T h e
MIESUSE
new era is a fact: it exists, irrespective of our “yes” or “no”. Yet it is neither better nor worse than any other era. It is pure datum, in
TOWARD THE MESOFORMS
itself without value content. Therefore I will not try to define it or clarify its basic structure.
Let us not give undue
importance to mechanization and standardization. Let us accept changed
COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE, ART AND PLANNING
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
economic
and social conditions
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
as a fact. All these take blind
and
fateful
course. One thing will
be
decisive:
the
way in which we assert ourselves in
Spring 2006
MIESUSE To w a r d
the
Mesoforms
CORNELL UNIVE RSITY College of Architecture, Art and Planning D e p a r t m e n t o f A r c h i t e c t u r e
Spring 2006 ARCH 512 Instructor: Juliรกn Varas varas.julian@gmail.com
“Mies has transformed ordinary buildings into poetry, but his theories, as such, could be applied to half of the factories in this country too… Mies based his art on three things: economy, science and technology, and, of course, he was right. But that is precisely what bores me, what bores us all”. (1)
I do not respect Mies, I love Mies. I have studied Mies, excavated Mies, reassembled Mies. I have even cleaned Mies. (2)
[Mrs. Farnsworth is] a highly intelligent, now disillusioned woman, who spent $70.000 building a oneroom house that is nothing but a glass cage on stills. (3) Those critics who have fixed their attention on Mies’s slabs, plateaus, and closure-refusing but barriercreating quasi walls -with their obsessive, multiple curtain and screen effects - have seen the works as Trojan horses, offering shimmering chimeras of flight and freedom but delivering only frustration, obstruction, monotony and intractability. Those who have focused on trajectories -the winding intervals and synaptic spaces - have found something else, a type of flow that is certainly slow, but steady and redolent with the democratic values and the capacious imagination and explicit materiality of the preceding generation’s architecture... (4)
As Mies van der Rohe’s work extends from his early housing studies and the perfection of Brno, it becomes less preoccupied with human activities, more general, more abstract, and through this anonymity gathers to it new alliances: the bussiness, the corporate and the organizations worlds. The architecture that has disengaged itself from its inspired roots in the senses -individual pleasure, touch, feeling and sight - has found through an accumulation of its inherent ambiguities unsuspected and chillier usages. (5)
(1) Philip Johnson, 1959 (2) Rem Koolhaas, 2004 (3) House Beautiful Magazine, 1953 (4) Sanford Kwinter, 1999 (5) James Gowan, 1986
CONDITIONS RESEARCH Agenda. Miesuse is part of an effort to formulate the conditions of research in architecture at the begining of the XXIst century. Conflating the rigor associated to technical education with the ambition for innovation that characterizes the tradition of liberal arts, the research is motivated by the awareness that architecture needs to maintain a highly dynamic discipinary profile to avoid being sidetracked from the contemporary cultural and technological framework. Unlike the modernist agenda, for which innovation was mobilized either by a program of radical social transformation, or by a need to manifest the alienation of subjectivity, architecture today must draw its creative energies from the larger engine of material production to which it belongs, by engaging it with agililty and opportunism. Within academia, this challenge can be modeled as a radical acceptance of the linearity of the design process, for, ultimately, the effects of the project will determine its pertinence. As its historical context, the studio will recognize a series of mainstream investigations carried out over the last fifteen years by what has been called “the architects of the second generation of late capitalism”. Linked to various strands of cybernetics and systems theory, these experiences have collectively cemented a disciplinary ground characterized by the reformulation of traditional alliances: From Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction to FOA’s Complexity and Consistency, from Christopher Alexander’s diagrammatic representation to Ben van Berkel’s diagrammatic production, from Aldo Rossi’s urban memory to Rem Koolhaas’s urban performance… Perhaps the deepest motivation for setting these processes into motion was the exhaustion of the regimes of signification on which architectural representation was grounded. The signifying effects of form had taken control of the whole chain of production, obscuring architecture’s performance in the realm of what David Harvey calls “absolute space”. The studio will work under the assumption that these alliances still constitute the most fertile ground for the construction of progressive positions in architecture. Yet, rather than working -as many of those practices did- in a consciously generated disciplinary vacuum, the studio will leave aside the modernist pretense to tabula rasa in favor of disciplinary continuity: innovation by accretion.
