Time isn't holding us

"You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?
  You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to?
  You may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong?
  You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?
  Letting the days go by...
  Time isn't holding us, time isn't after us
  Time isn't holding us, time doesn't hold you back
  Time isn't holding us, time isn't after us
  Time isn't holding us..."
- Once in a Lifetime, The Talking Heads

Alternate Architecture 10 - architect unknown

Books always have authors.  Even when they don't.  Books almost always include an author's byline, even to the point of including "Anonymous", if necessary.  Works published under a false name are attributed to the pseudonym naturally.  Even when the author's name is known.  References to books or articles always include the author's name.  When referencing a book, we are taught to scrupulously attribute the work to the author.  Books need authors.  It humanizes them.  Knowing the author (even when we don't) makes them accessible.

Paintings usually have artists.  If they don't, it's considered a tragedy.  To many, the value of a specific painting lies mostly in the value of the artist.  That's true both for monetary value and cultural significance.  Without an artist, a painting is cut adrift in a sea of images.  Faced with an unknown painting, historians or collectors will often first try to establish the artist.  When talking about a painting, a historian will describe the painting as it relates to the artist's life.  Paintings need artists.  It places them.  Knowing the artist makes them accessible.

Buildings often don't have architects.  Even great buildings.  Even when they do.  Buildings don't have plaques proclaiming their architect's name.  Newspaper and magazine articles about buildings rarely mention the architect (excepting architecture critics, of course).  Articles regularly omit the name of the architect, even when the architect is well known.  Buildings need occupants; not architects.  Perhaps omitting the architect makes them more accessible?

If you believe

"If you believe in trying to make the best of the finite number of years we have on this planet (while not making it any worse for anyone else), think that pride and self-righteousness are the cause of most conflict and negativity, and are humbled by the vastness and mystery of the Universe, then I'm the same religion as you." - Sal Khan, khanacademy.org

Sketches from India

Some of my sketches from Tamil Nadu, India
Robert James Eidlitz Travelling Fellowship, 2004

 

Alternate Architecture 9 - India

a piece my wife and I wrote for our Robert James Eidlitz Fellowship application:


In India, a thousand tiers of culture overlap, written layer after layer upon each other, never erasing, never revising, sometimes obscuring, but never clarifying each other.  Modern kitsch coexists with traditional dance in big budget Indian movies.  Fast food mixes with traditional architecture.  And religion infuses everything.  Out of all this explodes one of the world’s fastest growing economies, largest populations, and most misunderstood cultures.  India’s emerging influence can be felt around the world, along with its deep history, exotic culture, and unique aesthetic.  Its history is full of dramatic clashes between Islam and Hindu, tourist and pilgrim, commercialism and tradition.  Its intellectual growth amazes, while its overcrowded poverty staggers.  Studying how these warring cultural influences coexist within the Indian mind might tell us (designers and artists) a lot about our own futures in a world of increasingly conflicted and dynamic forces.

Indian architecture is an enigma.  It's an explosion of colors, forms, and figures.  For many in the West, Indian architecture is a complete unknown.  It's forms and structures are far away and unfamiliar.  

In Sanskrit, the word vastu means architecture or surrounding; shastra means system or rules.  Thus Vastu Shastras are an architectural design system, or rules for creating surroundings.  These ancient Indian texts make up perhaps the oldest design philosophy in the world.  Amazingly, although the shastras are now thousands of years old, Indians still use their principles to design and construct buildings today (as the Chinese still use Feng Shui). 

It is the Vastu Shastras that enumerate the fundamental principles of Indian (Hindu) design familiar to architectural history students, including the mandala (sacred plan diagram), maana (proportional relationships), and aayaadi (rules for human wellness).  However, the Vastu Shastras do not distinguish between architectural design, sculpture, painting, and city planning.  To the ancient authors of the vastu shastras, sculptures, buildings, and cities were simply details of the greater cosmic order. 

