A room´s description with haptic perception

A sensual Victorian interior. From eureka-california.com

I´ve read The Picture of Dorian Gray many years ago, and I should read it again under a new point of view. For example, we can read Juhani Pallasmaa´s book on haptic perception and then, complete the ideas reading Oscar Wilde´s novels or essays about arts and decoration. These paragraphs are from Chapter I of The Picture of Dorian Gray, don´t miss it:

Victorian interior with tall French doors to the garden. From weesiang.com

Another sensual interior from johnobrienartist.com

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pinkflowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires of the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

Portable landscape in San Francisco´s streets

¨First there were parklets, clearings placed on top of parking spaces. Then there was the Powell Street Promenade, a set of eight aluminum eddies that widen San Francisco's busiest pedestrian thoroughfare.

Now say hello to "parkmobiles" - portable landscapes in red steel bins 6 feet wide and 16 feet long, intended as a shot of mobile nature offering passers-by visual relief from asphalt and concrete. There will be six such pieces arrayed on blocks around Yerba Buena Gardens, each with a different horticultural theme.

"We want each one to be showy and eye-catching, but also easy to maintain," said Calder Gillin of CMG Landscape Architecture, which conceived the bins for the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District.

This isn't simply the latest twist on the parklet theme, which in the past year has moved from the city's bohemian edge to its downtown core. The parkmobiles signal San Francisco's most ambitious effort yet to improve the large, urban landscape in small, fluid ways - an effort set, tellingly, in a district that symbolizes old-school urban renewal.¨

REFERENCE:

Picture and excerpt from John King´s article:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/02/MN8G1KHUCE.DTL

The demolition of a life´s labor building

I can understand the owner of this property´s feeling, but, on the other side, I understand the City´s local regulations for Zoning and Building and Safety, I can say they are hard, but, considering the earthquakes and fire issues, it´s better for anybody to submit plans and be sure that everything is safe.

Now, if anybody has to pay permits, why the City would allow illegal properties? Why would anybody build a house skipping fees? When the City finds an illegal property, the process is simple. The owner will receive a letter from Code Enforcement, a professional has to be hired to provide the plans together with Title 24 Energy calculation and structural calculations. If it´s not done, the City has the right to demolish the illegal structures.

And nobody is taken by surprise. From Los Angeles Times:

¨A retired phone company technician who has been battling code enforcement over his ornate maze of structures dubbed "Phonehenge West" said he is not defeated -- even as workers began demolishing his three-decade project.

Alan Kimble Fahey, 59, of Acton had spent almost 30 years building his creation from discarded power company utility poles and other recycled materials. But he was convicted in June on a dozen building code violations because he did not obtain the proper permits.

Fahey has moved to a rental property in Tehachapi and has hired a company to start dismantling a 70-foot tower -- the highlight of his life's labor. Fahey said Friday morning the tower would probably come down within hours.

When asked if he would rebuild, Fahey said, "Even better. They haven't broken me."

I hope next time Mr Fahey submits all plans and calculations...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/phonehenge-west.html

Society for Phenomenology and Media. Call for Papers

CONFERENCE THEME: Media: Technology, Epistemology, Ontology, and Ideology

WHEN: February 16-19, 2012

WHERE: National Universiity, San Diego, California

APPLICATION DEADLINE: December 1, 2011

The Society for Phenomenology invites proposals for conference papers and three-person panels for its 14th Annual International Conference.

While phenomenological approaches have always formed a core at SPM conferences, all perspectives on media are welcome. The Society is especially interested in attracting divergent views from feminist, new historicist, analytic, linguistic, Marxist, semiological, structuralist and post-structuralist, post-colonial, and other perspectives. The Society also seeks research in topics of interest in popular culture, cultural studies, and gender studies as they are connected to media.

SPM conferences have been held in San Diego, California; Puebla, Mexico; Krakow, Poland; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Provo, Utah; Helsinki, Finland; Monmouth, Oregon; Arlington, Virginia; and Furtwangen and Freiburg, Germany. Speakers have included Anna-Terera Tymieniecka, Vivian Sobchack, Lester Embree, J. N. Mohanty, Bina Gupta, Mauricio Beauchot, Antonio Zirion, Barry Smith, John Durham Peters, Julia Iribarne, Paul Majkut, and Holger Zaborowski.

Direct questions and Submit title and 250-word abstract to:

Ms. Gabriela Romani, SPM Coordinator

socphenmedia@yahoo.com

Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam 2011

Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam 2011

6 - 9 Oct

LantarenVenster, Rotterdam

Fresh movies, cult hits, documentaries, animations and art-house gems: the AFFR screens about 100 very different films and with interviews, bike tours and debates it is by far the most ambitious program ever. The films have one thing in common. Architecture is always the protagonist. For its sixth edition, the AFFR has therefore opted for the most spectacular part of Rotterdam: the new LantarenVenster of architect Álvaro Siza at the Wilhelminapier.

Movie tickets cost € 8.50 (regular) / € 7.50 (on presentation of student card, CJP or 65 + pass holders). Day tickets € 25. The presale starts on September 26. Tickets are available at the box office of LantarenVenster (010-2772277).

http://www.affr.nl

Crossing the Line Conference. Call for Papers

Tibet: Self Portrait: Traced Wanderings by Irene Barberis

American University in Dubai, Dubai, UAE.

