The tower of Babel. Illustrated by Gustave Doré

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.—Genesis xi, 1-9.

REFERENCE

THE DORE GALLERY OF BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS. Vol. I. Edition of 1891

Paul Gustave Dore was born in the city of Strasburg, January 10, 1833. Of his boyhood we have no very particular account. At eleven years of age, however, he essayed his first artistic creation—a set' of lithographs, published in his native city. The following year found him in Paris, entered as a 7. student at the Charlemagne Lyceum. His first actual work began in 1848, when his fine series of sketches, the "Labors of Hercules," was given to the public through the medium of an illustrated, journal with which he was for a long time connected as designer. In 1856 were published the illustrations for Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques" and those for "The Wandering Jew "—the first humorous and grotesque in the highest degree—indeed, showing a perfect abandonment to fancy; the other weird and supernatural, with fierce battles, shipwrecks, turbulent mobs, and nature in her most forbidding and terrible aspects. Every incident or suggestion that could possibly make the story more effective, or add to the horror of the scenes was seized upon and portrayed with wonderful power. These at once gave the young designer a great reputation, which was still more enhanced by his subsequent works.

With all his love for nature and his power of interpreting her in her varying moods, Dore was a dreamer, and many of his finest achievements were in the realm of the imagination. But he was at home in the actual world also, as witness his designs for "Atala," "London—a Pilgrimage," and many of the scenes in "Don Quixote."

When account is taken of the variety of his designs, and the fact considered that in almost every task he attempted none had ventured before him, the amount of work he accomplished is fairly incredible. To enumerate the immense tasks he undertook—some single volumes alone containing hundreds of illustrations—will give some faint idea of his industry. Besides those already mentioned are Montaigne, Dante, the Bible, Milton, Rabelais, Tennyson's "Idyls of the King," "The Ancient Mariner," Shakespeare, "Legende de Croquemitaine," La Fontaine's "Fables," and others still.

Take one of these works—the Dante, La Fontaine, or "Don Quixote"—and glance at the pictures. The mere hand labor involved in their production is surprising; but when the quality of the work is properly estimated, what he accomplished seems prodigious. No particular mention need be made of him as painter or sculptor, for his reputation rests solely upon his work as an illustrator.

Dore's nature was exuberant and buoyant, and he was youthful in appearance. He had a passion for music, possessed rare skill as a violinist, and it is assumed that, had he failed to succeed with his pencil, he could have won a brilliant reputation as a musician.

He was a bachelor, and lived a quiet, retired life with his mother—married, as he expressed it, to her and his art. His death occurred on January 23, 1883.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8701/8701-h/8701-h.htm

Restaurarán la iglesia San Francisco de Asís en La Plata

Iglesia de San Francisco de Asís en La Plata. Foto de nestor_lp en http://www.panoramio.com/photo/16171294

Interior de la Iglesia San Francisco de Asís. Foto de Santiago Hafford para La Nación

El ministerio de Infraestructura bonaerense licitó la restauración y puesta en valor del Templo Parroquial Iglesia San Francisco de Asís ubicado en La Plata, en el marco del Programa Bicentenario y Obra Pública Patrimonial de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Según se informó oficialmente, las obras del templo que fue declarado Monumento Histórico Provincial en 1975 y donde se casaron Juan Domingo Perón y Eva Duarte, el 10 de diciembre de 1945, contará con un presupuesto de poco más de 2.400.000 pesos. “Esta obra es fundamental para recuperar la Iglesia San Francisco de Asís, que tiene un gran valor histórico y religioso, y que es muy preciada dentro de la comunidad local. Todas las tareas de restauración del interior y el exterior se harán con la rigurosidad necesaria para respetar la mirada patrimonial de este lugar, que fue construido hace más de un siglo”, precisó la ministra de Infraestructura provincial, Cristina Álvarez Rodríguez. La dictadura militar la eliminó del catálogo de monumentos históricos, pero fue reincorporada en 1987. Los trabajos comprenden dos grandes áreas. Por un lado se van a restaurar la nave principal, las capillas, los confesionarios, los altares laterales, y las fachadas de la casa parroquial. También el campo de deportes adyacente al templo y el interior de la torre del campanario. Tanto en la colocación de molduras y elementos decorativos, como en la reparación de las carpinterías, vidrios rotos y vitreaux, se respetará el diseño original. Además se realizarán tareas de reposición en todo el sector comprendido en el Teatro: en los cielorrasos, contrapisos interiores, desagües, la herrería y la fachada del local de la Liga de Madres de Familia y de la casa parroquial, en el tramo que vincula la Iglesia con el Teatro. También se reemplazará la vereda por otra que se adecue a la normativa vigente, y se cambiará toda la instalación eléctrica y las luminarias. Al acto licitatorio presentaron sus propuestas tres empresas y los trabajos tienen un plazo de ejecución de 300 días.

