May 29th, 2009 § Chris
A decade ago , the dream of virtual space was about to be realized, or so it seemed. Videoconferencing promised to eliminate the need for travel; the “glove” and VR glasses were ubiquitous features at malls as were elaborate 3D simulation pods. I remember architecture students at the time speculating about the end of architecture–who needs spaces for conferences,meetings, social interaction when all that can be done virtually. Oddly enough as the web has grown , virtual reality has become less about hardware and more about software ie social media 2.0. Seems virtual reality is getting more virtual. One major exception is the military use of virtual reality to wage combat at a distance.
Unexpected consequences are emerging :
On its face, it seems like the less stressful assignment. Instead of being deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, some pilots and other crew members of the U.S. military’s unmanned Predator drones live at home in suburban Las Vegas and commute to a nearby Air Force base to serve for part of the day. They don’t perform takeoffs and landings, which are handled overseas. But the Predator crews at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada “are at least as fatigued as crews deployed to Iraq,” if not more so, according to a series of reports by Air Force Lt. Col. Anthony P. Tvaryanas. The [reports] also showed that Predator crews were suffering through “impaired domestic relationships.”
Why is this? Part of the problem lies in what Tvaryanas calls the “sensory isolation” of pilots in Nevada flying drones 7,500 miles away. Although there are cameras mounted on the planes, remote pilots do not receive the kind of cues from their sense of touch and place that pilots who are actually in their planes get automatically. That makes flying drones physically confusing and mentally exhausting. Perhaps this helps explain the results of another study Tvaryanas published with a colleague in May, which examined 95 Predator “mishaps and safety incidents” reported to the Air Force over an eight-year period. Fifty-seven percent of crew-member-related mishaps were, they write, “consistent with situation awareness errors associated with perception of the environment” — meaning that it’s hard to grasp your environment when you’re not actually in it.
Aaron Retica New York Times December 14, 2008
Although these studies were limited, it does conform to our sense that seeing is not being. By working with concepts, plans, sections and other instruments, Architects are constantly looking at the third dimension as an equivalent of the other two. We move around, through designs, we make models, hold materials in our hands, look at architecture spatially. This effort to “be” in the world to inhabit “the flesh of the world” as Merleau-Ponty famously wrote about the third dimension, joins the haptic with the visual, or so we hope.
Over the past decade the explosion of design publications, print and digital, and the advances in 3D rendering have placed a premium on the image. One hallmark of our times is architecture as a spectacle; if it looks spectacular it will get press, regarless of it’s virtues or weaknesses. This creeping emphasis on the visual brings us back to the virtual. If pilots are losing their minds because of the loss of the environment and architecture is reduced to image–at least in publications, shouldn’t we give pause to how we consume and produce architecture.
It’s interesting that computer models, as wonderful a tool as they are, do not replace physical models. Could the touch, texture, light qualities and spatial nuance of physical models be what allows us to “grasp the environment’ in a way those pilots can’t? And as abstract as a plan or section is could it be that at a fundamental level these kinds of drawings allow metrics and order of the environment to be cognated, something the drone pilots were missing.
Image by sklathill
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April 22nd, 2009 § Chris
According to the placard outside this church in Davos, Switzerland, seven hundred years ago the builders built the steeple true and straight. Soon after the tower was complete it started twisting clockwise. Why did it twist? Another blogger jokingly suggested the Coriolis effect was to blame (think water down a drain and hurricanes). If that had anything to do with it then all the twisted steeples of Europe would rotate in the same direction. Apparently not. Theres as much clockwise rotation as there is counterrclockwise. Another theory is that all these steeples were twisted “by design”, built this way. that’s a tough one to prove, especially since these steeples have all been rebuilt/restored and the non of their cladding is original.
Apparently the green wood structure as it dryed and shrank , was the culprit behind the rotation of the steeple in Davos, (from the on-site information). Plausible? Without seeing the structure it’s hard to envision. A pastor in New Jersey speaking of his own church steeple problems suggested another possibility: after a tremendous wind storm, the tower had to be replaced, he said, because it had become twisted. The possibility of external wind forces contributing to the twist is compelling because it allows for clockwise or counterclockwise results while not discounting the internal force resulting from shrinking timbers. Sunflowers are a good example how twisting might be the result of two simple “forces” one internal and the other external. Sunflower seeds grow at a certain rate according to genetic instructions (internal forces) As they grow they bump into each other and are forced into a twisting geometry (external forces).
The steeple at L’Eglise du Grand Marchin, Belgium was one of the 40 or twisted steeples of Europe before it was destroyed in a fire. Despite it’s obvious “flaw”, when it came time to rebuild in the same timber technique, a decision was made to match the “flaw”, to transform it into design. A remarkable moment where material behavior is transformed into architectural “language”, the syntax is now purely synthetic, denoting something it is not : a twist formed through time, material, and force. Perhaps this is more proof that the twisted steeples of Europe were never intended to be so.