Material. As shown by a number of recent publications, the work of the German architect Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) enjoys a renewed currency in the disciplinary context. Undoubtedly one of the most influential architects of the modern period, Mies’s oeuvre achieved canonical status at the apex of its epoch. Having embodied one of the most uncompromising expressions of the Zeitgeist, Mies’s heyday, however, was already past by the late 1950’s. The radical achievements and formulations of the previous 40 years -from the early studies for skyscrapers in Berlin, to the rolled steel constructions of the American phase- came to be seen by the emerging post-modern critique as the veritable expression of modernism’s mechanistic, bureaucratic tendency. Mies’s seeming disregard for the figurative in favour of a material ethic, his efficiencydriven formalism, his disdain for the romantic sensibility, his obsession with method and architectural detail: these were used as accusations against his project, and often against the project of modernism as a whole. Since twenty years ago, when the last wave of studies on Mies took place on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth date, however, the architectonic debate has overcome the deep scepticism toward his work which –in the words of Luis Fernández Galiano- had prompted Mies’s second death . Yet, the contemporary relevance of Mies’s work is not just based on a renewed admiration for a great architect of the past, but on the various ways in which his project has been prolonged, developed and transformed by the avant-garde architectures of the last fifteen years. Mies’s work, perhaps more decidedly so than any other modernist architecture, relied for its powerful effects on its extreme reductionism. It idealized figures and components, in order to generate an oversimplified grammar characterized by the construction of categorical oppositions within a coherent Cartesian space. Mies’s oppositions are the result of a search for extremes. Within the absolute space of a single project, distinctions between plinth, column and roof, or between horizontal and vertical dimensions, construct these clear-cut identities. But oppositions also emerge at a larger scale, as a search for ideal formulations that lead Mies to explore the dissolution of the building into a field in the 1920’s, or to idealize the object in his American prisms.
IMPLEMENTATION Approach. If the parameters of architectural practice and education are usually defined through a combination of programmatic and sitespecific requirements, this studio will divert from that mode in that it will place the work of MvdR at its point of departure. The studio will undertake a projective investigation developing the core Miesian principles of coherence and continuity. At its most general, its goal will be to estrange the work of MvdR from itself by furthering the application of those principles to generate an excess of coherence . Mies’s oppositions will be taken as a framework that defines a space of intermediate architectural possibilities to be investigated. Specifically, this will involve diagramming movement and performance, recognizing the qualities of space, differentiating between intensive and extensive qualities, relaxing, tightening and reorientation its relations to force phase transitions, and, evolving alternative organizations. The challenge of the projects will be to invent a space of mesoforms: intermediate states of matter defined by the behavioral collaboration of fixed and fluid components (Kwinter).
Logistics. During the course of the semester, each student will conduct an individual investigation leading to a proposal of an architectural system, fragment or type, which will develop from the study of a project by MvdR, and will rely both on digital and physical modelling for production.
Collaboration. Students are encouraged to maximize collaboration between the design studio and Arch 552 -two and three dimensional description techniques, as well and presentation and fabrication skills will be expected as part of the final submission. In order to increase the exchanges and the synergies in the studio, participants are strongly encouraged to work in the studio space and in the computer labs, creating and maintaining comfortable and inspirig work place. It is important to keep a fluid and permanent communication channel among the members of the studio and with myself. For this purpose everyone will be expected to be alert with emails. Skype is a good means of communication for calls and messaging
Outcome.As an attempt to generate material and graphic quality, this course will lay a strong emphasis on the development of projective techniques. At the final review students will give a comprehensive presentation of their architectural experimentation, through the description of their models and images as part of a process of invention and acquisition of knowledge. Programs and sites will vary across the different projects, yet the methodological framework will be the plane of consistency of the studio. For the purposes of documentation, publication and theorization, the individual researches will be compiled into a collective report. The final output of the projects will thus be formatted using a common template in Adobe In Design. The specific requirements for each phase are listed below.
