Tag Archives: architecture

the sniper’s log_

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(daikanyama, tokyo)

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how does one insert an original program inside the old and new structures simultaneously? reconciling coherence with multiplicity?

you have always been fascinated by materials. the composition, the superimposition, the reciprocity and the conditions she confers.

you begin to question yourself if one could, through this, extend the disjunction of a place. then you begin to investigate the interactions of a place, it’s simplicity and sobriety.

you begin to understand that architecture generates movement and this notion challenges the anthropometric percepts of the classical era.

‘it is not they eye which sees, but the body as a receptive totality.’ - maurice merleau-ponty

materials have the ability to produce collective memories,  which can be constructed, reconstructed and collected.

if one controls the core, they will be able to alter the balance between endurance and impermanence, ensuring fluidity regardless of economical, social, political or cultural limits.

‘ resist anyone who asks you to design only the visible part. ‘ - lebbeus woods

a.

the sniper’s log_

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(street dialogues, barcelona.)

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certain x (un)certainty

- ‘planned’ environment appears to have eschewed the lively air of its inhabitants.

- the very act of entering a space violates the balance of geometry. when we intersect such places, do we affect one another? i believe so.

- textures, shadows & even acoustics, carve all sort of new and unexpected spaces. if there were limits to the production of clandestine spaces, what are the limits they hold, and how do we dilate them?

- to question the tangibility of highly sanitized urban design. are we, at best, problem solving or at worst creating generic solutions globally?

- does design co-exist with the urban tissue or does it subtext it; fuck context and (un)context design? will this rhetoric exaggeration set us questioning deeper on its immanence?

- maybe we can enter an urban space and think of its distant memory, with all its strange ambiguity and assertiveness. 

the urban fabric is a stage, we need more emotions and drama. it should not only be seen an instrument for economic commerce, it represents the expression of pride for its inhabitants.

any comments are welcomed.

a.

rekindled spring.

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(snow storm. niseko, japan.)

 

 

 

notes from the perforated pages;

henry miller, the time of the assassins: a study of rimbaud

conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought. if he succeeds in freeing himself, it is to make a sacrificial flight to the sun. his dreams of a regenerate world are but the reverberations of his own fevered pulse beats. he imagines the world will follow him, but in the blue he finds himself alone. alone but surrounded by his creations; sustained, therefore, to meet the supreme sacrifice.

the impossible has been achieved; the duologue of author with author is consummated. and now forever through the ages the song expands, warming all hearts, penetrating all minds. at the periphery the world is dying away; at the center it glows like a live coal. in the great solar heart of the universe the golden birds are gathered in unison.

there it is forever dawn, forever peace, harmony and communion. man does not look to the sun in vain; he demands light and warmth not for the corpse which he will one day discard but for his inner being. his greatest desire is to burn with ecstasy, to commerge his little flame with the central fire of the universe. if he accords the angels wings so that they may come to him with messages of peace, harmony and radiance from worlds beyond, it is only to nourish his own dreams of flight, to sustain his own belief that he will one day reach beyond himself, and on wings of gold.

one creation matches another; in essence they are all alike. the brotherhood of man consists not in thinking alike, nor in acting alike, but in aspiring to praise creation. the song of creation springs from the ruins of earthly endeavor. the outer man dies away in order to reveal the golden bird which is winging its way toward divinity.

 

rekindled this evening. very thankful.

 

a.

unlearning_

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‘ yet he is aware that everything is in a state of flux. a strong wind can change the shape of a cloud, a tumbling river the shape of a river bank, the process of changes in the earth’s crust, the shape of mountains. ‘ – the power of Ch’i

 

dear diary,

(10 Oct 2012)

do we want to win this battle or not?

sometimes it is important to find out what the city is, not so much of what it was, or what it should be, but perhaps the essence of what the city actually stands for. this thought drove me to explore the notion of the city.

