garethace

Just read through the Inventory, sounds interesting. Is Frank organising it, or speaking, or both do you think Paul?

Anybody here going?

Those are indeed all perfectly fair statements What? Archiseek just allows me to prolong the torture treatment even further and isn’t good for me. So I am just going to push away from the keyboard instead, pull the phoneline out of the wall, and get back to breathing fresh air once more. The trouble with writing What? is while it does allow one to fix problems, and things that are confusing about Architecture, environment etc. One does chase a lot of rabbits down a lot of rabbit holes.

And having to do that, means your day isn’t strictly organised. As a writer on and off for quite some time now, (good at doing research, high levels of concentration and intellectual weight lifting capabilities, good listening and observational talents, and a laid back temperament suited to exploring culture, people and situations) I have found at 9pm in the evening sometimes, I might have some great new idea, and have to chase it like a prey.

That might take you until 4am in the morning to nail the sun of a bitch. I have read widely and wrote extensively, and carefully compiled analysis and investigation of Architecture, literature, poetry and Art on many levels. But in myself, you are coming face to face with the unacceptable side of the Architect and reader/writer/researcher. As real journalists say, news is information that someone, somewhere, doesn’t want people to know about. You will crack a lot of heads, and take a lot of beatings yourself in the pursuit of real truths at the keyboard. And that doesn’t make the best laid foundations for relationships with Architects in practice, colleges or elsewhere. So perhaps Paul Clerkin is correct, in disagreeing with Duany’s advice that Architects must write about their own work.

So while I support in general your stance in the AAI Scribblings post. Beware, of the naiveity of your own advice. You will probably meet one or two real writers/journalists in Ireland in your life time. You might have already met one, just by talking to me here. But do, I urge you, strongly consider the eventual outcome of writing/reading taken to the extreme as in my case. And the next time, you decide to degrade a James or other poster because of their simple belief system, online on a forum, decide whether it is worth encouraging young practicioners of this noble profession, if they want to become great writers or not.

Do me a favour though, check out that movie with Sean Connery, and the young black kid from Harleem. Finding Forrester.

You’re typing now dog! (Insert Scottish accent)

It is a good movie, which deals with creativity and self-expression, and a lot of the things you have asked here. And might provide you with a good springboard from which to base your argument in relation to education and Architecture. While also dealing with a couple of things about great writers as individuals too. I found the character played by Ben Kingsley in the film, that of the stuck-up tutor, is an all too familiar one for Architectural students. (Just substitute Architecture for poetry and you have got it in one, particularly the poetry competition scene. But in the real world, Sean Connery’s character doesn’t actually come in to save the day) Now there I go saying much, too much yet again. Anyhow, thats all – best wishes and thankyou again for your reply.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

What?

I was in Malta working once, and I noticed that on the Med, people love to do nice long walks at nightime along by that little Islands beautiful long shorelines. But what I found strange and new for a while, but then it seems logical having gotten used to it, was that the Maltesse Hotels were always situated at the termination points of one of these nice shoreline pedestrian walks. Meaning, that the Hotels functioned as landmarks in the sense you are refering to. That a wide age group of people on Saturday evening walks could have tea and bikies at the the end of the walk. This meant that old people could do something on Saturday nights too, while the young skirts were busy going clubbing. The playgrounds were strategically located too. I find in our culture here in Ireland, that Hotels are never really landmarks, or significant places in every peoples’ lives. It was a strange experience for me, and an alternative defintion to how we here in Ireland, and planners here would say, ‘BIG landmark hotel with a sailboat shape on it’. WOW! But those Hotels basically tell you to go ********* when you are out walking the campshires in Dublin or someplace. What was also intriguing to me, was how you could get a cheap bus to the place where the walks started too. So there was entirely no need for a car at all. But in Malta, a car isn’t much good – nowhere much to drive – so people by circumstance have invented alternative forms of entertainment, and illusions of space and time. Blasting down the M1 with RAP on loud is the Northern European equivalent. Look at our miles and miles of canals and unused trainlines. There is a route through Dublin from the Wood Quay offices to where the U2 tower will be built, which passes by the Pearse Street Garda Station and Screen Cinema, which could do with a nice light rail system, and things along it, like in Helsinki or somewhere. Hop on, Hop off. Plenty of opportunity to put all kinds of landmarks, public buildings, institutions, public spaces and residential accomodation along it. Bringing that whole city back into the picture. Places like Hawkins street back into the picture. Instead of the North/South axis around College Green, O’Connell St. and Grafton St, which ‘has become our excuse for a city centre’. More like pick pocket mile. I am hoping that LUAS line on the North site, will offer an experience like this. But I think it would be nice eventually to see a LUAS running East to West just on the south bank of the Liffey too. Which might terminate down beyond Ringsend too, with nice pedestrian walks along the sea and Hotel projects/public open spaces like in Malta.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