Mamallapuram’s Pancha Pandava Rathas (“five chariots of Pandava”) are illustrated examples of the Vastu Shastras.  Carved from solid rock to resemble Indian temples in the Dravidian style, the rathas contain, in miniature, all the essential characteristics of Indian temple architecture.  Built as early as c.630-670, the Rathas seem to have predicted the development of Dravidian temple architecture in the following centuries.  Small “test models” of temple design, these detailed sculptures are a guide to the complex language of Indian architecture.

The spectacular temple-caves at Ellora abound with 600 years of artistic detail.  12 Buddhist, 17 Hindu, and 5 Jain caves share the west-facing wall of a cliff overlooking an ancient trade route.  Although devoted to three different religions, some of the temples are believed to have been built and occupied simultaneously.  Two of the most spectacular caves, the Buddhist Monastery Cave Tin Tala and the Hindu Kailasa Temple, are believed to have been under construction at the same time.  The Kailasa Temple, in particular, is one of the most amazing works of architecture and sculpture in India.  Hewn from solid bedrock, the 90m long by 53m wide by 30m tall temple is both a fully designed Indian temple and a single, massive sculpture! 

Madurai city is the embodiment of the Vastu Shastras’ Mandala plan.  The streets are arranged in concentric squares radiating outward from the amazing Sri Meenakshi temple.  Mass rituals reinforce the power of the Mandala design with huge processions through the streets in a clockwise direction around the temple.  The Mandala design of the city is a detail experienced at every turn in Madurai, whether walking down the city streets named for Tamil months, wandering through the thousand pillared hall of the Meenakshi temple, or observing the ancient art in the “Tank of the Golden Lotuses”. 

A “detail” in Indian architecture is more than just a piece or a part; it is a reflection and a guide to the whole.  Each stone embodies the spirit of the sculpture; each sculpture embodies the spirit of the structure; each structure embodies the culture; each culture embodies the order of the world; the order of the world embodies the order of the cosmos.  Each detail contains the logic of the whole. These details are not merely worth studying for their contribution to a greater whole; rather they are compelling in themselves for what they teach us about the deeper order of Indian design. The gods are in the details because the details are the architecture. 

Alternate architecture 8 - tower building game is best of the year

2011's iTunes game of the year is Tiny Tower by NimbleBit LLC.

Alternate Architecture 7 - phantom limbs

The Nefelejcs Project reveals the phantom limbs of architecture.  The group draws a plan or section of a vanished building on a nearby wall.  A simple shadow, a cartoon, these drawings show the ghost of places now gone:
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/12/merge-invisible-murals/

Alternate Architecture 6 - Thomas Doyle

Thomas Doyle's amazing miniatures capture the essence of loss.  Surreal portraits of homes capture simultaneous moments before and after some destructive event.  The tiny people inside make the tableaus all the more sad.

"My work mines the debris of memory through the creation of intricate worlds sculpted in 1:43 scale and smaller. Often sealed under glass, the works depict the remnants of things past—whether major, transformational experiences, or the quieter moments that resonate loudly throughout a life. In much the way the mind recalls events through the fog of time, the works distort reality through a warped and dreamlike lens." - Thomas Doyle.

Alternate Architecture 5 - mapping comes inside

Ever watched a spy movie and seen the hero whip out a gadget, push a button, and access a floorplan of the building they are in?  Ever wish you could do that?  Google's working on it.  

Alternate Architecture - Gingertecture

It's a sixties postmodern gingerbread house.  Although, I hesitate to call it a "house"...  it's more of a ... "Palazzo".  It's designed by renowned architect Morad Mejohas.  - Acura Commercial, 2010.




Everybody loves gingerbread houses.  Especially architects.  Every year my firm has a gingerbread house competition.  It's great fun.
I'd love to know what you think is important in a gingerbread house.  Maybe it's similar to what you think is important in a real house?  Or not?  Please take my fun holiday survey!
Thanks, Jacob

Alternate Architecture 4 - the gift to be simple

from: www.wikimedia.org

I have a vivid memory of visiting the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill outside Louisville, KY.  It was a bittersweet, sad experience, like walking through a house one last time before moving out.  Everything was quiet and empty, but full of memory.  Small touches remained to hint at past cheerful times – a chair, a quilt, or a desk all alone in an empty room.

