc.]
Steve asks:
What parts or are there parts of any large city today that are un-farcical un-staged un-phony [history]?
I ask because I would like to see what might be the opposite of 'farcical staged phony history.'
[possible leads:] Is NYC's Central Park a farcical, staged and phony history, hence a tragi-comedy reenactment? I'd say kinda-sorta, but it's very much liked nonetheless.
Philadelphia's original grid plan is patently a reenactment of ancient Roman military/colonial urbanism. When I worked downtown in the 1980s I never tired of the street theater, which I surmised was engendered by the average street widths (just a tad too narrow for a modern metropolis), but I never saw the plan as farcical, staged, or phony. [Or did I just contradict myself? I'm again reminded that where there's real reenactment, there's usually inversion as well.]
Philadelphia's Fairmount Park is the largest urban park in the world, and it has a large collection of historic homes, indeed country estates from the 18th century when what is now Fairmount Park actually was 'out in the country' relative to Philadelphia. None of this is farcical, staged, or phony, rather true history. When you are at Mount Pleasant, for example, a true Georgian Manor, and you look at the adjacent ball-playing fields of today, what you are also looking at is a very old field where crops used to be grown.
Philadelphia's Independence Mall is today being newly reconstructed. Pretty much all the new stuff is (going to be) farcical, staged, and phony history, but none of it is reenactment.
Re: the dead end of urbanism as we know it
2003.01.12 16:19
I always thought it interesting that the oldest part of Berlin actually began as two cities (I guess towns, really), Berlin and Colln. Thus the two Berlins of the latter 20th century were not at all unprecedented for this place. [Dare I suggest that West Berlin and East Berlin were quasi reenactments of their very origin?]
Interesting too is how Berlin's growth over the last several centuries was more an assimilation of the towns/boroughs that surrounded old Berlin. Ungers, in the 1970s, liked to refer to Berlin as an archipelago, a group of islands.
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050112a.db Romaphilia, Dominican Fortress
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050112b.db Dominican Fortress, plan development
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050112c.db Philadelphia Museum of Art, model
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050112d.db Philadelphia Museum of Art, plan
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050112e.db Romaphilia, Parkway quadrant, model
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050112f.db Romaphilia, Parkway Interpolation, plan
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050112g.db Ignudi
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any suggestion about Manual DeLanda courses in Upenn
2007.01.12 11:57
Invalid design methods have a far greater impact, if you asked me.
09011201.db IQ, Philadelphia street grid, in progress
"A post about empty spaces - or lack of - feels like a suitable place to put Quondam, Stephen Lauf's epically impenetrable 'online collage', a real labyrinth of a website. Here, for example, you'll find information on the First Virtual House of the 20th Century, Robert Venturi's Franklin Court. Not just an empty room, but an empty house."
2009.01.12
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