Space – November 12

That sounds like it would be good. Does it require that you must be a member to go or is there a charge etc?

That should be a good bust up! Have to be there, LOL!

this is on tonight,
could be very interesting, or could be intensely boring. im willing to give it the benifit of the doubt though. see you there, 2+2 is…….

Well I think Sean made one of the biggest bo bos I have ever heard – that Neo-Classicism was the very first colonisation and change in the Irish Architectural landscape. But he did manage to illuminate the concept of Neo-Classicism in a way I personally had never heard before. It was worth listening to the speakers for that brief opinon alone.

I would say that the Cistercian monasteries were the first multinational, and just as the tech companies have been responsible for a change in the current Irish urban/suburban and rural landscapes today – the Cistercian monasteries each had like 16,000 sheep, a net income of 1M each per year – and there were lots of them all over Ireland. They were billionaires, but Henry VIII decided he liked the idea and did the equivalent of Bush in Iraq today.

The poor old monks were left selling off the doors of their cells to earn a few bob. 🙂 Such a contrast, of a thriving economic super power in the middle ages with total destruction that followed after Henry VIII.

On another point, there was some talk about cosmic perception of the world and architecture in Oriental world. Well I am not sure if you know this guys, but ‘Ma’ is the word in Japan for both Space and for Time – the are the same word.

In Oriental cultures space is seen as three dimensional rather than 4 dimensional. That is, the orientals understand space as being about two planes, and the dimension between the two planes is defined by time – not space. I believe that modern architecture and the modern world has been moving towards Eastern ways of thinking.

Symmetry – all the eastern religions have to do with ‘Artless Art’. That is you go through stages of meditation trying to move outside the common senses, until your senses are giving you your view and perspective of the world anymore. Assymetry was one of the things in architecture, related to the eastern way of achieving this state of disassociation from senses.

But on the whole I found the Physicist to be an interesting contrast to our architectural profession. Why? Well because the two diagrams he showed to explain himself were relating to how space in Physics is viewed from human scale to the scale of a galaxy, and then from the human scale down to the smallest part of an atom. What struck me therefore, was that Physics has still maintained an important overview over many different scales – whereas architecture is still struggling to define itself outside of 3 or 2 dimensions – 1:100 scale perception of space.

If you go up to 1:1000 scale you are into the territory of government and planners. Go down to 1:50 or 1:20 scale and you are talking draughts persons and technicians or technologists. Yet as people we experience space everyday from any scale from 1:50,000 down to 1:1.

I personally believe that all first year students in colleges of Architecture should do their projects at 1:500 – in relation to circulation, light and views. Rather than the typical ‘3D Thinking’ exercises where you are given a 5 metre cube and told to ‘break up the space’.

(Still brings back painful memories of breaking up the space)

You find yourself in first year in architecture school trying to think your way around this 5 metre cubic abstract box, as if you were living on a vessel in the Film the MATRIX. No light, nothing to view outside and no where to walk. You just sit and eat re-constructed food that is poured out of a tap! Everything the body could ask for!

That is how architectural students are introduced to space – it is no wonder many what to get plugged back into the Matrix and eat fat steaks!

Wake up architects, the world is out there, it is big and it is beautiful! Honest.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Did anyone here watch the programme about English Landscape Gardening last night? Interesting fellow this Brown. One man once said to Brown, “I hope I die before you do Mr. Brown, because I would rather like to see heaven before you have had a chance to improve it!” You either love Brown or hate him. A lot like some modern Architects today, he repeated exactly the same concept no less than 200 times across Britain’s stately homes landscape.

Mind you, the modern suburban homes in the United States aren’t a million miles away from Capability Brown.

high density” estate development east of Cleveland.

Lancelot Brown was called “Capability” because he always searched for the capabilities of the landscapes.
I like his projects. well… I like english gardens. heh…

Nice projects there on your web site Hector. Have you looked much at Brown in the past year?

Or spent any time in England experiencing them? Is there any equivalent to Brown on the continent?

I haven’t looked much at Brown.. but I like it… I haven’t experienced any garden of him either… I want to !!!! I have to go to England… maybe my next trip in summer will be england and ireland 🙂 or also. germany… don’t know yet. 😛
I think there is no equivalent in the continent… that’s the reason of english gardens are called english gardens 🙂 but I think there are things similar in chinese gardens.

I am a great fan of Helmer Stenros and Seppo Aura’a book about this – it does mention Chinesse gardens a lot, and how the whole perception of space and time is becoming more ‘eastern’ in modern architecture.

However, Stenros failed to even mention Brown. I like the notion that the garden gives you surprises and depends upon the fact that the observer moves.