There was a simple elegance to Shaker life.  It extended through every object they made, every song they sang, and every place they touched.  They lived with nature, using every product of their industry, with very little waste.  But they were also very progressive.  Their places are museums to us now, but that's just because time has passed them by.  They used and invented cutting edge labor-saving devices.  Before suffrage, they had a society of rough equality and human dignity.  It's sad their beliefs doomed them to extinction.

Our lives can’t and shouldn’t be like the shakers – but we can learn much from them.  Living with less can be a virtue.  Working simply can be the greatest joy.   And having less can make us free. 

Alternate architecture 3 - Washington DC

A recent exhibit at the National Building Museum takes a look at the Washington DC that could have been, but isn't.  Unbuilt Washington features a collection of architectural models, drawings, and exhibits showcasing the unbuilt works of many different architects for projects both familiar and strange.  It sounds like a fascinating exhibit.

But maybe more interesting is the Washington DC that could be, but isn't.  The video game Fallout 3 is a post-apocalyptic action shooter set in a Washington, DC ravaged by nuclear weapons.  It's uncanny representation of ruined DC is both oddly simplistic and enormously vast.  It shows the powerful creative potential of a place (mis/re)interpreted.

Alternate architecture 2 - Gibellina

Gibellina could be a city in an Italo Calvino book.  Destroyed by an earthquake in 1968, with tragic loss of life, the city was not rebuilt.  Rather, the residents relocated to a new site nearby (new Gibellina), leaving the ruins behind.  At the request of the city, the artist Alberto Burri created a huge commemorative sculpture from the remains of the town.  The sculpture / site is a literal Nolli map, where the streets are void and the buildings are entirely poche.  It's a surreal place - a fossilized city that no one can ever inhabit again.

Alternate architecture 1 - the guidebook

"The Colosseum was the temple of the sun.  It was of marvelous beauty and greatness, disposed with many different vaulted chambers and all covered with a heaven of gilded brass, where thunder and lightning and glittering fire were made, and where rain was shed through slender tubes.  Besides this there were the supercelestial signs and the planets Sol and Luna, which were drawn along in their proper chariots.  And in the middle dwelled Phoebus, who is the god of the sun.  With his feet on the earth he reached to heaven with his head and held in his hand an orb that signified that Rome ruled over the whole world.
After some time the Blessed Silvester ordered that temple destroyed and likewise other palaces so that the orators who came to Rome would not wander through profane buildings but instead pass with devotion through the churches.  But he had the head and hands of the aforesaid idol laid before his Palace of the Lateran in remembrance of the temple, and they are now falsely called by the vulgar Samson's Ball.  And before the Colosseum was a temple where ceremonies were done to the aforesaid image."
- the medieval guide to Rome Mirabilia Urbis Romae
- from the translation The Marvels of Rome, Mirabilia Urbis Romae, Francis Morgan Nichols, 1889, republished 1986, Italica Press.

Alternate architecture - a series

Ed: Do you own a video camera?
Renee Madison: No. Fred hates them.
Fred Madison: I like to remember things my own way.
Ed: What do you mean by that?
Fred Madison: How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened. 
Lost Highway, 1997

A building is a slippery thing.  It seems so solid, so unchanging and objective.  But it's nothing more than a collection of experiences in the mind.  It's a sequence of sights, sounds, and smells woven into a movie by your brain.  And it's a group of memories bundled under an arbitrary category - "my house", "the office", "the pyramids".  These experiences, these memories, seem like external, objective things.  But they're all in your head.