Meeting times. Regular meeting times for desk-crits will be: Mondays 12:30 – 5:30 /
Fridays 12:30 – 5:50. Toward the end of the semester
we will add time for tutorial meetings on Wednesdays.
Readings.
Complementing the weekly tutorials, there will be special seminar sessions on Wednesdays dedicated to the discussion of the
assigned bibliography. We will read texts by Karl Chu, Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Sanford Kwinter, Greg Lynn, Iñaki Ábalos, Manuel De Landa, and Alejandro Zaera-Polo.
ASSIGNMENTS 1 - TOPOLOGY: Modelling & Diagramming (2 weeks) Input:
Studio brief, bibliography, image dossier. - LYNN, Greg, “Forms of Expression: The Proto-functional Potential of Diagrams in Architectural Design” in El Croquis n. 72/73. - TUFTE, Edward R., The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, 1990. (pp. 165, 173, 185) - http://zeus.cs.hartford.edu/~anderson/intro.html (On Diagrams)
Goals:
Acquaint yourself with the project of your choice and its author. Generate the raw materials / Introduction to digital computation.
Usage:
Based on the documentation provided, understand the spatial and functional organization of the project, by re-drawing it on a drafting program such as Autocad or Rhino. Choose a fragment of the project and model it three dimensionally using solids (Autocad) or surfaces (Rhino). The accessory elements used to transfer the information from paper to screen should be part of the project. Tracing on the screen not allowed.
Deliverables:
1) Plans and sections of the project. Scale 1:100. 2) A wood model of a fragment of the project at scales between 1:50 and 1:10. 3) A series of 3 diagrams addressing program (spatial and quantitative), structure, and circulation. 4) Brief oral presentation of the project. Clarity and rigor in the process of geometric reconstruction will be of importance in the evaluation of the exercise.
Due:
Monday, February 6 1:00 pm. Internal pin-up (11”x17” landscape format).
2 - GENERATIVE RULE SYSTEM: Crystalline states (3 weeks) Input:
Drawings from exercise 1 - CHU, Karl, “Archeology of the Future”, in Peter Noever (Ed.), Peter Eisenman. Barefoot on White-Hot Walls. MAK & Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004. - VARAS, Julián, “Molecular Landscape”, in TransScape, Nov. 2003. ( I will provide it) - ZAERA-POLO, Alejandro, “Eisenman’s Machine of Infinite Resistance”, in El Croquis n. 83, 1997. In-class presentations: Rule-based Urbanism (JV) – Sat. 11th – 2:00 pm. Research on Voronoi diagrams: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/gina/voronoi.html /http://www.snibbe.com/scott/bf/index.htm Department lectures: Christian Kerez (February 16th ) / Claudio Vekstein (February 23rd ) Reference projects: OMA, Seattle Public Library / FOA, Bundle Tower / Peter Eisenman, Houses I and II.
Goals: Usage:
Re-describe the chosen project by forcing it to emerge through a process of genetic manipulation. (transformation and complexification of simple components) Acquaint yourself with bottom-up determinism in the design process.
Deliverables:
Organized presentation of at least three different experiments with rule systems, through the following components: 1) Diagrams of the rule systems employed in each case 2) DIY handbook-style diagrams describing step-by-step the generation of each experiment. 3)At least 3 diagrams addressing the relationship between the sought-for forms, and the results of the experiments.
Due:
Friday, March 3rd - First interim review.