REFERENCIA:

http://www.lavozdelaprovincia.com.ar/2011/07/restauran-la-iglesia-de-la-plata-donde.html

The Trascending Architecture Symposium. Washington DC

The Symposium will take place this Fall (October 6-8, 2011) at Catholic University of America School of Architecture and Planning. It is entitled “Transcending Architecture: Aesthetics and Ethics of the Numinous”. Attendance will be free of charge but you must register to secure a seat.

The “Transcending Architecture” symposium will consider the aesthetics and ethics that move us from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from the profane to the sacred. Far from avoiding the charged issues of subjectivity, society and intangibility, we will examine the phenomenological, symbolic, and designerly ways in which the holy gets fixed and transmitted through architecture. A remarkable group of presenters will provide attendees with ample opportunities for intellectual, spiritual, and professional growth. Confirmed speakers include Juhani Pallasmaa, Karsten Harries, Thomas Barrie, Karla Britton, Michael Crosbie, Lindsay Jones, Rebecca Krinke, and Maged Senbel.

More information at:

http://www.sacred-space.net/symposium/overview.htm

A town in honour of Ivo Andrić

Where the Drina flows with the full force of its green and foaming waters' ... the fabled 16th century stone bridge over the Drina river in Višegrad. Photograph: Mort Rosenblum/AP. Guardian.co.UK

I love the work of Emir Kusturica, being my favorite movie ¨Time of the gypsies¨. I also enjoy his music.

In a certain way, I´m related to the Yugoslavian culture, from my father in law´s family. My son´s name is Ivo, as a Yugoslavian word for Ivan, that´s John or Juan. 

The final scene in “Time of the Gypsies,” which uses the facade of the Milan Cathedral as a backdrop. The opera is an adaptation of Emir Kusturica’s 1988 award-winning movie. NYTimes.com

From guardian.co.uk, Kusturica´s new idea: a new town in honour of Nobel laurate Ivo Andric:

¨Work is set to begin building a new town inspired by the writing of Yugoslavian Nobel literature laureate Ivo Andrić, following plans by film director Emir Kusturica and the Republika Srpska's government.

Andrić, who won the Nobel in 1961, is best known for his novel The Bridge on the Drina, the inspiration behind the new town of Andrićgrad. Written by the author during the second world war, it tells of the three centuries of conflict the bridge of the novel's title has witnessed, situated as it is in the small Bosnian town of Višegrad.

Work on the town of Andrićgrad, which will be located within Višegrad, is due to start this week and to be completed by 2014, reported Serbian news agency Tanjug. Kusturica, who has won the Cannes Palme d'Or twice, told Balkan Insight that it would be "the biggest, most spectacular project of my life", with stone streets, gates and tower, encompassing a museum, library, theatre and memorial to Andrić . The project to build the 17,000-square metre town will be funded by the film director, and by the government of the Republic of Srpska.¨

Keep on reading:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/28/bosnian-novelist-new-town-ivo-andric

Lea el artículo en español:

¨El director de cine hizo las planos de un nuevo pueblo que será construido desde los cimientos, inspirado en la novela más famosa del más célebre escritor yugoslavo, Ivo Andrić, cuando se cumplen 50 años de recibiera el Nobel de Literatura. Una historia atravesada por la guerra que destruyó ciudades enteras.

Según Balkan Insight, Kusturica está planificando usar Andrićgrad en sus próximas películas Pancho Villa y El puente sobre el Drina. El director ya ha construido una aldea, Kustendorf, sobre el valle de Mokra Gora en Serbia occidental, que tiene una cancha de básquet subterránea, una biblioteca y un cine. "Un día, cuando estaba filmando, me fijé en un rayo de sol y pensé: Allí construiré un pueblo", le contó Kusturica a The Guardian en el 2005.¨

http://www.revistaenie.clarin.com/literatura/La_ciudad_que_sono_Kusturica_0_507549504.html

A treasure hidden below the Padmanabhaswamy temple

Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple. From http://www.dnaindia.com/

¨Round-the-clock police patrolling around the famous Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram was put in place on Monday as the stock-taking of priceless assets, hidden in the shrine’s cellars, by a Supreme Court-appointed panel resumed after a day's break.

The patrolling, monitored by an exclusive control room set up at the Fort police station, was enforced based on the decision taken by a high-level meeting convened by chief minister Oommen Chandy on Sunday.(...)The cellars of the shrine, managed by a trust controlled by the erstwhile Travancore royal family, has revealed invaluable wealth running into thousands of crores since the inventory got underway last week.

According to temple sources, the panel today made the list of articles in a chamber, which is frequently opened for using its jewellery, lamps and silver and brass platters for temple rituals.

A decision on searching one remaining chamber, which is seldom opened, was deferred as it required technical expertise and support to avoid damage to the structure. A decision on this was expected to be taken on Friday, the sources said.

Since the exercise started, five cellars had been examined and the list of articles found from them would be submitted to the apex court by the seven-member panel, which included two former high court judges.