 

project N_ ‘ now this is not the end. it is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. ‘ – Sir Winston Churchill

 

i have spent 4 years learning from the institution, it provoked an intuition of what the term ‘vibrancy’, and it’s quasi-endless potential , stood for. it’s role, often too quick to be generalized , can play a crucial key towards what characterizes the ‘real city’ in the 21st century. in such contemporary times, the stark indifference of what ‘vibrancy’  mean to the spectators of cities can somehow evoke an extraordinary artificial form of memory, which helps to facilitate the process and function of the city.
this city has changed at an unbelievable speed, and there is almost no illustration of its gradual shift from center to periphery (and possibly beyond) it presents herself in a rather idiosyncratic way, where my initial landing model succeeded in showing some properties of the evolution of complex systems, and in particular, the difficulty of governing a design determined by multiple interacting elements. however though, what is evidently clear is that the complexity of systems does not allow us to keep thinking in linear causality or in simple systems (any longer).

for this investigation, i propose a radical model that challenges the conventional notion of problem fixing, as well as redefining the notion of concept, context, and content. the history of architecture is not so different from the history of science. it is a history of the forms of conceptualization, and elaborating it further would mean the beginning of a question that builds upon earlier concepts, but that does not presuppose the existence of a specific answer or solution.

the rest, is still (unwritten)

 
best,

a.

 

 

through the looking glass_

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@ Zurich/ 2012

the lobotomy of modernism in its purest and possibly, opulent form.

one building which i thought was quite well layered despite its block-like qualities. the clear ‘rationality’ of the framed static views in some ways appear akin to the reflection of the tree to the bottom right of the image. this building housed an architectural atelier.

maybe then we can argue that the architecture is for certain, most apt to house the fluidity; it’s program within. how do we then document the intangible aspects of a program?

the content as you may, melds into the concept, juxtaposing the context. the protagonists seeks to negotiate these juxtapositions, not as much as to vindicate each’s survival, but more so to reciprocate these ‘seamless’ integration.

the sort of poetic juxtapositions often gives form to the vernacular idea of concepts and the generic notion of the context.

as a starting point, it was intriguing to document these accidental collages that co-exist. they give rise to a series of debate in such contemporary times, as you may.

best,

a.

deconstruction_

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Daniel Libeskind – Jewish Museum (Copenhagen)

 

a soul is not given. but everyone can find a pine cone in the face, sense malice in a crowd, enjoy the greatest fulfillment of translating the vitality of a radish into the world-picture at the expenses of ruinina, humanity on which the future production of cradles and atonement depends.
the best makes and disguises bestowed on those whose time is not running, but instead are always coming home, they have the passion for roaming the Siberian forest, where Puskin’s deported assassin is still trying to perform the last gesture

 

- though the former is alive – the latter is long dead

 

 

 

a.

wandering eye_

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meanwhile… Barcelona, Spain. Fundació Joan Miró.

how often do you narrate the intangible aspects of the arts and architecture?

the visit left me with this positive identification that might have indeed given me a fresh impetus, lifting me beyond the dwindling realm of the various avant-gardes.

a.


the sniper’s log_

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things are amazingly quiet today, not what i was expecting for a public holiday in Copenhagen. i like the mood today, i got my nose in a book for the entire day thankfully.

this is a log; a recording of events, experiences, observations, thought around me. initially unsure if i should do with this idea, but decided it might be an interesting collective reflection in the long run. if i may put it this way, this is the post where anything goes.

Pier Luigi Nervi; such beauty in construction

the architectural flair inside of me has kept me rather occupied these days. i found myself reading books from start to end. i do think there is an absolute beauty about picking up a book and reading it from start to end, especially so in the age where technology plays a commanding role over our most things. well anyways i should digress. this (reading), over idling away the days doing the mundane and tedious, i find it really liberating.

time has been on my mind. the linear concept to be specific. it started with this simple photography above. i was just wondering, i do grasp the western idea of progress and it’s attributes. the enlightenment also brought about the idea of modernity, which we are very much bound to. would that mean we are reliant on a condition that cannot be pinned down to a fixed sets of attributes? modernity opens the way for the notion of critical reasoning; (whose feature fails to rely on any foundation that is unquestionable, or any revelations) we then are not ruled by identity or tautologies, but by the concept of ‘otherness’ and contradiction. do we then go back to a cyclical concept of time or have modernity paved an archetype of time.

the goal of criticism in the past was truth, but in the modern times, truth is criticism. not eternal, but truth of change. this constant conflict with tradition and elevating struggle is really interesting, especially so in an architectural context. i found myself in a labyrinth of closed doors. i hope it will not eventually become another paradox of our time. i stand by the architectural canon of course, but the same rule applies; stay curious.

if the idea of progress advances improvement in the human condition, then why are we at the point of old modernism?

a.