This exercise will require the accomplishment of a certain amount of mechanical work. Simplify the task first by working on a single layer of the project (i.e: structure, enclosure, circulation, services, etc), on an orthographic 2d projection. Describe the organization in a procedural (rather than compositional) mode. Turn all matter-of-factness into explicit decisions determined by a system of rules. The system of production has to be linear at this stage of the work (it can not be based on an overview of the project or a preconceived idea of its final form). Using this technique, match the project’s final form. Refine the system of rules until the results approximate the project with precision. When a layer has been generated successfully move on to other layers, as a derivation of the previous one(s).
3 - MESOFORMS: Smectic-Nematic states. (4 weeks) Input:
Re-description of project based on generative system from exercise 2. Lectures: Sanford Kwinter (March 9) / SERVO (March 16) - DE LANDA, Manuel, “Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture” in LEACH, Neil, (Ed.), Designing for a Digital World, John Wiley & Sons, London, 2002. - KWINTER, Sanford, “Mies and Movement”, in MERTINS, Detlef, (Ed.) The Presence of Mies, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1994.
Goals:
Investigate the range of adaptability of the project based on the re-description of it generated in the previous step. Force the project ot mutate beyond its envelope of perfomance.
Usage:
Introduce a simple problem into the project by modifying some of its conditions (functional, technical, structural, site- specific, etc) or stating a new desired program / performance. Re-generate the project using the description system created on the previous exercise, but employing the new settings. Repeat this operation as many times as necessary, consistently increasing the preassure placed on the project. Re-define the settings as often as necessary.
Deliverables:
All of the experiments of this phase will be presented with reference both to the parameters under investigation and to the original configuration of the project. The scales and modes of representation should be consistent with those used since phase I.
Due:
Saturday, April 1st - Second interim review.
4 - FRAMING: Evaluation, rationalization and presentation. (3 weeks) Input: All previous work. Template for final collective book. Goals: Develop own evaluation criteria & rationalize the operations of the project. Determine the differential conditions and the net gain vis-a-vis the source material of the investigation. Incorporate material information and production constraints. Frame the investigation. Usage: In this phase it will be important to update the historical conditions of the project, such that the testing process is oriented to the production of a building that is specific within contemporary givens. In other words: How do changes in lifestyle, technology, or material life affect the project? The production of the semester will be documented and edited for the purposes of presentation and external evaluation. Deliverables:
Comprehensive description of the project in physical and digital formats, including a systematic account of the research process. The scales and modes of representation should be consistent with those used since phase I.
Output format:
Letter-sized format booklet based on template + physical model(s) + Digital presentation.
Due:
Thursday, May 4th.
THEORY ...I imagined myself getting onto the back of an author, and giving him a child, which would be his and which at the same time be a monster. It is very important that it should be his child, because the author actually had to say everything that I made him say. But it also had to be a monster because it was necessary to go through all kinds of decenterings, slips, break ins, secret emissions, which I really enjoyed... Deleuze
CYBERNETIC CONCEPTS Functioning as a counterpart to the studio, the seminar will expose participants to some of the theoretical and architectural precedents that the design work seeks to develop. Encompassing a selection of texts and projects, as well as references from the fields of art and engineering, the seminar will contribute both a rigorous working terminology, and a set of resonating images. This loosely structured informational package will work as a starting point for a small-scale investigation the will augment the scope of the studio project. The seminar should thus be regarded as a space to sharpen students’ argumentative and critical skills: these represent an opportunity to mobilize the vector of virtualisation. If the studio sessions are geared toward the actualisation of a series of abstract hypotheses and diagrams, the seminar should reinforce the capacity to articulate concepts and images in a manner that charges both