Memories of a house demolition

I´ve been at a Craftsman style house demolition yesterday. Being built in wood frame, it´s impressive how fast a house like this can be demolished.

This particular house that had been designed by an architect at the beginning of the SXX, has to be respectfully remembered.  It has been documented before, there´s a complete record of it.

The homeowner told me that passers-by shook their heads in discontent. But this is progress, part of the evolution of cities, and if planners have decided to support the demo, there are no more complaints.

Anyway, as a kind of homage, I´ve taken pictures and decided to show them under an artistic point of view, what I usually call, ¨the beauty of ruins.¨ 

A free standing corner, the textures of the remainings intermingled with the palm trees, ...

the textures of all materials including the fence, ....

the new point of view through the opening that was left to the houses across the alley, the last memories of the people who´d been living and working inside....

the vigilant pipes, as witnesses of the works and the colorful expectation, the hope in colors, for the two new houses that will be built in coming months.

Finally, DEMOLITION, a beautiful poem by Mark Doty

The intact facade's now almost black 
in the rain; all day they've torn at the back 
of the building, "the oldest concrete structure 
in New England," the newspaper said. By afternoon, 
when the backhoe claw appears above 
three stories of columns and cornices, 

the crowd beneath their massed umbrellas cheer. 
Suddenly the stairs seem to climb down themselves, 
atomized plaster billowing: dust of 1907's 
rooming house, this year's bake shop and florist's, 
the ghosts of their signs faint above the windows 
lined, last week, with loaves and blooms. 

We love disasters that have nothing to do 
with us: the metal scoop seems shy, tentative, 
a Japanese monster tilting its yellow head 
and considering what to topple next. It's a weekday, 
and those of us with the leisure to watch 
are out of work, unemployable or academics, 

joined by a thirst for watching something fall. 
All summer, at loose ends, I've read biographies, 
Wilde and Robert Lowell, and fallen asleep 
over a fallen hero lurching down a Paris boulevard, 
talking his way to dinner or a drink, 
unable to forget the vain and stupid boy 

he allowed to ruin him. And I dreamed 
I was Lowell, in a manic flight of failing 
and ruthless energy, and understood 
how wrong I was with a passionate exactitude 
which had to be like his. A month ago, 
at Saint-Gauden's house, we ran from a startling downpour 

into coincidence: under a loggia built 
for performances on the lawn 
hulked Shaw's monument, splendid 
in its plaster maquette, the ramrod-straight colonel 
high above his black troops. We crouched on wet gravel 
and waited out the squall; the hieratic woman 

-- a wingless angel? -- floating horizontally 
above the soldiers, her robe billowing like plaster dust, 
seemed so far above us, another century's 
allegorical decor, an afterthought 
who'd never descend to the purely physical 
soldiers, the nearly breathing bronze ranks crushed 

into a terrible compression of perspective, 
as if the world hurried them into the ditch. 
"The unreadable," Wilde said, "is what occurs." 
And when the brutish metal rears 
above the wall of unglazed windows --
where, in a week, the kids will skateboard 

in their lovely loops and spray 
their indecipherable ideograms 
across the parking lot -- the single standing wall 
seems Roman, momentarily, an aqueduct, 
all that's left of something difficult 
to understand now, something Oscar 

and Bosie might have posed before, for a photograph. 
Aqueducts and angels, here on Main, 
seem merely souvenirs; the gaps 
where the windows opened once 
into transients' rooms are pure sky. 
It's strange how much more beautiful 

the sky is to us when it's framed 
by these columned openings someone meant us 
to take for stone. The enormous, articulate shovel 
nudges the highest row of moldings 
and the whole thing wavers as though we'd dreamed it, 
our black classic, and it topples all at once.

Images with copyright

 

Memories of a house demolition by Myriam B. Mahiques is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Buildings as a disguise -out of the ¨architecture¨ category-

Heidi Weber Museum. Centre Le Corbusier

http://www.centerlecorbusier.com/frameset2.html

The Centre Le Corbusier is a great example of an ideology. Beautiful in its plasticity, no need for decoration, or extra ¨twists.¨ 

Sometimes, architects carry the label of their buildings. They design them as stamps, that can be built anywhere in the world, for any society. Absurd.

Sometimes, the buildings are so literal in their ¨main idea,¨ what we used to call ¨la idea rectora,¨ that they do not show architecture any more. They are just a scenography of the ridicule. 