1st November – 3rd November 2011

Crossing the Line: Drawing in the Middle East - intersections of transdisciplinary practice and understanding will bring together specialists from various fields of research and practices to examine the role of drawing in the contemporary Middle East. Drawing as medium, as a tool, as notation, performance, and as a specific mode of thinking and imagining in the processes of invention, production, reproduction and communication within and across fields and disciplines: from art to science, from technology to ideology and cultural practices.

Conference themes:

Drawing as a transdisciplinary practice

Drawing as an intersection

Crossing the Line: hand and technology in a changing world

Drawing: a portrait and landscape-notations of our time.

This conference is a collaboration between The American

University in Dubai and RMIT University, Australia.

The deadline for abstracts/proposals is 15 August 2011.

Enquiries: irene.barberis@rmit.edu.au

http://crossingthelineconference.blogspot.com/2011/07/crossing-line-call-for-papers.html

An excerpt of ¨House Decoration¨. From Essays and Lectures by Oscar Wilde

Interior decor of Oscar Wilde´s house. From discoverireland.com

Oscar Wilde´s house

Aestheticism (or the Aesthetic Movement) was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design. Generally, it represents the same tendencies that symbolism ordecadence represented in France, or decadentismo represented in Italy, and may be considered the British version of the same style. It was part of the anti-19th century reaction and had post-Romantic origins, and as such anticipates modernism. It was a feature of the late 19th century from about 1868 to about 1900. 

The Peacock room, designed by James Abbott Mc Neill Whistler. Wikipedia.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticism
From House Decoration in From Essays and Lectures by Oscar Wilde:

¨IN my last lecture I gave you something of the history of Art in England. I sought to trace the influence of the French Revolution upon its development. I said something of the song of Keats and the school of the pre-Raphaelites. But I do not want to shelter the movement, which I have called the English Renaissance, under any palladium however noble, or any name however revered. The roots of it have, indeed, to be sought for in things that have long passed away, and not, as some suppose, in the fancy of a few young men - although I am not altogether sure that there is anything much better than the fancy of a few young men.

When I appeared before you on a previous occasion, I had seen nothing of American art save the Doric columns and Corinthian chimney-pots visible on your Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Since then, I have been through your country to some fifty or sixty different cities, I think. I find that what your people need is not so much high imaginative art but that which hallows the vessels of everyday use. I suppose that the poet will sing and the artist will paint regardless whether the world praises or blames. He has his own world and is independent of his fellow-men. But the handicraftsman is dependent on your pleasure and opinion. He needs your encouragement and he must have beautiful surroundings. Your people love art but do not sufficiently honour the handicraftsman. Of course, those millionaires who can pillage Europe for their pleasure need have no care to encourage such; but I speak for those whose desire for beautiful things is larger than their means. I find that one great trouble all over is that your workmen are not given to noble designs. You cannot be indifferent to this, because Art is not something which you can take or leave. It is a necessity of human life.

And what is the meaning of this beautiful decoration which we call art? In the first place, it means value to the workman and it means the pleasure which he must necessarily take in making a beautiful thing. The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart. I cannot impress the point too frequently that beautiful and rational designs are necessary in all work. I did not imagine, until I went into some of your simpler cities, that there was so much bad work done. I found, where I went, bad wall-papers horribly designed, and coloured carpets, and that old offender the horse-hair sofa, whose stolid look of indifference is always so depressing. I found meaningless chandeliers and machine-made furniture, generally of rosewood, which creaked dismally under the weight of the ubiquitous interviewer. I came across the small iron stove which they always persist in decorating with machine-made ornaments, and which is as great a bore as a wet day or any other particularly dreadful institution. When unusual extravagance was indulged in, it was garnished with two funeral urns.

It must always be remembered that what is well and carefully made by an honest workman, after a rational design, increases in beauty and value as the years go on. The old furniture brought over by the Pilgrims, two hundred years ago, which I saw in New England, is just as good and as beautiful to-day as it was when it first came here. Now, what you must do is to bring artists and handicraftsmen together. Handicraftsmen cannot live, certainly cannot thrive, without such companionship. Separate these two and you rob art of all spiritual motive.

Having done this, you must place your workman in the midst of beautiful surroundings. The artist is not dependent on the visible and the tangible. He has his visions and his dreams to feed on. But the workman must see lovely forms as he goes to his work in the morning and returns at eventide. And, in connection with this, I want to assure you that noble and beautiful designs are never the result of idle fancy or purposeless day-dreaming. They come only as the accumulation of habits of long and delightful observation. And yet such things may not be taught. Right ideas concerning them can certainly be obtained only by those who have been accustomed to rooms that are beautiful and colours that are satisfying.

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/774/pg774.html
(Phrases in bold per my selection)

The Hypothetical Development Organization (H.D.O.).

¨Begun in December 2010, H.D.O. was founded by writer Rob Walker, photographer Ellen Susan and New Orleans’ publisher/gadfly G.K. Darby. The trio commissions, prints and posts fantasy signage not only as a means of provoking interest in abandoned sites around New Orleans, but also as a way to generate an alternative narrative for the city. They draw on the active imaginations of architects, designers and artists, giving them free reign to rework the existing buildings on paper. "As a public service, H.D.O. invents a hypothetical future for each selected structure. Unlike a traditional, reality-based developer, however, our organization is not bound by rules relating to commercial potential, practical materials, or physics," reads the organization’s website. Funded by a Kickstarter crowd-sourced grant, posters will pop up around the Big Easy this winter and spring.¨

REFERENCE for picture and text:

http://places.designobserver.com/feature/the_interventionists_toolkit_posters_pamphlets_and_guides/25408/