A stunning range of gold ornaments, idols inlaid with precious stones, jewels, heaps of solid gold coins and silver and gold platters and lamps have been discovered from the cellars so far.¨

From:

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_padmanabhaswamy-temple-gets-round-the-clock-patrolling_1562330

Padmanabhaswamy temple. Photo by Rainer Haessner

Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple is a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu, maintained by the erstwhile Travancore Royal Family, and located within the East Fort in the city of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala state, South India. The temple is one of 108 Divya Desams (Holy Abodes of Vishnu) principal centres of worship of the deity in Vaishnavism. The temple, constructed in the Dravidian style of architecture is referenced in the early medieval writings of the Tamil Alvar saints (6th-9th centuries CE), with structural additions to it made throughout the medieval period up to the 16th century CE.

The history of the temple dates back to the 8th Century. It is referenced in the Divya Prabandha canon of literature by the Tamil Alvar poets.

The foundation of the present gopuram was laid in 1566.The temple has a 100-foot,seven-tier gopuram. The temple stands by the side of a tank, named Padma Theertham (meaning the lotus spring). The temple has a corridor with 365 and one-quarter sculptured granite-stone pillars with elaborate carvings. This corridor extends from the eastern side into the sanctum sanctorum. An eighty-foot flag-staff stands in front of the main entry from the 'prakaram' (corridor). The ground floor under the gopuram (main entrance in the eastern side) is known as the 'Nataka Sala' where the famous temple art Kathakali was staged in the night during the ten-day uthsavam (festival) conducted twice a year, during the Malayalam months of Meenam and Thulam.

REFERENCE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmanabhaswamy_Temple

Lea la noticia en español:

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1386613-hallan-un-tesoro-en-un-templo-de-la-india?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=titulares&utm_campaign=NLCult

On the difference between Pure and Empirical Knowledge

House wreck. By swainboat at flickr.com/photos

¨That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it.

But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element given by sense, till long practice has made us attentive to, and skilful in separating it. It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called a priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience.

But the expression, "a priori," is not as yet definite enough adequately to indicate the whole meaning of the question above started. For, in speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say, that this or that may be known a priori, because we do not derive this knowledge immediately from experience, but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself borrowed from experience. Thus, if a man undermined his house, we say, "he might know a priori that it would have fallen;" that is, he needed not to have waited for the experience that it did actually fall. But still, a priori, he could not know even this much. For, that bodies are heavy, and, consequently, that they fall when their supports are taken away, must have been known to him previously, by means of experience.

By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience. Knowledge a priori is either pure or impure. Pure knowledge a priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up. For example, the proposition, "Every change has a cause," is a proposition a priori, but impure, because change is a conception which can only be derived from experience.¨

REFERENCE

The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant.Translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn. First edition 1781

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4280/pg4280.html

Inspired by "The City"

City 3. Digital art by Myriam B. Mahiques

" THE city waited twenty thousand years.

The planet moved through space and the flowers of the fields grew up and fell away, and still the city waited; and the rivers of the planet rose and waned and turned to dust. Still the city waited. The winds that had been young and wild grew old and serene, and the clouds of the sky that had been ripped and torn were left alone to drift in idle whitenesses. Still the city waited.

The city waited with its windows and its black obsidian walls and its sky towers and its unpennanted turrets, with its untrod streets and its untouched doorknobs, with not a scrap of paper or a fingerprint upon it. The city waited while the planet arced in space, following its orbit about a blue-white sun, and the seasons passed from ice to fire and back to ice and then to green fields and yellow summer meadows.

It was on a summer afternoon in the middle of the twenty thousandth year that the city ceased waiting." 

From the story " The City", by Ray Bradbury. In his book " The Illustrated Man".

Selection of projects by Peter Zumthor

Art Museum of the Cologne.

Bruder Klaus field chapel

Peter Zumthor (born 26 April 1943) is a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize.

In 1994, he was elected to the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. In 1996, he was made an honorary member of the Bund Deutscher Architekten (BDA). In 1998, Zumthor received the Carlsberg Architecture Prize for his designs of the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Bregenz, Austria and the Thermal Baths at Vals, Switzerland (see below). He won the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 1999. Recently, he was awarded Praemium Imperiale in (2008) and the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2009).

The Vals spa—famed among architects for its evocative sequence of spaces and exquisite construction details—presents intriguing correspondences between Heidegger’s writing and Zumthor’s architecture. Writing in his architectural manifesto, Thinking Architecture, Zumthor mirrors Heidegger’s celebration of experience and emotion as measuring tools. A chapter entitled “A way of looking at things” begins by describing a door handle:

I used to take hold of it when I went into my aunt’s garden. That door handle still seems to me like a special sign of entry into a world of different moods and smells. I remember the sound of gravel under my feet, the soft gleam of waxed oak staircase. I can hear the heavy front door closing behind me as I walk along the dark corridor and enter the kitchen[...].(1998:9)

Zumthor always emphasises the sensory aspects of the architectural experience. To him, the physicality of materials can involve an individual with the world, evoking experiences and texturing horizons of place through memory. He recalls places he once measured out at his aunt’s house through their sensual qualities.

Zumthor´s project for serpentine´s gallery, 2011

A chapel in Switzerland

Thermal bath at Vals

REFERENCE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Zumthor

All pictures from:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jun/19/architecture-serpentine-pavilion