with generative potential. The universe of sources/references of the course constitutes a fragmentary rendering of the post-deconstructivist disciplinary landscape. Although it can be argued that the architectural processes of the last fifteen years can hardly be construed as a homogenous or unidirectional movement, the seminar singles out a number of concepts whose widespread utilization denotes a Deleuzian plane of consistency. Even if short historical perspective might discourage conclusions about a structural nature of these phenomena, it is possible to recognize the overall loss of aura of the manual paradigm, in the face of the digital, as the reality where most of these processes ultimately cohere. While this shift does not necessarily imply the defunction of the hand as a tool of production (a new interface, the mouse-screen, simply replaces the pencil-paper), it irreversibly transfers skill from it to the eye and to the brain (and this, in turn, breeds news skills in the hand). The main effect of this process is the hard-wiring of the digital diagram in all forms of organization-related thinking. In other words, every form of production must now be read through the informational lens. Developing over 5 weeks, each seminar session will thus be centered around a specific topic of discussion. Although every student will be expected to be well acquainted with the weekly readings and projects, each session will be led by a team of two persons, who will be responsible for introducing the topic to the rest of the class. This intro will consist in an oral presentation based on project images and diagrams, and should not extend for more than 30 minutes. Special consultancy meetings will be scheduled on Monday evenings (flexible) to discuss the presentations for the following Wednesday. Aside from participating in the discussions (by questioning the presentation, or by bringing in new ideas, images or information), the rest of the teams are expected to prepare a brief discussion of a particular architectural project that is germane to the day’s theme. Although these short discussions should be based on independent research, some suggestions for materials are given below. The texts that are included in the reader should be considered as the base for a more extensive research to be conducted by each team, expanding and customising the range of textual and image-references. Because the seminar will focus on the instrumentalization of informational and cybernetic concepts, we will skip over a direct engagement with their core definitions, assuming that some background reading will be conducted in parallel to the weekly assignments. Some of the main resources are accessible on-line. This link that can serve as a starting point for the research: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CSTHINK.html The following two books are great for attaining a perspective of the central notions of cybernetics. I recommend reading them both: GREGORY BATESON,
Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
NORBERT WIENER,
The Human use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society.
THE DIAGRAM: From description to prescription Session 1
Wednesday, Feb. 22nd, 1:30 hs – 101 West Sibley Virtual / Actual - Mediations - Organisation and Form - System and Intutiton MANUEL DE LANDA, GREG LYNN, ROBERT SOMOL, Suggested projects: For inspiration only:
“Deleuze, Diagrams and the Genesis of Form” in ANY n. 23, 1998. “Forms of Expression: The Proto-functional Potential of Diagrams in Architectural Design” in El Croquis n. 72/73. “The Diagrams of Matter”, ANY n. 23, 1998. Claudio Vekstein, Coastal Park in Vicente Lopez, Province of Buenos Aires - UN Studio, Moebius House – OMA, Seattle Public Library (and many other projects) – Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon… www.visualcomplexity.com www.radicalcartography.com Also, see the late work of Jackson Pollock.
DETERMINISM: Genetic / Mimetic Session 2
Wednesday, March 8th, 1:30 hs Information (Genotype) and Form (Phenotype) - Fitness (Selection mechanisms) - Variation operators (Mutation and Recombination) - Mimesis, Indexing and Heredity. KARL CHU, MICHAEL HENSEL, Suggested projects: For inspiration only:
“Archeology of the Future”, in Peter Noever (Ed.), Peter Eisenman. Barefoot on White-Hot Walls. MAK & Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004. “The Unconscious Destiny of Capital”, in LEACH, Neil (Ed.), Designing for a Digital World, John Wiley & Sons, London 2002. “Finding Exotic Form: An Evolution of Form Finding as Design Method” in Architectural Design Vol. 74 N. 3 May/June 2004 Peter Eisenman, Houses I, II, III, IV – FOA, Bunch Tower (proposal for the World Trade Center site) – Mies van der Rohe, 50 x 50 ft. house. The work of Canadian artist Brian Jungen, particularly the “heads” and the “skeletons”.