And this:

and has it given you any clarity?

Has any architecture education establishment, given any young people any clarity at all? The description by Gehry of the student from Eisenmanns class in gridlock over the line and the wall, just had me rolling around the floor! I would love to see Mr. Bean do a show based around that! 🙂

Repost:

With flashbacks to the Glenn Murcutt lecture in Bolton Street DIT last year, I read this very informative account of an evening lecture at Columbia University! 🙂

The committee was reportedly deadlocked last spring, but the rumor mill was running free, mostly churning through the same three names–Lynn, Zaha, Libeskind; Zaha, Libeskind, Lynn–as if some privileged recitation of those five syllables might, like rubbing hands on the genie’s bottle, summon an agent to deliver the school from uncertainty.

Taking pity, it would grant three wishes, one for each: a limitless supply of disposable logic for the idle generation of form (Lynn), a probe to uncloak the mysteries of taste (Zaha), and a path through geometry to the unspeakable name of God (Libeskind).

Come and sample the atmosphere, of the changing of the guard at Columbia University. Like some platonic shifting of subterranean earth masses, the tremors will be felt in Ireland I am sure.

Seems as if the winds of change in LA, are definetly changing towards, the Princes of Paper Architecture, finding ways to meet clients, overcome adversity and finally build something. Interview with a 58-year old, calmer Thom Mayne. There is after all a vast new market opening up these days in trendy culture capitals around the world for collecting Famous Architects As good design is seen as a symbol of prestige in many places, even in our very own Dublin city. Thom admits to having no less than 5 years of therapy in how to be nicer to his clients, and as a result now, has some building commissions going too, you can see on his web site. Any opinions people? Any old admirers out there? I think Thom Mayne is a tired old vet now, but he has had his ass in the grass, he is the real deal. In short he has seen the elephant and heard the owl. You are welcome to hear some more opinions about Progressive Architecture between an Irishman, an Aussie and an American here.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Long answer is. . .

I came to Architecture with a portfolio full of drawings and Art work, because the College said, I needed to be interested in those things, before becoming an Architect. However, the really strange thing about that is, I went from sketching and working in Art fluently before I became an Architectural student – to becoming all self-conscious, nervous and hating sketching and art (things I loved doing to begin with) as a result of doing Architecture.

I find a lot of contradictions in the idea of ‘artistic’ or visually aware people being asked for to go and do Architecture. Not least of all, as a result of my architectural training, I ended up hating something I had done completely naturally ever since I was 5-years old! It is worse than losing a child! It feels a lot like a part of you has been removed! Had I not got that interview to become an Architect, I would probably be a very happy, well-adjusted person who did Art as a hobby. I find it very dangerous the way that Architecture colleges like to flirt with the artistic community. Hoping to inject some uber-talent into their ranks, but it is more like some bull shit NAZI plot to create better Arians! The objectives of the artistic and architectural design community are very different.