Your mind is building these places all the time.  It takes your perceptions (a splash of color, a smell of paint, a feeling of cold or sun on your face) and bundles them with your stream of consciousness ("what room is the 11 o'clock meeting in again?") to make an image of a place.  It uses this image to locate you in space, to fix you in time.  It overlays time after time to build your memory of home.  It shapes your dreams.  It uses  both experienced and borrowed images to personify institutions and far flung places.  Your mind uses its spatial memory to structure your life.

No buildings aren't really made of concrete.  They're made of memories.  And memories are not a stable thing.  They change all the time.  So do our experiences of buildings.  They drift over the course of our lives, with new spaces coloring old ones, with places mis-remembered, with changing opinions, and ageing physical abilities, and with forgetting.  Our experience is a heterogeneous thing, full of holes and overlaps.  Our brains compensate by automatically smoothing things out in the background, without us even knowing it.  But the instability is there, just under the surface.

And our collective experience of buildings is even less stable.  It's built up from a collage of different people's (unstable) memories, dreams, and desires.  And it suffers from (mis)interpretation, imperfect documentation, and propaganda.  It's codified in maps, pictures, and descriptions - with varying degrees of accuracy.  Our collective spatial experience is partial and biased to begin with, even before it's colored by our cultural point-of-view.  If our individual experience has holes, our collective experience is swiss-cheese.

Which leaves a gap between the bricks and mortar of our world, and our experiences of them. This allows our individual experiences to slip away from each other.  Your experience of a place is very different from mine, from anybody else's.  And our collective experience of a place may be only lightly connected to reality (if there even is such a thing).  It enables fascinating, different experiences, from one person to the next, from one culture to the next, from one time to the next.

But "our" image of a place seems so familiar!  Our brain does such a good job of smoothing out the kinks that we can't even imagine another point of view.  It's an illusion.  When we are confronted with the other perspective, a place may seem strange, even scary.  I call this experience "alternate architecture."  Explore it with me...

the Project

the project I've been working on for 2 years is occupied!

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

CNS RESEARCH AND EDUCATION GREENHOUSE

Amherst, Massachusetts

2011

PROGRAM COMPONENTS:

Classroom, Research Laboratory, Teaching and Research Greenhouse

PROJECT TEAM:

Owner: University of Massachusetts Building Authority

User: University of Massachusetts College of Natural Sciences

LEED administrator: Payette Associates

Architect: Payette Associates

Landscape Architect: Payette Associates

Civil Engineer: Nitsch Engineering

Structure: LIM Consultants

MEP+FP: Vanderweil Engineers 

Greenhouse Design: Greenhouse Engineering, Inc.

General Contractor: DA Sullivan and Sons

Greenhouse Contractor: Stuppy Greenhouse

CLIENT QUOTES:

“These state-of-the-art greenhouses, enhance the college's research, teaching, and extension endeavors. The sophisticated design is as beautiful as it is energy efficient, provides a sustainable infrastructure to facilitate plant growth. The new laboratory and classroom spaces are housed in the same structure, provide a one-stop-shopping space for learning and experimentation.”

Steve Goodwin, Dean of the College of Natural Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"It is great to see, after so long, that we finally have a state of the art greenhouse complex where faculty can conduct research for the floriculture industry and students can gain hands-on experience in a facility current with industry standards."

Bob Luczai, Massachusetts Flower Growers Association

PRESS:

UMass Amherst - Youtube Video:

http://youtu.be/HGtAZFAFbIE

UMass Amherst Sustainability Initiative:

http://www.umass.edu/livesustainably/projects/cns-research-education-greenhouse

UMass Facilities press release:

http://www.facilitiesnet.com/site/pressreleases/UMass-Amherst-Completes-Nearly-100-Building-Projects-and-Upgrades--23037

Thirty Spokes

"Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
  It is the center hole that makes it useful.
  Shape clay into a vessel;
  It is the space within that makes it useful.
  Cut doors and windows for a room;
  It is the holes which make it useful.
  Therefore profit comes from what is there;
  Usefulness from what is not there."
- Tao Te Ching, Eleven; Lao Tsu (The Old Master)
  translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, 1997