MACHINIC PRACTICE: Systematic unpredictability Session 3
Wednesday, March 15th, 1:30 hs
Abstract Machines / Concrete Assemblages - Efficiency and Sensitivity - Efficiency and Redundancy - Internal and External Consistency ALEJANDRO ZAERA-POLO, SANFORD KWINTER, GREG LYNN, CIRO NAJLE, Suggested projects: For inspiration only:
“Eisenman’s Machine of Infinite Resistance”, in El Croquis n. 83, 1997. “Flying the Bullet, or When Did the Future Begin?”, in Rem Koolhaas, Conversations with Students, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. ibid. “Convolutedness”, in Landscape Urbanism. A Manual for the Machinic Landscape. Architectural Association, London, 2003. Peter Eisenman, Aronoff Center for Design and Art – OMA, competition project for Melun-Senart (1986) – Various projects by Enric Miralles. See the work of aerial photographers Alex McLean and Georg Gerster.
MESOFORMS: Intermediate states of matter Session 4
Wednesday, March 29th, 1:30 hs
Fragmentation and Wholeness - Intensive and Extensive Qualities - From Object to Relationship - Differences in degree and Differences in Kind - Critique of identity SANFORD KWINTER, STAN ALLEN, Suggested projects: For inspiration only:
“Mies and Movement”, in MERTINS, Detlef, The Presence of Mies, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1994. “From Object to Field”, AD Profile 127, 1997. Le Corbusier, Venice Hospital - Greg Lynn, Embryological House - Peter Eisenman, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin - Nox, World Trade Center Proposal - Herzog&deMeuron, Signal boxes, Basel. Introductory sequence to A Constructive Madness. (Movie written by Jeffrey Kipins about Frank Ghery’s Lewis House project)
AFFECT: Program & beyond Session 5
Wednesday, April 5th, 1:30 hs
Lifestyle - Production of Subjectivity - Topology, Materiality and Affect.
INAKI ÁBALOS, MARC COUSINS, ALICE T. FRIEDMAN, FÉLIX GUATTARI, Suggested projects: For inspiration only:
The Good Life. A Guided Visit to the Houses of Modernity. Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2001. (Chapter 1: Zarathustra’s House + Chapter 6: Huts, Parasites and Nomads: the deconstruction of the house) “The Aeffect”, in BRET STEELE (ed.) Corporate Fields. Architectural Association, London, 2004. Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. (People Who Live in Glass Houses: Edith Farnsworth, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Philip Johnson) Chaosmosis. (Chapter 1: Production of Subjectivity) Mies van der Rohe, Farnsworth House and other residential projects - OMA, House Y2K – FOA, Virtual House. Manifestos and images from BRUCE MAU’S Lifestyles book, Hans Werleman’s photos of OMA’s villas, etc.
LOGISTICS CALENDAR
Riezler:
but February
Topology
form,
D r.
January
PHASE 1
Dear
CALENDAR SPRING SEMESTER 2006
My
attack
Week 1 Mon. Fri.
23 27
12:30 PM
Mon. Wed. Fri.
30 1 3
12:30 PM 12:30 PM
Desk crits Presentation by JV: Molecular Urbanism Desk crits
Mon.
6
12:30 PM
Pin-up Phase 1
10
12:30 PM
a Week g a 2i n s t
12:30 PM
Launch of phase 1 Desk crits
form
12:30 PM
as
is
an
end
not in
against itself.
I m a k e t h i s a t t a c kWeekb3 e c a u s e o f w h a t I h a v e l e a r n e d . F o r m a s a n e n d Fri.
142 East Sibley
Launch of phase 2
i n e v i t a b l y r e s u l t sSat.i n m11 e r e f oPresentation r m a lbyi Jose s mArnaud .This effort is directed only to Generative Rule System
2:00 PM
Week 4 Mon. Tue. Thu. Fri.