My husband says that I shouldn´t promote those type of examples, but I remember one of my students, in her first year of architectural design, she liked Gehry´s metaphor of the guitar, and she designed a building with the shape of a guitar. Being her a junior,  it was very difficult for me to explain why she shouldn´t work like this. 

So, this post is dedicated to students. And I hope with these few words and pictures they could understand that not all buildings belong to the category of ¨architecture,¨ but ¨construction¨ instead.

¨This photo, lifted from the Tumblr Chaz Hutton, depicts seven New York City architects decked out for the 1931 Beaux-Arts costume ball as the buildings they designed. From left to right: A Stewart Walker as the Fuller Building, Leonard Schultze as the Waldorf-Astoria, Ely Jacques Kahn as the Squibb Building, William Van Alen as the Chrysler, Ralph Walker as 1 Wall Street, DE Ward as the Metropolitan Tower, and Joseph H. Freelander as the Museum of New York.¨ From 

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2012/10/here_are_some_architects_disguised_as_their_own_buildings.php

Photo via Flavorwire.  ¨Also in China, land of architectural craziness it is,  this Piano House, masterminded a few years ago by Hefei University of Technology architecture students to house plans for the new Shannan district in Huainan City and bring notoriety to the region.¨ From:

http://curbed.com/archives/2013/01/02/here-now-nine-nutso-buildings-disguised-as-other-things.php

¨Dubbed “Galije” and located on a parcel of untouched coastline land, the resort is envisioned as a way to combine exclusivity with a responsible, sustainable embedding of the structure in its surrounding landscape. “The split/limbo we found ourselves in was to design an iconic exclusive luxury resort in projecting total of 100,000 library program that should be invisible. An exclusive residence under cover. As a result we designed the whole project as an offset to the terrain and covered it with a blanket of the original landscape. Where a higher density was needed we lift the blanket to create a hill. The iconic hotel is formed by pulling the blanket in front of the cliff to create a even more dramatic overhang. The more flat parts of the landscape hold the villa’s organized around their private patios facing the sea,” From 

http://inhabitat.com/aston-martin-resort-disguised-as-a-giant-mountain-of-lush-green/

Building Disguised As A Building.Oxford Street, London. By Bob Comics

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8424687@N08/4961292564/

Coke building in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. From http://www.tripadvisor.com/

Changes of habitat in the XIX Century, in the words of Virginia Woolf

Storm clouds gather and lightning strikes over the Houses of Parliament

thetimes.co.uk

I ended 2012 reading Virgina Woolf´s Orlando, which I enjoyed, specially the beginning of chapter V, where she explains the evolution of the century through a climate change.

And as a consequence, the clothes, the houses, the interior design, the landscape, were changed, due to the damp that filled everything, including the hearts.
I think the following paragraphs are a beautiful way of explaining the European habitat (though she refers to England). Of course there are many great passages in the book, but these are my favorite ones:

THE GREAT CLOUD WHICH HUNG, not only over London, but over the whole of the British Isles on the first day of the nineteenth century stayed, or rather, did not stay, for it was buffeted about constantly by blustering gales, long enough to, have extraordinary consequences upon those who lived beneath its shadow. A change seemed to have come over the climate of England. Rain fell frequently, but only in fitful gusts, which were no sooner over than they began again. The sun shone, of course, but it was so girt about with clouds and the air was so saturated with water, that its beams were discoloured — and purples, oranges, and reds of a dull sort took the place of the more positive landscapes of the eighteenth century. 

 Under this bruised and sullen canopy the green of the cabbages was less intense, and the white of the snow was muddied. But what was worse, damp now began to make its way into every house — damp, which is the most insidious of all enemies, for while the sun can be shut out by blinds, and the frost roasted by a hot fire, damp steals in while we sleep; damp is silent, imperceptible, ubiquitous. 

Damp swells the wod, furs, the kettle, rusts the iron, rots the stone.  So gradual is the process, that it is not until we pick up some chest of drawers, or coal scuttle, and the whole thing drops to pieces in our hands, that we suspect even that the disease is at work. Thus, stealthily and imperceptibly, none marking the exact day or hour of the change, the constitution of England was altered and nobody knew it. Everywhere the effects were felt. The hardy country gentleman, who had sat down gladly to a meal of ale and beef in a room designed, perhaps by the brothers Adam, with classic dignity, now felt chilly. Rugs appeared; beards were grown; trousers were fastened tight under the instep. The chill which he felt in his legs the country gentleman soon transferred to his house; furniture was muffled; walls and tables were covered; nothing was left bare. 

