Tuesday, January 27, 2009

People, Place, Occasion

We remember things by where we were or what we were listening to at the time that an event happened. Some say that great architecture should always take you back to a time and a place, it should create a memory or cause you to remember something that happened before. Figuratively speaking, architecture should be living. It should breath, react, and respond to the inhabitants, us.

As architecture is now, very few if any of the buildings we create respond to us in such away that causes us to respond and be happy with it. What can architects do to make people enjoy a building more? Can architect create a building that is more human like? By human like I mean can it respond to environmental changes, with or without the help of human kind?

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Craft

Readings:

David Pye, "The Workmanship of Risk and the Workmanship of Certainty" The Nature of Art and Workmanship, Chapters 1,2, and 4 (London: Studio Vista, 1968) 5-10, 13-24

Bruce Metcalf, "The Hand at the Heart of Craft" from American Craft, Aug./Sept. 00, Vol. 60, No. 4 (New York: American Craft Council, 2000) 54-61, 66

Adolfo Natalini, "Elements" and "Building" Figures of Stone (Milano: Electa Editrice, 1984) 33-36 and 71-75

Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, "1.2 The Hand and the Machine" and "4.0 Processes We Do Not See," Refabricating Architecture (New York: McGraw Hill, 2004) 4-7, 68-101

Malcom McCullough, "7-Medium" from Abstracting Craft (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996) 193-220


Question:

Craft, before the industrial revolution it was a persons lively hood. It was a part of everyone, something that ran so deep that it could not be denied. With the industrial revolution the art of craft and the handmade began to change, the value of the machine became more and more important. Machines, for the most, have part taken over the jobs of the craftsman, mass producing object after identical object.

As machines continue to improve in their dexterity, and abilities to mimic the human hand and even human behavior will the human element of making things be lost? Will there continue to be a place of those who consider themselves craftsman and makers of things, or will more and more advanced robots be able to take their place?


Reference Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78krbfy9hh0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHFZVwQ53bk&feature=related

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Sustainable Practices

Readings:

Kenneth Frampton, "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance" The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (ed.) Hal Foster (Seattle, Washington: Bay Press, 1983) 16-30

Wendell Berry, "The Whole Horse" The Art of the Commonplace (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2002) 236-248

Rem Koolhaas, "Bigness: or the Problem of Large" Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture, Charles Jencks and Karl Kropf, editors (West Sussex: Academy Editions, 1997) 307-311

Rem Koolhaas, "Junkspace" (exerpted and reformatted from the website "Bridge The Gap"), transcript from a conference talk in which Koolhaas participated in July 2001, Kitakyushu, Japan (website: http://www.btgjapan.org/catalysts/rem.html)


Question:

With experts on both sides of the fence of sustainablity one must question the validity of the argument. There is support for and against global warming, which is the reason that we are become more and more aware of the effect that we are having on our environment. Also, as more and more people are being born, the population increases, and with that increase comes the demand for more stuff. And obtaining stuff requires the use of materials, which, in todays industural socity means packaging, which takes up more space that the suff we aquire.

Is there a way for citizens to contiue to have all the stuff that we desire and the stuff that makes us confortabe in our environment, and still preserve or leave behind enough for our childs child to have the same quality of life that we have now?