January 28th, 2009 § Chris
From the New York Times, January 28, 2009
And in Florida, not far from the Palm Beach clubs where Mr. Madoff wooed some of his investors, George L. Theodule, a Haitian immigrant and professed “man of God,” promised churchgoers in a Haitian-American community that he could double their money within 90 days.
He accepted only cash, and despite the too-good-to-be-true sales pitch, he found plenty of investors willing to turn over tens of thousands of dollars.
“The offices were beautiful, and I was told it was a limited liability corporation,” said Reggie Roseme, a deliveryman in Wellington, Fla., who lost his entire savings of $35,000 and now faces foreclosure on his home.
This brings to mind the question of authenticity. Ponzi schemes, shams that we can believe in, until the truth comes out, prey on our desires and weaknesses. Our willingness to rely on appearances for signs of authenticity (The offices were beautiful) points to questions about architecture’s role in such deceptions.
It’s been said that ”Art is a lie that tells the truth” . The history of architecture, reflects an ambivalence about “truth”. Architecture operates like language, representing but not necessarily embodying, and architecture is a constructed embodied, materialized phenomenon that is primarily experienced. We read and experience architecture simultaneously. Geometry, space, materials, tectonics order form, form an order which we would hope is revelatory, engaging and celebrating our humanity , rather than deceitful, obscuring and controlling.
The predominance of vision has effected the way we think about materials. As more and more communities employ “stampcrete” and if they can’t afford that, “stamphalt” in public spaces, the erosion of values is painfully obvious. The attitude of “as long as that stuff looks like brick, it’s OK” is exactly what got the ponzi scheme victims into trouble. Actually all the use of fake materials is sort of like a ponzi scheme–you simply put the day of reckoning off until the whole thing fails and at great expense you end up doing what you should have done the first time around. Materials carry memory, and the replacement of materials with facsimiles destroys memory, with it the hard won truths and values of our society. As an example I’ve posted two images of bricks one of painted stamped asphalt and the other of 19th century brick pavers.
The inadvertent marks of the makers, of the hands that handled the wet clay can be seen in the lower image, the memory of the lives that made these bricks. The moss growing between each brick reveals an unanticipated symbiosis of inert and living matter. the bricks, slightly uneven gently accommodate the pushing of tree roots below without cracking or failing. The stamphalt has none of this capacity to hold time and life–no capacity for memory and for that matter, imagination. The fact that it is unsustainable and unrecyclable is no coincidence. Whenever we remove the dimension of time and the capacity to remember from materials, we fall prey to appearances and hidden costs, not only economic and environmental but cultural and societal.
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November 17th, 2008 § Chris
We stumbled on this little “Vicinato” (neighborhood) A few years ago in the then abandoned cave dwelling area of Matera, Italy. Astonishingly, at one time, in the late nineteenth century this courtyard and its attached dwellings were home to over one hundred inhabitants. The families were large, mothers often having a dozen or more children to counter the odds of childhood death due to disease and malnourishment.
In such dire circumstances we would expect the role of architecture to be useless, peripheral, and unaffordable. Look a little more closely at the photo, especially at the railing/wall between the conjoined stairs which lead up to two dwellings. Right there, whoever built that stair understood something of the critical role architecture plays in giving form (as in order) to society. The builders, acknowledging the importance of social order, especially in such close bound circumstances, made adjustments to the rail separating the two stairs. Instead of the rail staying the same height, it was built so as one climbed the stair the degree of privacy was adjusted. At the courtyard the stairs start their rise from different points, a subtle perhaps accidental degree of separation. As the stairs climb, the rail rises to slowly separate the two families first bodily and finally from view. This small detail speaks volumes about privacy, grace, respect and the rich territory of negotiation between private and public life.
We’ve become accustomed to thinking of architecture as fashion, style, somehow separate from the essential fabric of society. We take the functioning of our social order for granted, because it more or less works. The built environment forms that order no less than our laws, customs and cultural practices, but is too often overlooked, in the dash to build more office parks, highways, malls, and suburbs.
November 9th, 2008 § Chris
The Westminster Street entry to 3SIX0
The third floor foyer to our studio
models are everywhere
everyone is busy, including Echo who is watching for the mailman
This blog is a new door for us swinging wide open. Let’s see what comes in, and what we’ll be sending out. The photomosaic above is part of a terrific animation Josh Lantzy our summer intern compiled, documenting a walk to our studio at 146 Westminster street in Providence. See below for the full animation:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skEPX0oz5OU&hl=en&fs=1]
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