Seminar Notes February 16th/18th

(Sketch for a History of Ideas, continued)

1 linguistic, morphology and semantics;
language insinuates itself into architecture

2 Ciam - Team X - the Dubrovnik handover,
a tired Le Corbusier?

3 The Post-Modern Condition, Jean Francois
Lyotard (also see in French, Postmodernism pour
les enfants).

4 legibility/illegibility - from venturi to rogers;
or reading the sections through the facade -
five rules, five obstructions.

5 the critic, the architect, the public and the text.

6 Rhizome- Deluze & Guattari/ The Society of the
Spectacle Guy Debord - the situationists, le flaneur...

7 insight from randomness - see heisenberg and kurt godel's
theorem on 'incompleteness' - redundant knolwedge in
waiting, or junk DNA??

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Lars von Trier: Five Obstructions screening 16th February

from SearchWorld / Independent Film World / Independent Film

Lars von Trier, the Danish director of "Breaking the Waves," "Dancer in

the Dark," and "Dogville" returns with a strange and brilliant meta-film.

In 2000, he challenged his mentor, the veteran filmmaker Jorgen Leth,

to a one-of-a-kind director's game: von Trier would give Leth rules, or

obstructions, by which Leth would have to remake his own 1967 short film

"The Perfect Human"--five times.

The first film, according to von Trier's rules, has to be composed of shots

no longer than 12 frames and must be filmed in Cuba, without a set. Fast

forward to Havana: Leth has found a solution to the difficulties and is

making his film with confidence. With satanic glee, von Trier comes up

with an even more constraining set of obstructions, clearly taking

pleasure in torturing his former teacher.

He attempts to find the most crippling rules and devises appropriate

punishment when Leth fails to follow them.
Lars von Trier is no stranger to sadism: this is the man responsible for

the abuse of Emily Watson, Bjork, and Nicole Kidman in his last three

features. "The Five Obstructions" makes it clear that his apparent mean

streak is considered, focused, and aimed at a kind of creative catharsis.

His agenda is to strip away the pretense, to get from the "perfect" to the

"human," as he puts it.
Von Trier is hoping to force his former teacher to make a bad movie, a

"pile of crap," but the truth is that creativity feeds on limits: the resulting

short films are all terrific. To see how Leth discovers ways to use the

devilish obstructions to his advantage is nothing short of thrilling.

"Everything inspires you!" the frustrated von Trier complains.

The directors' game reveals itself as something more than an empty

exercise in style: von Trier had a secret agenda all along, but by the

time the fifth film unreels, the ambiguities have multiplied, and it's not

clear anymore who exposed himself more, or who obstructed whom.

In this creative mindgame, the only clear winner is the audience.

If you like The Five Obstructions, the following films may interest you
• Jesus, You Know

• The Story of the Weeping Camel

• Medea

• The Private Archives of Pablo Escobar

• Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey

• The Celluloid Closet

• A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies

• 4 Little Girls

• American Experience - The Battle Over Citizen Kane

• Dark Days

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Seminar Notes - the Derrida screening 14th February

Derrida - some quick notes:

1 an individual's right to privacy

2 Heidegger on Aristotle: He was born, he thought, he died!
(Is that it?)

3 how to love knowing one is dying (eventually) -
the impossible confidence of love (Circumfession 1992)

4 beware: thinking at work! thinking as an 'action' movie!

5 the permanently flawed biography (history?)

6 the ear and the other, 1982

7 deconstruction - to make 'natural' what is unnaturalised?
deconstruction is not a sitcom - read, do some homework.

8 remember Levi-Strauss: that savage(d) mind or
'thinking-in-the-wild'. (see Edmund Leach)

9 see also The Undoing of Thought/The Defeat of the Mind,
Alain Finkielkraut.

10 love is narcissistic - Points 1992

11 Archive Fever, 1998

12 The secret passions of philosophers: the sexual life
of bees, philosophers, architects? a book we all want
to read - really?

13 life: exactly (?) what is left out, what is edited?

