Architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974) used to ask “What does the building want to be?” In talking about light, shadow and silence he’s also reported as saying, “Everything you make is already too thick. I would even think that a thought is also too thick.” I assume the kind of thick thinking to which Kahn refers is where…More
Panoptic man
Panoramic photography, of the kind now common on digital cameras and smart phones, allows you to sweep your camera from a fixed point around 360 degrees (or part thereof) to produce a composite image to present either as a flat plane or to be revisited as an immersive simulacrum. What happens when bodies get in…More
Circles and how to get out of them
“There are weeks when it can sound as if the European sovereign debt crisis is going around in circles,” according to a NYT article on problems with the Euro. Problems that can’t easily be solved lead you in circles, even a vicious circle. Resolving the Euro crisis is also like “trying to square the circle,” a reference to…More
Le Corbusier’s error
We all make mistakes. Take comfort though from the advice of cybernetician Ranulph Glanville: “error is, in itself, neither bad nor good, but endemic — it cannot be eliminated. . . . it is error that drives the system!” (p.1181)More
Meditation on a blunt instrument
Digital networks presumably influence people’s encounters with social reality: “real life is life online.” But there’s also the argument that reality in general is mediated through the instruments we use, in our social life and in our understanding of the material universe. The physicist Neils Bohr noted that for observations and calculations about sub-atomic particles no sharp…More
The opposite of architecture
If the universe requires antimatter as well as matter then surely anything is entitled to an opposite. With architecture it’s easy to identify candidates for the role. “Anarchitecture” could be a kind of anarchic practice against orderliness. If architecture is building something then its opposite probably involves pulling it down. If people think architecture produces iconic,…More
The reception of architecture
Meryl Streep’s embarrassing acceptance speech at the Golden Globe awards reception this week didn’t go down all that well, but the pistachio-crusted pistou ravioli was very well received. (She acknowledged everyone except the Iron Lady herself, and only apologised for “trampling over England’s history.”) Reception is a major issue in the arts. Talented artists receive awards, lavish events…More
Arboreal architecture gets wrong end of the stick
What is neuroarchitecture?[1] In a recent New York Times article author Sarah Williams Goldhagen claims that developments in cognitive neuroscience are having an effect on architecture. Cognitive neuroscience derives evidence about how the mind works from heavy duty brain imaging technologies such as EEG (electroencephalography), CAT (computed axial tomography), and NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) imaging. Neurotechnologies are getting cleverer,…More
Pictures devour reality
Most of us harbour the suspicion that being photographed removes something essential: if not our souls, then privacy, security, self image, the way we want to look. According to Susan Sontag the camera can “presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate” (Sontag, 1979, p.13) … and from a safe distance.…More
Inconspicuous architecture
Are first impressions important? Architect Peter Zumthor thinks so. I enter a building, see a room, and — in a fraction of a second — have this feeling about it. Buildings inevitably impress us in some way. Many buildings stand out immediately. People make snap judgements on their beauty or lack of it, their functionality…More