18 November 2023 Saturday
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2016.11.18
"classical western architectural design" except it's really just a watered-down version of Leon Krier style circa 40 years ago.
2009.11.18
It's not that "there really isn't meant to be any real thought there" but that "intellectual rigor" really isn't necessary to design architecture. In fact, it could well be asked: Does it really behoove us to mask our lack of depth and our inability to achieve real, effective, incisive strength in our work with intellectual nonsense? A lack of depth and an inability to achieve real, effective, incisive strength are not fixed with intellectual rigor, rather they are fixed via design rigor. The architectures of Zumthor, Predock and Chipperfield (for example) do not stand out because of their intellectual rigor, but because of their design rigor.
Yet design rigor isn't always necessary to create architecture either. Gehry's architecture exhibits a very high-grade design facileness, and maybe that is indeed something rare.
As for the "computer people", the various/sometimes architectures of Hadid and UnStudio (again for example) well demonstrate being beyond "figuring it out," and they're even doing it rigorously.
I'm not here trying to express my opinion, as much as I'm experimenting with establishing some kind of baseline for architectural theory to build upon. I am of the opinion, however, that honesty, or at least objective observations and assessments of present conditions, is a fair place to start.
2000.11.18
Since beginning this "vehicle" film thread, it has dawned on me that when "vehicles [in films] are both very literal and very symbolic, and, moreover, it is the seamless transition from literalness to symbolism that the vehicles deliver," that this phenomenon is much akin to the notion of the medium simultaneously being the message.
1994.11.18
182.
In the dictionary there is a listing under spontaneous magnetization which is the magnetization within each magnetic domain of a ferro-magnetic substance in the absence of a magnetizing field. This whole concept makes me wonder if the heart works because of spontaneous magnetism? Looking up ferromagnetic in the dictionary I found:
1. of or relating to a class of substances characterized by abnormally high magnetic permeability, definite saturation point and appreciable residual magnetism and hysteresis
2. a ferromagnetic substance (as iron, nickel, cobalt, and numerous alloys)
At first I found no connection to the heart but just above ferromagnetic in the dictionary is a listing for ferromagnesium.
Ferromagnesium means contains iron and magnesium. This is starting to sound like blood and it is starting to look like the heart might just be operation because of spontaneous magnetization. Further to my surprise, just above ferromagnesium in the dictionary is a listing for ferrohemoglobin which tells me to just look hemoglobin.
The definition of hemoglobin is an iron containing protein pigment occurring in the red blood cells of vertebrates and functioning primarily in the transport of oxygen from the lungs to the tissues of the body. I, of course, am thrilled here by the hemoglobin connection to the lungs and can now further imagine a magnetic thing going on between the heart and the lungs. The dictionary tells me to compare hemoglobin with carbonylhemoglobin and methemoglobin.
Methemoglobin is found in normal blood in much smaller amounts than hemoglobin, that is formed from blood, hemoglobin or oxyhemoglobin by oxidation and that differs from hemoglobin in containing ferric iron instead of ferrous iron and in being unable to combine reversely with molecular oxygen.
Carbonylhemoglobin is a very stable combination of hemoglobin and carbon monoxide in the blood when carbon dioxide is inhaled with resulting loss of ability of the blood to combine with oxygen.
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