Furthermore, having passed my third year Architecture in college, I was forced strongly to consider finishing that course, to obtain a degree, a career and standard of living. Imagine the opinions of people learning that someone had done that much of a course and had suddenly dropped out. In most college courses, having got that far one would expect with time and effort and persistence to work through the system, and emerge at the other end.

However, you seem to have come down on the correct side of the razor blade. The process you described, of knocking that building was a growing awareness of the environment, a growing awareness of society, the public spaces, the effects of buildings on the streets of our capital and eventually a generalist’s perspective on urban design matters. Which is more important to the Architect, than the artistic sensitivity of the Post Modern period. I loved the PMPA building beside Wolf Tone park, back in the early nineties, because I thought it was classy, with those big red columns. It does have a lot in common with ideas running through the Installation Art of the same period.

Since artistic ability is about following ones heart and natural instincts to create something on a piece of paper, block of wood or piece of metal or stone, which embodies ones energy and creativity. Architectural drawings are not an expression of creativity and the human spirit. I can create masterpieces in paint or other mediums, for people to enjoy, but every instinct I had ever developed as an Artist was entirely wrong in the Architectural situation. I would regularly be told that design is on butter paper, it is disposable, crumple it up and throw it away! Noel Brady would argue that butter paper is just ideas, and ideas are cheap. You see, the conflict now between what an artist does on a canvas, and an Architect draws on paper? I find it very dangerous the way that Architecture colleges like to flirt with the artistic community.

The idea on the one hand, that Architectural college is supposed to instruct the student in matters of design and the built environment – to transfer some body of knowledge and understanding to that student. While on the other hand, they tell the students that they need to have the design or ideas come from their own creativity and hand. That is a blatant contradiction, and I do not wonder why so many conflicts happen in Architectural colleges.

Then the Architectural college ask students of architecture ‘to read, study and learn about current trends in design’. Otherwise ‘the students will be ignorant of designs happening around the world’. Yet students are expected to work at that, do it in isolation, and to receive absolutely no credit for doing that work. Hence, students do not bother, and never read an AR or El Croquis, unless they want to be ‘part of that really dedicated gang’. I mean someone like Paul Clerkin would be chewed up and spat out in bubbles in our Architectural schools. (I can just hear the Architects now trying to put on their open-minded hats quickly now, and deny that, but it is true)

I like the account given by Reener, from Arnheim, about spending Fridays and Saturdays at a separated Institution intirely, where one can discuss and learn other things, and receive some recognition or credit for going through those things. Instead of some crackpot arsehole in a college asking you to read such and such article in the AR, about such and such building, and then you get no actual credit on paper, or otherwise for that effort. But the problem with students doing ‘stuff outside the college’ is simple – the college couldn’t ‘take responsibility’ for what goes on in that external class, and it would just be treated like some pile of old rubbish.

I remember a group in my time, who started doing life-drawing classes on their year-out in Dublin. I thought it was cracked, and everyone went ‘Oh, thats weird!’ However, I would have loved if Bolton Street or UCD would run night courses in Urbanism and Theory for students on years out, or design web-based tuition in such areas. As those are the things I lack most of all. To make the actual transition you seem to have made What? I try my best to do what I can now, but there is no formal credit for it at all. I am sure that Clerkin and all of his buddies, would be interested too. The AAI is a good institution and I attended/learned from it for years. But there is no more credit than some lecturers in the college saying ‘I saw you at the site visit’. Hence Students do not avail of that wonderful resources on our doorstep.

After all, I mean, I am using Paul Clerkin and other similar people as examples ‘of the public’, who want to educate and become more deeply aware of their surroundings. This encapsulates a lot more people than one might think, planners, social workers, engineers, artists… Irish Times Journalists. . 🙂

Brian O’ Hanlon.