Then a change of diet became essential. The muffin was invented and the crumpet. Coffee supplanted the after-dinner port, and, as coffee led to a drawing-room in which to drink it, and a drawing-room to glass cases, and glass cases to artificial flowers, and artificial flowers to mantelpieces, and mantelpieces to pianofortes, and pianofortes to drawing room ballads, and drawing-room ballads (skipping a stage or two) to innumerable little  dogs, mats, and china ornaments, the home — which had become extremely important- was completely altered.

Outside the house — it was another effect of the damp — ivy grew in unparalleled profusion. Houses that had been of bare stone were smothered in greenery. No garden, however formal its original design, lacked a shrubbery, a wilderness, a maze. What light penetrated to the bedrooms where children were born was naturally of an obfusc green, and what light penetrated to the drawing-rooms where grown men and women lived came through curtains of brown and purple plush. 

But the change did not stop at outward things. The damp struck within. Men felt the chill in their hearts; the damp in their minds. In a desperate effort to snuggle their feelings into some sort of warmth one subterfuge was tried after another. Love, birth, and death were all swaddled in a variety of fine phrases. The sexes drew further and further apart. No open conversation was tolerated.

The architectural structures of Nature

Mr. Ron Neumeyer Delta, Canada Specimen: Blowfly Proboscis Technique: Brightfield
Is it a dome?

I remember one of our colleague professors had a picture in the bathroom, beautiful illustrations of a fly, a floor plan, cross sections, elevations. I've been always delighted with it.

Because, though the flies are absolutely nasty and ugly, there's the beauty of the structure of nature, and most interesting, its representation as an architectural drawing.

A few days ago, I came across with the gallery of Olympus Bioscapes (link below) and thought that organicism in its most complex forms is a fashion in architectural concepts and competitions, not all of them can be built, but, on the contrary, nature has its own architectural forms, let's see some examples. 

Mr. Piotr Rotkiewicz San Diego, CA, USA Specimen: Fossil Skeleton of Polycystine Radiolaria Technique: Darkfield Illumination
Is it a tower?

Mr. Harry Taylor Kensworth, Dunstable, Bedfordshire, UK Specimen: Dahlia flowerhead Technique: Brightfield (in reverse), 50x Objective
Is it a spiraled Pantheon?

http://www.olympusbioscapes.com/gallery/2012/

Cities´ illustrations from the Nüremberg Chronicle

Nüremberg

The Nuremberg Chronicle is an illustrated Biblical paraphrase and world history that follows the story of human history related in the Bible; it includes the histories of a number of important Western cities. Written in Latin by Hartmann Schedel, with a version in German translation by Georg Alt, it appeared in 1493. It is one of the best-documented early printed books—an incunabulum —and one of the first to successfully integrate illustrations and text.

Latin scholars refer to it as Liber Chronicarum (Book of Chronicles) as this phrase appears in the index introduction of the Latin edition. English speakers have long referred to it as the Nuremberg Chronicle after the city in which it was published. German speakers refer to it as Die Schedelsche Weltchronik (Schedel's World History) in honour of its author.

The illustrations in many copies were hand-coloured after printing.

Two Nuremberg merchants, Sebald Schreyer (1446-1503) and his son-in-law, Sebastian Kammermeister (1446-1520), commissioned the Latin version of the Chronicle. They also commissioned George Alt (1450 – 1510), a scribe at the Nuremberg treasury, to translate the work into German. Both Latin and German editions were printed by Anton Koberger, in Nuremberg. The contracts were recorded by scribes, bound into volumes, and deposited in the Nuremberg City Archives. The first contract, from December, 1491, established the relationship between the illustrators and the patrons. Wolgemut and Pleydendurff, the painters, were to provide the layout of the Chronicle, to oversee the production of the woodcuts, and to guard the designs against piracy. The patrons agreed to advance 1000 gulden for paper, printing costs, and the distribution and sale of the book. A second contract, between the patrons and the printer, was executed in March, 1492. It stipulated conditions for acquiring the paper and managing the printing. The blocks and the archetype were to be returned to the patrons once the printing was completed.

The author of the text, Hartmann Schedel, was a medical doctor, humanist and book collector. He earned a doctorate in medicine in Padua in 1466, then settled in Nuremberg to practice medicine and collect books. According to an inventory done in 1498, Schedel's personal library contained 370 manuscripts and 670 printed books. The author used passages from the classical and medieval works in this collection to compose the text of Chronicle. He borrowed most frequently from another humanist chronicle,Supplementum Chronicarum, by Jacob Philip Foresti of Bergamo. It has been estimated that about 90% of the text is pieced together from works on humanities, science, philosophy, and theology, while about 10% of the Chronicle is Schedel’s original composition.

