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Abstract Americans love their history, and they certainly love their historical architecture. Architecture has always operated in between reality and fiction; the original and the copy, a precedent and an antecedent. history and future. Architect, and architectural representation, would seem to tend towards representations of truth, representations of the time in which they were produced. Architects are engrossed by notions of truth; truth in material, truth in form, etc. But what happens when truth is relative? What if the meanings of symbols, and their associations with time and history, do not matter - in fact, it is not allowed to matter? What happens when our digital mechanisms fold multiple readings of history into one, without a beginning or end? Architecture and urbanism today desires to recycle, reuse and regurgitate a canon of precedent and standard; a canon or a code, (or perhaps a catalogue) is often critically suspect, and are often simply facsimiles divorced from meaning. But why? Why do Americans in particular obsess over particular styles, fetishized aesthetics or mass produced material approximations? These tend to be small-scale architectural components and details (column covers, statuettes, faux marble, screen printed wood textures, etc.) but also encompass the borrowing of whole projects and building forms, and are usually tied to some specific moment in history: Imperial Roman, Hellenistic Greece, Hindu, JudeoChristian, Colonial American. Architecture has a long legacy of this, where resonances of projects fluidly move through time, constantly reinterpreting itself; this is essentially the critical intent of Postmodern architecture, but done ironically. One might even correlate the often-taught axiom, “Architects don’t design buildings,
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we design things that look like buildings.” Even further, one could 1. Breitschmind, and Olgiati 2019. Non-Referential say Architects design things that look like buildings, which look like Architecture other buildings.” 2.
While Postmodern architecture is critically ironic in its resurrection of historic precedent, it reaches a point today where the mechanisms of design simply replicate what we see as historical, without critical intervention; it is Postmodernism, but taken as fact. Design operates within a new modality where architectural production forfeits itself to algorithmic thinking - the Internet, its conduit. The thesis studies the shapes, elements and materials that constitute such a catalogue, but moreover, studies who or what puts it together, and makes the claim that rather than irony, it is utilized to claim suzerainty over history, and push aesthetics in an ideological direction. Digital tools are designed to manipulate history. It is the raw material for a new narrative; the aesthetics of the past guising a sinister present. The dangers of false narratives play out when people believe successful design is one that merely manipulates the historical, the precursor, or the standard. The thesis’ results misperform current production paradigms in an acritical way, cf. “to do something so wrong it's good”2. The intention is not necessarily to advocate the results as good or bad; rather, it is contemporary aesthetics reductio ad absurdum; its sincerity, therefore, elusive. Is this the future beyond, or is there something else, perhaps something non-referential.1, 2
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Runting
Helen.
“Clone Stamp”
2019.
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deus ex machina
Contents i. Abstract ii. Table of Contents Part I. Prelude “The great dispute between the ancients and the moderns is not yet settled; it has been on the table since the silver age succeeded the golden age. Mankind has always maintained that the good old times were much better than the present day”
Part II. Curation “Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.”
Part III. Method “Let us work without reasoning,” said Martin; “it is the only way to make life endurable.”
Part IV. Product “Nothing is so common as to imitate one’s enemies, and to use their weapons.”
Part V. Assessment “Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.”
Part VI. Punchline
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Doppler Diagrams
Doppler Diagrams
Doppler Diagram
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Part II. Curation “Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.”
-Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary (1752)
ELEMENT TYPE: Homestead SHAPE TYPE: Homestead NAME: Levittown NAME: Levittown
SHAP NAM
ELEMENT Homestead SHAPETYPE: TYPE: Homestead NAME: Trailer
NAME: Trailer
ELEMENT TYPE: Door ELEMENT TYPE: NAME: Mihrab
Door NAME: Mihrab Portal
ELEM NAME
ELEMENT TYPE: Hearth ELEMENT TYPE: Hearth NAME: Power Plant Cooling Tower NAME: Power Plant
ELEMENT TYPE: Column ELEMENT TYPE: NAME: Greek
NAME: Doric
Column
ELEM NAME
ELEMENT TYPE: Stair ELEMENT TYPE: Stair NAME: Fire stair NAME: Fire Escape
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Part III. Method “‘Let us work without reasoning,’ said Martin; ‘it is the only way to make life endurable.’”
-Voltaire, Candide
Part I. Prelude “The great dispute between the ancients and the moderns is not yet settled; it has been on the table since the silver age succeeded the golden age. Mankind has always maintained that the good old times were much better than the present day.” -Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary (1752)
Washington D.C
Site study
Ford's Theater Where Our President Died Mathew Brady. c. 1860 Washington D.C. Library of Congress
Treasury Mathew Brady. c. 1860 Washington D.C. Library of Congress
Mathew Brady. c. 1860 Washington D.C. Library of Congress
Fig. (46)
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Part IV. Product “Nothing is so common as to imitate one’s enemies, and to use their weapons.”
-Voltaire
In 2016, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City installed a piece by the Chinese artist duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Titled “Can’t Help Myself” the work is a large robotic arm affixed with a roughly 4-foot
Fig. (55) Jacques Louis-David. 1805. Napoleon at the Great St. Bernard. Château de Malmaison
Fig. (56) Paul Delaroche. 1850. Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Walker Art Gallery
CLIMATECONDITION = Windy.Alps
PERSON = Napoleon
GARMENT = Cape.Red
VEHICLE = Horse
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Fig. (55) Jacques Louis-David. 1805. Napoleon at the Great St. Bernard. Château de Malmaison
CLIMATECONDITION = Windy.Alps
PERSON = Napoleon
GARMENT = Cape.Grey
VEHICLE = Horse
ENVIRONMENT= snow
Fig. (56) Paul Delaroche. 1850. Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Walker Art Gallery
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38.89976332736733, -77.04249111443399 H.G.-13 The Forum form extracted from the Algorithm
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Part V. Assessment “Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.”
-Voltaire
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Fig. (67) Architectural details for a theater
Fig. (69)
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An artist's rendering of an exploded ceiling detail for a forum
EMBEDDED WIDEFLANGE BEAM
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HYDRO-DIPPED COLUMN COVER
PLYWOOD PANEL INSERT
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Part VI. Punchline
1. Russo, Rhett “Architecture, Deep and Cryptic.”
wide squeegee, sat in a large pool of viscous red fluid, surrounded by a 20-foot tall acrylic barriers within a sparse gallery space. Slowly moving back and forth, the machine continuously mopped the fluid surrounding it, pulling the squeegee inwardly, rotating and flipping its arm to catch a sudden a runaway bit of the fluid. Continuously cleaning the floor of the fluid, the machine makes quick, dramatic movements, seemingly frustrated at its inability to keep the fluid from seeping further away from itself. Flailing to catch the next trickle of “blood” the dramatic and visceral kinetic reactions of the machine seemed to mimic Sisyphus failing to move his rock uphill. In reality, the machine was designed to enact an