The singer/musician Paul Brady said in a documentary last night on RTE what?, that people like a song, particularly when they sense you have taken a risk to do it. The audience can likewise sense when you have decided not to take that risk, and it is obvious in the resception from the audience. So I guess Architecture has its audience too, everyday, and people sense when the composer has played things safe.

as a presentation tool i would agree that many CG images are flat and unimaganitive looking. but i feel this is the fault of the creators of these images rather than the method used.

Zaha Hadid and Tom Mayne, have chosen to use computers as a tool yes. But you will notice, their computers images aren’t really 100% finished, commercially saleable images. To waste ones time producing good images is a waste of time. I don’t actually agree with showing Computer generated high quality stuff to clients. Even though I theoretised on this a lot. I would much prefer to see Architects using bland, flat looking computer models to investigate the geometry, construction and detailing of buildings amongst other architects, technicians and structural engineers.

There is a good article here, on how watercolours are still used in preference over computers, to visualise things like glass skyscrapers in the States, where the light and atmoshphere is constantly changing. Meaning that a freeze-frame computer generated still, will always fail. Hertzog and De Meuron always use a certain photographer, who digitally alters his images, to capture a little bit of that changing quality of their building’s skins at night, rainy weather etc.

Steven Holls web site, has quite a few computer generated images, which aren’t inch-perfect, but say something about the Architecture. Likewise the OMAs etc, are working in digital, and hand-drawn/digital hybrids. There are some nice hybrids here too, using sketch up software.

Often the computer model is cheaper, and quicker as you have said. But also, having made a really nice physical model of a building you cannot just rip it up again, without going to a serious amount of trouble, expense and time, which you simply don’t have. With computers, it is sometimes just possible to produce things, by the shere fact alone, it is so easy to edit a wall or opening or position of a door or column. We as a profession are still thinking in terms of physical cardboard models, and haven’t gotten used to the flexibility of digital modelling as yet.

Eamon O’ Doherty used always say in Bolton Street, use butter paper, it costs you nothing. If it isn’t right, crumple it up and throw it in the bin. That is the kind of attitude that needs to be cultivated with computer models – not the current ‘precious’ attitude that has filtered down from commercial visualisation, who regularly charge thousand per one good A3 image. Sure the Architects images might not be presentation material, but the would be cheap, easy and edit-able, or rubbish-able. Allowing the Architect to probe, and solve problems, not to set them in stone.

I don’t like that attitude, that everytime I sit down in front of a highend desktop system, with a sophisticated solid modeller like Z or VIZ, that my sole object is to produce a saleable ‘WOW’ image. Unfortunately that is how computer modelling is used now, and it is very similar to the old Butter Paper/Tracing Paper and Ink argument.

Most older architects, who aren’t familiar with computerisation do not understand that computer models are easy to change. And therefore are extremely reluctant to use computer modeling as a tool to generate, edit and change models on the fly. They think it would be just far too time and technically demanding for the limited word processing skills of their CAD using Architects. Another thing is having the raw computing power on your desk, and a stable system/software too. My learning to see essay does outline some of the demands placed upon an Architect using a computer to design today. Just like supercomputers are used to crack the great mathematical problems today, require a good formula to be written in the form of a program. The solving of Architectural problems via a computer requires the Architect to input information, based upon real world phenomena. While the computer is a way to visualize the world more realistically, it also requires us to observe the world more clearly too.

Architects who aren’t qualified enough with computers to pass any judgements, or suggest their proper usage, include most Architects from the age of 30 upwards, and all the ones who read Foreign Office Arch websites and Greg Lynn. There is nothing worse than good architects who can design brilliantly, and feel that gives them the right to talk as if they knew something about computers – leave computers to computer geeks like me, and the younger generations growing up. Watching 40 something well-educated, open minded, skilled Architects trying to sound computer-savy, is like seeing your Dad turn up to the rave party. And perhaps, if I ever learn enough about design, I can share with you all, how Architects could use computers. You need to spend a long time, not doing Architecture at all, and just doing computer modelling, to properly learn what a computer is and does. But Architects don’t have that opportunity – they need to look back in 10 years time on what they built/designed.