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You don't pull no punches....Seminar (cliff) Notes 11th February

"You don't pull no punches
but you don't push the river, no"

sometimes we need to go from Jacques Derrida to
Van Morrison - here's a re-run on the
I am Architecture narratives you are working up
through the individual texts:

1 consider it a working up towards a cognitive
map
- before architecture
- during education
- now (as you are about to leave)

2 consider how this informs the
(world)(UTA)(professional) 'system of architecture'
recall Pascal Casanova's The World Repulbic of
Letters.'

3 consider the ultimate question:
what is worth knowing?
what has been worth knowing?
remembering there are no 'wrong' paths.
consider pushing the river too!

Seminar (cliff) Notes 9th February

5 Big Ideas and a Spanner - a stand-up lecture
outline sketch for a History of Ideas in Archtiecture


- how history can be introduced as a series of interlocking ideas
- the interconnective tissue implied (across geographies, cultures,
histories and politics)
- the relevance of history to the shaping of architectural thinking (in the present)

1 suggest the last century can be selectively analysed by
considering it under the notion of
"5 Big Ideas and a Spanner"

2 ask for as many big ideas from the last century
as possible

3 these could include anything voiced from the students:
human rights,fascism, mass production, communism,
space travel, internet..................................................
................................................................................
4 make an interconnective tissue from what appears
random

5 considee how one can link these and see the
interactivity through the following five notions -
the 5 big ideas:

- Modernism (incl. modernity, modernisation - progress, equality,
democracy and the agendas for social change as the big idea)

- Constructvisim (incl the constuctive mind, Soviet aesthetics
agitprop and propaganda/social mission - suprematism, linguistics -
the heavily constructed big idea)

- Conceptualism (after Duchamp, why Dadaism is not
necessarily Duchampian, playing chess and R.Mutt's urinal -
art 'off the canvas' - the big idea)

- Plurality (linguistics, the rise of..de saussure , the significance
of language studies, semiology and structuralism - the open work
1950s literature, prelude to post-structuralism)

-Digitalism (the next paradigm after the one before - consider
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - the
21st century as a re-tread of the 20th century (computer-aided)
digital space becomes another outer space or the suburbanisation
of the mind).

The Spanner: Undoing. Contest, Interrogation - the consequences
of late 20th century thinking.

(to be continued).

Seminar (cliff-)Notes 7 Feb

1 Milan Kundera - The Book of Laughter & Forgetting
(see the History of the Blackbird section)
consider - angelic laughter/laughter of the devil
consider also Cervantes, Sterne and Brautigan

2 Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being;
the notion of coincidence and the confidence of
the random - re: USSR/Czech Republic pre 1989.

3 Consider adding/extending the alphabet:
provisionality
undecidability
incongruity
interiority
exteriority
bull

for the concept of 'bull' see my How Architecture gots its Hump
(MIT Press) for the notion of the Architectural Bull -
edict, papal bull, trope, directive, paradox of congruous incongruity...

4 Edward Said - Orientalism
how the West constructed the East and still does
so...see also Said's many books including
'Covering Islam'. Said died last year. For an
interesting (brief) assessment of this see
Ahdaf Soueif's Mezzaterra, Fragments from a Common
Ground - consider how "modernism' re-colonises the
common ground!!

5 The story of the architecture student and the boss's
command - make it Western, well hell, make it Western!
And Western it was!
Best Western!! (see the other SOA blog for this story in detail).

6 language & architecture
consider the word for architecture in Finnish
"rakennustaide"
rakennus = building
taide = art/skill
the art/skill of building??
consider the untranslatable in buidling across cultures.

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I Am Architecture - working blogs 8.2.05

Here are the narrative triggers we discussed yesterday.
These are flexible as more ‘steps’ and ‘texts’ in the
education of an architect are revealed. This way of working
will allow you to refine previous texts later whilst
thinking ahead – spirally – to the eventual completed
narrative. This process will also allow us to continue the
seminar online when I am back in the Hotel Architecture.