13 14 16 17
12:30 PM
Desk crits Lecture: Kazuyo Sejima Lecture: Christian Kerez Desk crits
PHASE 2
t h e e x t e r i o r. B u t o n l y w h a t h a s l i f e o n t h e i n s i d e h a s a l i v i n g e x t e 5:15 PM 6:00 PM
12:30 PM
Week 5
r i o r . O n l y w h a t h aMon. s i n t 20 e n s i t y Desk o crits f 1l iŻfTHE e DIAGRAM can have intensity of form. EvSeminar Wed. 22 12:30 PM 1:30 PM
12:30 PM
Conversation with C.V. Lecture: Claudio Vekstein Desk crits
12:30 PM
Desk crits
4:00 PM
Thu. Fri.
23 24
Mon. Fri.
27 3
6:00 PM
101 West Sibley
e r y “ h o w ” i s b a s e Week d o6 n a “ w h a t ” . T h e u n - f o r m e d i s n o w o r s e t h a n t h e March
First review
142 East Sibley
o v e r - f o r m e d . T h e Week f o7 r m e r i s n o t h i n g ; t h e l a t t e r i s m e r e a p p e a r a n c e . Mon. Wed. Thu. Fri.
6 8 9 10
12:30 PM
Week 8 Mon. Wed. Thu. Fri.
13 15 16 17
12:30 PM
1:30 PM 6:00 PM
Desk crits Seminar 2 Ż THE GENETIC Lecture Sanford Kwinter Desk crits
120 Rand Hall
Mesoforms
PHASE 3
Real form presupposses real life. But no “has been” or “would be”. 12:30 PM
1:30 PM
Desk crits Seminar 3 Ż THE MACHINIC Lecture SERVO Desk crits
142 East Sibley
T h i s i s o u r c r i t e r i o n : We s h o u l d j u d g e n o t s o m u c h b y t h e r e s u l t s a s Week 9 Mon. Fri.
6:00 PM
12:30 PM
20
b y t h e c r e a t i v e p r o c e s24s . F o r i t i s j u s t t h i s t h a t r e v e a l s w h e t h e r t h e Week 10 Mon. Wed. Fri. Sat.
27 29 31 1
FIELD TRIP TO CHICAGO
12:30 PM
Desk crits Seminar 4 Desk crits
Ż MESOFORMS
form is derived from life or invented for its own sake. That is why April
1:30 PM
12:30 PM
PM
Second review
120 Rand Hall
157 East Sibley
Week 11
t h e c r e a t i v e p r o c eMon. s s i s 35 s o e s Desk s e crits n t5 i Ża LIFESTYLE l. Life is what is decisive for us. Wed. Seminar 12:30 PM
Fri.
7
12:30 PM
Desk crits
101 West Sibley
Week 12
I n a l l i t s p l e n i t u Mon. d e a n10 d i n Desk i t scrits s p i r i t u a l a n d m a t e r i a l r e l a t i o n s . I s Wed. 12 Additional desk crits (optional) Framing
PHASE 4
12:30 PM
Fri.
14
12:30 PM
Desk crits
Week 13
i s n o t o n e o f t h e Mon. m o s t17 i m p oDesk r t acritsn t t a s k s o f t h e W e r k b u n d t o c l a r i f y , Wed. 19 Additional desk crits (optional) 12:30 PM
Fri.
21
12:30 PM
Desk crits
Week 14
a n a l y z e a n d o r d e rMon. o u r24 s p i r i tDesk u acritsl a n d m a t e r i a l s i t u a t i o n a n d t h u s t o Wed. 26 Additional desk crits (optional) 12:30 PM
Fri.
28
12:30 PM
Desk crits
t a k e t h e May l e a d ? M uMon.s t n o1 t a l l Final e l reviews s e b e l e f t t ot.b.at h e f o r c e s o f c r e a t i o n ? Week 15
Fri.