The Chronicle was first published in Latin on 12 July 1493 in the city of Nuremberg. This was quickly followed by a German translation on 23 December 1493.

REFERENCE: Wikipedia.org

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

Reference for images:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Chronicle

Brujas

Constantinople

Florence

Krakow

Jerusalem

Mainz

Paris

Cologne

Praga

Viena

Constantinople

Roma

The world map

The demolitions of historical Beijing in the work of Jiang Pengyi

I like these artistic photographs, the author is Jiang Pengyi, a Chinese artist who claims:

¨My photographs of city, still objects and massive skyscrapers reduced to miniature sizes communicate my recurrent themes of excessive urbanization, redevelopment and demolition in the Beijing city¨

All pictures and text downloaded from:
http://www.blindspotgallery.com/en/artists/2010/jiang-pengyi

Urbanism, Spirituality and Well Being. CALL FOR PAPERS

International Symposium at Glastonbury Abbey and Harvard Divinity School (June 6-9, 2013)

Sponsored by the Harvard Divinity School, the Harvard Center for Health and Global Environment, and the ACS Forum

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

General Information

If we instinctively seek a paradisiacal and special place on earth, it is because we know in our inmost hearts that the earth was given to us in order that we might find meaning, order, truth and salvation in it. (Thomas Merton)

The International Symposium on Urbanism, Spirituality & Well Being will convene experts in the fields of architecture, landscape design, urbanism, religious studies, public health and other related disciplines to address leading-edge global culture and urbanism issues from contemplative, spiritual, philosophical, design and ethical perspectives. The 2 1/2 day program of scholarly presentations and panel discussions is sponsored by the Harvard University Divinity School, the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment and the Forum for Architecture, Culture and Spirituality. The symposium topics include scholarship on the history of cities and architecture planned according to spiritual motivations or principles; the contemporary built urban environment and the plethora of forces that shape it; and the prospects of future urban life that nurtures meaningful, sustainable, and spiritually inspiring built environments and architecture.

How we draw from past and present contexts to cultivate new urban and architectural visions is an imperative that theologians, public health experts, architects and urban designers are well placed to address through philosophical, theoretical and practical considerations and contemplation. This international symposium will focus on the history and potential of the city to spiritually uplift the human spirit, contextualize and symbolize our shared “human condition,” accommodate communal activities and rituals that give meaning to our lives, and provide connections to knowledge and understanding of the transcendent dimension of existence in architecture and the urban setting.

The USW Symposium will take place June 6 – 9, 2013 at Glastonbury Abbey, Hingham, Massachusetts & Harvard University Divinity School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The deadline for presentation/paper proposals is January 14, 2013. See Submission Details.

The Forum for Architecture, Culture and Spirituality is an international scholarly environment established in 2007 to support architectural and interdisciplinary scholarship, research, practice, and education on the significance, experience and meaning of the built environment.

PAPER PROPOSALS DUE JANUARY 14TH | See details below

If we instinctively seek a paradisiacal and special place on earth, it is because we know in our inmost hearts that the earth was given to us in order that we might find meaning, order, truth and salvation in it.                                    Thomas Merton

The International Symposium on Urbanism, Spirituality & Well Being will convene experts in the fields of architecture, landscape design, urbanism, religious studies, public health and other related disciplines to address leading-edge global culture and urbanism issues from contemplative, spiritual, philosophical, design and ethical perspectives. The 2 1/2 day program of scholarly presentations and panel discussions is sponsored by the Harvard University Divinity School, the Harvard School of Public Health and The International Forum for Architecture, Culture and Spirituality. The symposium topics include scholarship on the history of cities and architecture planned according to spiritual motivations or principles; the contemporary built urban environments and the plethora of forces that shape it; and the meaningful, sustainable and spiritual prospects of future urban life that nurtures meaningful, sustainable, and spiritually inspiring built environments and architecture.

How we draw from past and present contexts to cultivate new urban and architectural visions is an imperative that theologians, religious leaders, public health experts, architects and urban designers are well placed to address through philosophical, theoretical and practical considerations and contemplation. This international symposium will focus on the history and potential of the city to spiritually uplift the human spirit, contextualize and symbolize our shared “human condition,” accommodate communal activities and rituals that give meaning to our lives, and provide connections to knowledge and understanding of the transcendent dimension of existence in architecture and the urban setting.