Once again, everyone consider preparing a text
(even a graphic text – remember 500 words initial entry)
for the competition below – you all have the ability to
write and situate yourselves in this increasingly ambiguous
zone between the privileged alienation of a profession and the blurred
public perception of that profession. If you can’t do it,
don’t expect professors and instructors to do it – if you doubt this
see my Tokyo Flash Notes (2003)

Walking across campus yesterday, and then onto Chase Manhattan
Bank on East Border Street, the song of Interpol came to mind
– Next Exit: How do the words go? “We’re not going to the town,
we’re going to the city, we’re going to drag this shit around….”
Your next exit?
Go figure!

Happy Pancake Day
rc. 8.2.2005


I am Architecture - working titles
(individual blogs to be completed by March 12th 2005)

NW – Escape Routes, Heidegger and the Bored game
LS – Why I stopped reading Venturi’s C&C on the Third Time and then started again
MK - The Thesis I might do, the Thesis I can’t do
TR - The Parallel World (Post-Privileged Architecture)
TN - Despuntes: Architecture and Untranslatability
KJ - I’ve only finished one book in my life. I don’t lie: life in a graphic novel.
BS – Concrete Poetry.
BB – Derrida and McLuhan: This Architectural Life
RH – The Hacker and Architecture’s Next Game
SW- The Truck or the Porsch: art or architecture?
SB – Collapse: the Da Vinci Code & Architecture
RP - How John Cage & Brian Eno would meet Sonic Boom and interrogate Architecture.
TF – Climbing (&) Architecture
MS – Learning to Fly
MG – Drowned World – Refloating Architecture
RJ – Why I don’t need to read all the Classics to become an architect.

architosh competition?

would anyone consider writing a 500 word proposal for an essay -
let's discuss next time - 'tosh' by the way in British english
means 'rubbish, ' balderdash' 'babble' as it the oft'heard
dismissal of James Joyce as a 'load of tosh' -
think about it - Frank H.


2005 ARCHVOICES ESSAY COMPETITION FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS
ArchVoices has announced its third annual essay competition for young professionals. The 2005 ArchVoices Essay Competition is intended to encourage, promote, and reward critical thinking and writing--—two traditionally underemphasized areas of architectural education and training.
Between February 11 and March 18, young professionals are invited to submit a 500-word essay proposal, reflecting on their daily experiences as the newest members and future leaders of the architecture profession. Selected semifinalists will be invited to develop a 2,000-word essay, further exploring the ideas from their first submittal. The 2005 competition jurors include: § Maurice Cox, Loeb Fellow & Past Mayor of Charlottesville; Jessica Farrar, Member, Texas House of Representatives; Ambassador Richard Swett, FAIA, Former Congressman & U.S. Ambassador to Denmark; Jessica Wendover, Assoc. AIA, Rose Architectural Fellow.
As in past years, the author of the first place essay will receive a cash prize of $981, equal to the base cost of the Architect Registration Exam (ARE), and a comprehensive set of ARE study materials, valued at over $1,500, compliments of Kaplan AEC Education. The author of the second place essay will receive an Apple iPod, complements of Architosh. Up to five honorable mentions may also be conferred, and those honorees will receive prizes donated by John Wiley & Sons, Kaplan AEC Education, and Architecture magazine. The top ten finalists will receive a 1-year subscription to The Architect's Newspaper, and all semifinalists will receive a copy of the 2005 Almanac of Architecture & Design, compliments of the Design Futures Council. Additional Reader's Choice winners selected by a public vote will receive book selections donated by Princeton Architectural Press.
The competition will be conducted entirely online at www.archvoices.org/competition. The website provides the competition calendar and additional information on eligibility, submission guidelines, frequently asked questions, and writing resources.
Questions?
Contact info@acsa-arch.org, 202/785-2324
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 1735 New York Avenue NW Washington, DC 20006 www.acsa-arch.org

seminar 2.2.05 - easy reading/difficult reading

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I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch taem at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Such a cdonition is arppoiately cllaedTypoglycemia :)-Amzanig huh? Yaeh and yuo awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

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complexity and contradiction - the reverse side of easy reading.