10
5
READINGS Base materials ÁBALOS, Iñaki, The Good Life. A Guided Visit to the Houses of Modernity. Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2001. (Chapter 1: Zarathustra’s House) BLASER, Werner, Mies van der Rohe. Artemis, Zürich, 1972. CARTER, Peter, Mies van der Rohe at Work. Phaidon, New York, 1999. First published by The Pall Mall Press, 1974. EISENMAN, Peter, “Mies and the Figuring of Absence”, in LAMBERT, Phyllis, (Ed.), Mies in America, Canadian Center for Architecture and Whitney Museum of American Art, Montréal and New York, 2001. EVANS, Robin, “Mies van der Rohe’s Paradoxical Symmetries”, in EVANS, Robin, Translations from Drawing to Building and other Essays, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1997. FILLER, Martin, “Architecture and Nothingness”, in The New York Review of Books, June 12th 1986. FORD, Edward, The Details of Modern Architecture. Vol. 1. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1994. GOWAN, James, “Reflections on the Mies Centennial”, in AD vol. 56, no. 1, 1986. JOHNSON, Philip C., Mies van der Rohe. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1953. (revised second edition) KOOLHAAS, Rem, “Miestakes”, in LAMBERT, Phyllis, (Ed.), Mies in America, Canadian Center for Architecture and Whitney Museum of American Art, Montréal and New York, 2001. PARICIO, Ignacio, “Tres observaciones inconvenientes sobre la construcción en la obra Americana”, in A&V n. 6, 1986. MERTINS, Detlef (ed.), The Presence of Mies. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1994. N.A., “A Latter Day Temple in Berlin”, in AD, Volume XXXIX, February 1969. QUETGLAS, José, Fear of Glass. Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion. Actar, Barcelona, 1999. SCHULZE, Franz, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1985. SMITHSON, Alison & Peter, Changing the Art of Inhabitation. W W Norton & Co. Inc, London, 1998. SPAETH, David, Mies van der Rohe (foreword by Kenneth Frampton). Rizzoli International, New York, 1985. WACHTER, Gabriela (ed.), Mies van der Rohe’s New National Gallery in Berlin, Vice Versa verlag, Berlin, 1995.
Complementary bibliography CHU, Karl, “Archeology of the Future”, in Peter Noever (Ed.), Peter Eisenman. Barefoot on White-Hot Walls. MAK & Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004. DE LANDA, Manuel, “Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture” in LEACH, Neil, (Ed.), Designing for a Digital World, John Wiley & Sons, London, 2002. (Reprinted in Phylogenesis: FOA’s Ark, Actar, 2003) KWINTER, Sanford, “Mies and Movement”, in MERTINS, Detlef, The Presence of Mies, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1994. LYNN, Greg, “Forms of Expression: The Proto-functional Potential of Diagrams in Architectural Design” in El Croquis n. 72/73. TUFTE, Edward R., The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, Cheshire, Connecticut, 1990.
Visual Explanations, Graphics Press, Cheshire, Connecticut.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
VARAS, Julián, “Molecular Landscape”, in TransScape, Nov. 2003. ZAERA-POLO, Alejandro, “Eisenman’s Machine of Infinite Resistance”, in El Croquis n. 83, 1997. 11
t h e f a c e JUNG-GUEEUM
HEATHERBECK
o f
circumstance. Here the problems of the
ERIKAHAWKINS
spirit begin. The important question to ask is not “what” but “how”. What goods we produce or what NATHANIELJONES tools we use are not questions of spiritual value. How the question of skyscrapers versus low buildings is settled, CHRISTOPHERMASCARI whether we build of steel and glass, are unimportant questions from the point of view of spirit. Whether we tend to centralization or
KATHERINEMEAGHER
decentralization in city planning is a practical question, not a question of value. Yet, it is the question of
value that is decisive. We
BRENDAPETROFF
must set up new values, fix
our ultimate goals,
so
standards. For what WOO-YOUNGSHIM
that
we
may
establish
is right and significant for the new era- is this: spirit
the
opportunity
for
e x i s t e n c e . VICTORTZEN
JU-HYUNGYOOK
© Julian Varas Revised version April 3rd, 2006
any era –including to
give
the
ANDREWSMITH