6 April

1520 death of Raffaello Santi
1528 death of Albrecht Dürer

1667 birth of Jacques Jules Gabriel

1814 birth of Miklós Ybl
1881 death of Gabriel Jean Antoine Davioud

scale and architecture
1996.04.06     206g 2080 2093 2120 2122 2133 2137 2156 2157 2189 2198 2205 2206 2209 2226 2227 2244 3786

Towards a New Dexterity
Patterning
1998.04.06     3000f

Re: (not just) Steve's (but all our) envelope
2000.04.06 12:23     4415b

ironically, I never mentioned skin
2000.04.06 12:22     3716d 3739b 3770b 3791 4415b 5720f

Re: E-M~A ARCHITECTURE / OSMOTIC ARCHITECTURE
2000.04.06 21:23     3716e 3784f

overall, one very Piranesian daze
2000.04.06     e2607 e2608 e2611 e2743 e2744 e2759 e2844 e2909 e3106 5300b 5319r

What's your favorite piece of architecture?
2015.04.06 11:05     3310n 3751f 3775y

the streets of Piranesi's Campo Marzio
2021.04.06     5321e 9007m

Chan Sawant   Olympic Sports City   New Delhi

Herzog & de Meuron   56 Leonard   New York



2000.04.06 12:23
Re: (not just) Steve's (but all our) envelope
It might be better to refer to the plural skins in architecture as opposed to just the singular skin in architecture. I suggests this because it seems that architectural skin most times refers specifically to the exterior skin of a building. It may be much more appropriate to refer to the inside surfaces of a building as skin as well. Moreover, it is architecture's interior skins that most envelop a building's operational systems.


2000.04.06 21:23
Re: E-M~A ARCHITECTURE / OSMOTIC ARCHITECTURE
...my method is to understand our bodies in order understand how our imaginations work, subsequently, once the working of our imaginations is understood, then we can begin to decipher how our imaginations generate architectures.

2000.04.06 12:22
ironically, I never mentioned skin
After I wrote:
"Is not the 'architecture' of the human body an envelope rammed full of 'attributes' that DO NOT show their 'implementation' on the outside? For example, breasts with nipples hardly reflect either the lungs or the pumping heart inside, likewise the one-piece torso offers little 'superficial' indication of two cavities inside. And further, isn't the sublime singularity of the navel very much like the exact opposite of the twisting, turning, asymmetrical intestines just inside? [And just think how literally close the activities within barber shops and beauty parlors come to the activities inside the brain, yet who would dare say that these two activities share the same "function"?]"
John Young and Van Varga both replied with immediate references to corporal skin. This epidermal connection is appropriate because our skin is indeed our corporal envelope, however, I wish to stress that the examples I used (breasts, nipples, torso, navel, head of hair) where not about skin, but rather corporal design features specific to the body's surface -- yes skin is involved as the predominant material application of these features, but skin is not what predominates the design; our skin is what adapts to the design.
Van also mentioned the sense of touch integral to skin, and this undeniable connection has truly provocative architectural design implications, i.e., envelopes that feel and or respond to contact (or, as inspired by John Young, building surfaces that (visually) indicate how they are "feeling"). About five years ago, while I was heavily doing research regarding (the theory of) chronosomatics, I came to the conclusion that touch is the first sense to have come into being, and that touch/contact was/is indeed the medium by which "life" itself began. Not only did touch exist before tasting, smelling, hearing or seeing, but, most of all, it was the contact of two otherwise lifeless entities that 'spawned' animate life. Moreover, it can well be argued that tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing are really only very specialized touch/contact senses. Note also that the sense of touch is not just an attribute of the body's external skin, but a sense indigenous to all parts of the body inside and out.
So what were these two lifeless entities that spawned life through contact with each other? Of course, my answer is that I reasonably assume the true answer may at this late point never re-appear, and that even a reenactment would fall far, far short of the original event. Nonetheless, I believe there is a very significant clue as to the 'scenario' of that first contact right on our own bodies, specifically at the body's extreme external tips, i.e., the tips of our toes and the tips our fingers. It is there that last vestiges of humanity's physical hard external shell still exists, namely our nails, and right underneath our nails are those cross-sections of our body's that are largely just skin. I theoretically propose that this soft entity under a hard entity represents the same conditions that first spawned life. Essentially, it was something soft and vulnerable that found "security and protection" under something hard and more permanent. Animate life began when the contact between the soft and the hard actually became a bond, and thus too the sense of touch came into being.
Now skipping millions of years on the evolutionary scale, I see this soft/hard duality as the beginning of two sexes as well. Contrary to common perceptions, it is the female that is hard and the male that is soft. In simple undeniable terms it is woman that enables embryonic development within her own body -- woman's bodies themselves are hard protective shells (only women corporeally possess and facilitates the human egg that in turn allows fetal development). Men, on the other hand, very much do not have that "built-in" protectiveness, hence men make great displays about forever being on the defensive, and indeed it is almost exclusively men that have continually created our planet's foremost industry, if only to create that protective shell that their sex was not born with -- the age old military apparatus (shields, armor, war ships, submarines, tanks, stealth bomber, etc. are all "man"-made protective shells).
So what then is architecture? Is it a hard, 'simple', 'natural' protective shell that engenders the continuation of life? Or is it a soft formlessness forever (re-)designing an applied shell it doesn't naturally have?

050406a Sober House II plans   2359i01
050406b Sober House II elevations   2350i16



05040601.db


17040601   Chan Sawant   Olympic Sports City   New Delhi
17040602   Herzog & de Meuron   56 Leonard   New York


18040601 Mayor's House plans   2269i10


20040601   iiq06 model   2348i35
20040602   iiq06 base plan project plans   2348i36



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