By far the most computer-advanced architectural practice in the world, Frank Gehry makes thousands of little study physical models on every project. And just photographs them every day, so that if the design team loses their way, they just track back through the archives of model photography, to find where they lost the design a bit. With computer models, dating and archiving of models should be done too. With Architectural technicians doing most of the computer modelling in practice nowadays, the architectural technicians don’t even hold onto a week old version of a digital model – they constantly edit and change the same model – and end up with ‘one file’.

The discussion here is all around these topics. I find it telling that in the 1960s, an engineer at Intel predicted something called Moore’s Law: That transistor counts and therefore computing muscle also would double every one and a half years. While this law has held true ever since the 1960s, Architectural projects move at a far slower pace altogether.

Personally I found it much easier to remain objective about design problems by using a computer. Because I understood computer models to be designed to be edited and changed. And therefore not really precious and ‘once-off’ like a physical model can be. It is hardly the fault of computer Architectural design advocates like myself, that computers are used precisely for the kind of highly-ray-traced images we are seeing now. I can take my computer model and delete half of it, like editing a word document, or cut it in half in seconds. Surely that must count for something?

I can also save several different versions of a design in computer model format, which would be difficult to do using physical models in most architectural practices in Ireland. But definetly, the disadvantage of the computer model, in giving you the ability to see the reality of a building, is having to observe reality more closely as a result. Learning to see.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

With flashbacks to the Glenn Murcutt lecture in Bolton Street DIT last year, I read this very informative account of an evening lecture at Columbia University! 🙂

Taking pity, it would grant three wishes, one for each: a limitless supply of disposable logic for the idle generation of form (Lynn), a probe to uncloak the mysteries of taste (Zaha), and a path through geometry to the unspeakable name of God (Libeskind).

Come and sample the atmosphere, of the changing of the guard at Columbia University. Like some platonic shifting of subterranean earth masses, the tremors will be felt in Ireland I am sure.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Thought you guys may enjoy this article:

Tom Mayne, Prince of Progressive Architecture

The Prince of paper architecture says:

The power of the school is that it exists and interacts every day with students and teachers, and an entire educational system. “Architecture can’t just be on paper,” Mayne says. “You have to build. That’s what makes us architects.”

But his old buddies in UCLA don’t like him ‘turning like this’.

“Spoken like a true betrayer of his kind,” replies Sylvia Lavin, chair of architecture at UCLA. “That just makes me want to kill Thom. You can print that–and I am a huge supporter of Thom and always have been.” She says that Mayne spent most of his career in a more academic context. “For him to then turn and call the group of which he was a member five minutes ago irrelevant because they haven’t attained his level of success is offensive,” she says. “What is it that is so alluring about the world of businessmen and money and international fame that requires somebody like Thom to abandon the roots and the structure–the academy and its conversations–that made it possible for him to do what he’s doing? Is architecture only determined by how many square feet the project is or by how big the budget is?”

But it looks as if the 58-year old Mayne, is now beginning to enjoy the relationship with his clients a lot more too:

Mayne’s biggest fan among his clients is, surprisingly, U.S. district judge Michael Hogan, the point man on the design for a federal courthouse in Eugene, Oregon, which will be finished in 2005. Hogan says he’s never met anyone like Mayne in his life. “I was not pleased about Thom’s selection,” he admits. “Any federal judge, their idea of a courthouse is the Supreme Court. I read descriptions of Thom like ‘the bad boy of L.A. architecture.'” Hogan, an evangelical Christian, says one of his first meetings with Mayne did not go well. “He said he was a loyal proponent of the extreme opposition to everything I believe in,” he says, adding that Mayne told him anyone with faith “is not sane. He did it with such enthusiasm and relish; he was needling and provoking.”