28.10.08

Notes on a Napkin

Picnic: what leads most the discussion are ideas about duality.

swamp: with the opposition of above-beneath --> what is present is the idea of decay and putrefaction. Swamps are commonly known for their darkness either figuratively or literally. Either things disappear or get stuck then disappear. Ideas of camouflage with any organism that lives IN the swamp.
From: Dark Eden: The Swamp in 19th Cent. American Culture by David C Miller
"Europeans long had feared and despised uninhabited and uncultivated landscapes. Besides their obvious dangers, such 'desert places' were thought to be ugly and evil. Assisted by an aesthetic revolution in eighteenth-cent Great Britain, however, urbane antebellum Americans took romantic delight in certain wild places such as mountains and forests. Yet swamps seemed neither sublime nor picturesque and thus retained their age-old negative connotations. In the years following the Civil War Americans sought out these newly aestheticized exotic landscapes, particularly in Florida and the Mississippi Delta."
- Miller presents the romanticized view of the swamp environment in history. This is the immediate vision we have, where hierarchy establishes decay and growth , not unlike any other environment. A horizon divides and organizes the swamp, the need for survival dictates that organisms pass through the water's surface inhabiting both the land and the water.

cliff: moving across the surface perpendicular that is itself perpendicular to the surface of the earth. Just like in the swamp, hierarchy is established but vertically relating more so to the forest than the swamp.

[Image & Article from Abitare]



[Ice Age Landscapes in Lower Manhattan]
* what a fantastic viewpoint, collapsing a subterranean wormhole with the Big Apple skyline behind the overhang. Almost as if two points of view were photographed at once without a two point perspective.

forest: After walking around this year's Frieze Art Fair this Tokyo painter caught my eye. Amongst the plethora of quickly made banal art work, his large scale forest was so peaceful. Little irridescent daubs of paint made up the entire 4m wall and cleverly the spatial treatment was to reverse what happens in real life. Meaning trees became negative space while empty space became this compendium of lavender, rose and pearl hues.



26.10.08

First Three Guests

The Cliff:
  • The ecology of the cliff as seen in the Antartic. Alaska, with melting glaciers.
  • Reality of the Inuit having to relocate due to their environment melting and becoming unstable.
  • Like a domino effect the melting of the Polar Ice caps leads to effects elsewhere --> coastal zones (California, Florida & seasides) will slip underwater.
  • With the cliff itself the sheer sides can provide a dwelling. Ie: rapelling and hanging pads.
  • challenging the verticality of a cliff in a perpendicular manner like the Anasazi who live inside the cliff.





The Swamp:
  • Idea of above/below --> Florida swampland where only the ghost orchid grows versus danger of alligators pikes and snakes.
  • mire/stuck/heat/floating/heiarchy
  • the Swamp was the end result of Hurricane Katrina breaking levees: --> Military Hydrology
  • cult movie: The Swamp Thing . 1982





The Forest:
  • Environmental canopy - shade
  • ground dwellers - live in roots on forest floor often without sunlight
  • canopy dwellers - rotate from tree to tree oftentimes not even going to the ground at all
  • Large net where several scientists live for months documenting the Amazon or in Madagascar
  • hierarchy within the verticality similar to cliff
  • a collection - repitition forms the whole


20.10.08

Table for Nine

curiosities within Architectural practice...

I. The opportunity to combine dissonant principles. ie. Politics, Economics, Social theories, Technology...

II. To walk the line between what exists in our immediate reality and what might be possible with a sprinkle of fiction.
III. Within a project to reuse - recycle concepts that feed back into a project to either strengthen or provide innovative solutions.
IV. To think locally instead of globally, although collectives are important.
V. Parallels between Cuisine and Architecture.
VI. The "Marxist" thought: ie. the where? & why? of things rather than accepting pure face-value.

VII. Translation between emotions or the ethereal into reality - the grounding.
VIII. Experimenting with reuse - recycle of materials, waste and existing co
nditions.

IX. Multiplicity