ACS Paper sessions will be conducted at Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham, MA (where accommodations will be available for symposium participants).

Papers are invited for the following topics:

1. Urbanism of the Past

Scholarship on the history of architecture and the built environment planned according to spiritual motivations or principles.

2. Present Urbanism

Scholarship on contemporary thinking concerning the relationship of spiritual motivations and the built environment, including architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, market capitalism, multiculturalism, sustainability and social equity.

3. Future Urbanism

Scholarship on the future of urban life, with particular emphasis on the fundamental needs and practices of placemaking and the creation of meaningful, sustainable, and spiritually inspiring urban environments and architecture.

4. Open Sessions

Scholarship that addresses the issues related to architecture, urbanism, spirituality and well-being from a broad range of perspectives.

Process and Format for Submitting Proposals

Proposals should be approximately 1000 words and are due January 14, 2013. Each will receive three blind peer reviews from a panel of ACS members. Each proposal should include the following:

• Title

• Session Title

• Expanded abstract (not to exceed 1000 words) that includes the topic, its scope, principle argument(s), primary sources and/or case studies, and intended conclusions.

• Images may be included but should not exceed 5.

All proposals should be sent as an attached file saved in a “DOC” or “RTF” format, to: Thomas Barrie at tom_barrie@ncsu.edu

Include your contact information in the body of your e mail, but not on your paper proposal. Individuals submitting proposals will be notified of the symposium committee’s decision via email by March 1, 2013. Complete papers (approximately 3,000 words, including notes) will be due May 1, 2013.

http://www.acsforum.org/usw_symposium/

Beauty. Exploring critical issues. CALL FOR PAPERS

3rd GLOBAL CONFERENCE

Sunday 15th September – Tuesday 17th September 2013

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

‘The first real problem I faced in my life was that of beauty,’ wrote the poet-playwright- novelist Yukio Mishima, in Temple of the Golden Pavilion as he pondered beauty’s relevance, meanings, and the spell it cast over him. Beauty is complicated by the word beauty itself. Limited or overloaded, beauty has been celebrated as essential or denounced as irrelevant. The existence of beauty has been challenged, called a search for Eldorado. Some find no beauty in life, a recurring motif in subcultures, music lyrics, and the notes left by suicides. Others dismiss that perspective, arguing that common sense, experience, and multidisciplinary research reveal the reality and centrality of beauty in our lives. But what exactly is beauty? Speculations about the nature of beauty are various and contradictory. Some philosophers have argued that it will remain a mystery. Other theorists have held less modest beliefs, arguing that beauty expresses a basic spiritual reality, has universal physical properties, or is an experience and construction of mind and culture. The beauty ‘project’ will explore, assess, and map a number of key core themes.

These will include:

1. Understanding Beauty

- Defining beauty

- Theorising beauty

- Power of beauty

- History of beauty

- Politics of beauty

- Culture of beauty

- Religion of beauty

- Beauty Myths

2. Experiences of and Representations of Beauty

- Pursuit of beauty

- Expressions of beauty

- Appearance of beauty

- Making beauty

- Documenting beauty

- Emotion and beauty

- Beauty and seduction

- Representing beauty in art, literature and popular culture

3. Beauty and Nature

-Beauty and the natural world

-Beauty and the Sublime

-Beauty and desire

-Science and mathematics of beauty

-Medical aspects of beauty

4. Beauty, Culture, and Identity

- Beauty subcultures

- Beauty and social stratification: gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, age, etc.

- Beauty collectors

- Beauty specialists

- Beauty disciples

- Enhancing the body beautiful: cosmetics, tattoos, piercings, surgical interventions, and other forms of body modification

5. The Business of Beauty

- Beauty and consumer culture

- Beauty and cultural capital

- Beauty professions and trades

- Beauty cities

- Beauty marketing and forecasting

- Professional beauties (models, actors, celebrities, beauty pageants etc.)

- Fashion and beauty

- Glamour and beauty

6. Diminishing the Beautiful

- Beauty and transgression

- Beauty and ugliness

- Beauty and aging

- Defiling the beautiful

- Destroying the beautiful

- Beauty and death

- Beauty and decay

Presentations will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes. The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals.

What to Send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 22nd March 2013. 

Keep on reading:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/beauty/call-for-papers/