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louvre pyramid; Ieoh Ming Pei @ 21/03/12

‘ the plan distributes people effectively from the central concourse to myriad destinations within its vast subterranean network. the architectonic framework evokes, at gigantic scale, an ancient atrium of a Pompeiian villa. the treatment of the opening above, with its tracery of engineered castings and cables, evokes the atria of corporate office buildings; the busy movement of people from all directions suggests the concourses of rail termini or international airports. ‘ - mark pimlott

i personally am a huge fan of triangles. this particular photograph documents I. M. Pei’s extraordinary legacy to modernism. his concept puts forward the intervention into the Cour Napoleon at the Louvre Museum. a dramatic nature of the intervention is clear with the juxtaposition between the old and the new. the strangely familiar symbol becomes displaced, truth was realized as the perfect complement and counterpoint. its notion becomes the organizing factor of space. amidst the warm lighting, the ingeniously conceived triangular web of supports reveals it’s modesty. the path towards modernity.

a.

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‘ less is more. ‘ - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

pavelló alemany (german pavilion); @ barcelona, spain. 15/04/12

Mies van der Rohe, absolutely one of my favorite protagonist of the modernist architectural movement. i felt almost like being in a dream, i finally got to investigate the materials & objects of construction. the much talked about pavilion from the 1929 international exposition.

plausibly one of the most important icons of the modern architectural movement. whilst in the light of contextual qualities, curious notions such as proportion, scale, spatial reading & formal abstraction came to attention. the answers to my investigations were methodologically revealed, as here i am, exposed to the intangible physicality and phenomenal specificity of the modern complexity of architecture.

my travels has led me on a grand tour of urban rooms, where incongruities of geopolitics have matured into unique built environments. & for all this, i am eternally grateful to my parents, for without them, i would never have the opportunity to witness & mature.

a.

wanders of this world_

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i like it when..

_two worlds collide, endeavoring to make an image of reality

_the air is thick without the lingering days of summer

_i witness unanticipated results from my roll of film

_i am standing & listening & still believing regardless of

_i notice the precariously balance between happiness & anxiety in your eyes

_you label old-fashion and old-school but still depend on paper as a medium considering it was from 104AD

_they can’t leave the city because they’re too busy building another one

_a promise made never to be deliver, only to be defiant of any discernible logic

_spaces can articulate at various scales through accidents & coherence

_z is for 01000001 01101100 01100101 01100001 00100000 01101001 01100001 01100011 01110100 01100001 00100000 01100101 01110011 01110100

&

last but not least…

i like it when god is in the details

a.

proto-metabolist_

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architectural;

Singapore’s proto-metabolist movement, the south-east’s non-western avant-garde movement for urban renewal.

the architectural song-lines of our reverse alchemy synthesizes a new norm for modernization in the south-east of asia. the country’s apotheosis of urban renewal is unique and avoids the contamination of ingredients in the melting pot, keeping them separate, but allowing the manipulation of identities for a more ‘modern’ culture.

characterized by:

- coexistence & conflict of amazingly heterogeneous institutions & individuals

- unprecedented rapid & extensive transformation n the physical structure of the society

- rapid communications methods

- technological progress & its impact upon regional cultures

we are modernization in its purest form, lobotomized, adopting the mechanics & rationalistic program. a semiotic state, conscious of, inspired by, demographic pressure. if there is chaos, it is authored, if it is absurd, it is willed absurdity. our urban society is a dynamic field of interrelated forces; a set of mutually independent variables in a rapidly expanding infinite series. this equilibrium will change in character as time passes and not remain rediscovered at small scale.

western civilization must recognize the thinkers at the periphery if we’re heading towards the same goal of ultimate globalization.

‘ our cities are fluid & mobile. it is difficult to conceive of some of them as places, in the real sense of that word. how can an entity with no discernible beginning or end be a place? it is certainly more apt to think of a particular part of a city as a place. if it were possible to articulate each of the parts of the city more adequately, to give qualities of edge and node to now formless agglomerates, we would have begun to make our large urban complexes at least understandable, if not ‘image-able’. ‘ - fumihiko maki

(entitled: the only moment we were alone. photo credits: usaid umar/@ieatthefish)