Protected: How to debate anonymously or The Wizard of Oz

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Protected: Covers That Didn’t Make It

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Hint-Hint?

Every time I read a horror-scope (misspelling intended), I am amazed by how well they fit with the reality. But of course, those things are kept so vague that they could apply to anyone. Yes, every single day, every one of us is either having problems with our partners, or looking for one. We have done some work well, while some work was done, well, less well. Therefore, you’ll either get on well, or less well with your colleagues at work.

And then there’s English Lit. How much analysis does can one use on someone else’s writing, or any way they express their thoughts and feelings. How deep can you dig, and twist, and search, until everything seems to fit your purpose, just like horoscopes. Can subtle hints even exist today, can they be picked up, or are all hints (apart from shameless flirting), just wishful thinking. Are we so desperate, as to twist, reinterpret and believe that what our friends, media or the government say, and they actually say it in a literal way, into something that we want to believe, into something we can believe.

What am I trying to say. It’s crystal-clear to me, but I guess I’m just hinting it to you.

Peter S.

A Self-fulfilling Prophecy (or Why we love Lady Gaga)

So I momentarily return to my celebrity musing, though this will not last too long, so bear with me (or click it away, bitch).

I can remember that this january, a friend of my was commissioned by someone to paint a picture of Lady Gaga, Carl Lagerfeld and Kanye West in a jacuzzi, with their clothes on. While the commission did not work out as planned, it did introduce me to Lady Gaga. Not really, I read about Lady Gaga in that Playboy my uncle gave to me for Christmas (as a joke, I’m giving him one this time around, the one with Marge Simpson). But still, Lady Gaga wasn’t all that huge back then, but she was being hailed as the next big thing.

I still remember when Avril was the next big thing, and it was rather disappointing. All that’s left now are a couple of old ties in girls’ wardrobes and a couple of overproduced pop-rock albums (plus that perfume-advertisement, which was atrocious). Sorry for being a culture snob, but even pop can be done well.

Now for Lady Gaga. I truly think she’s awesome. I don’t care if she’s overproduced, overmarketed, sounds like  man etc… With Lady Gaga, the conscious, the behind-the-scenes, the overproduced, the plastic and  all the hoo-hah becomes irrelevant as soon as the product is revealed. Very Warhol-esque. Following the formula Modern Ar t= I could do that + but you didn’t, Gaga (or whoever is lurking in the background) mystifies the world. No one cares about her person, only her persona. The woman becomes dematerialized in her Kermit-the-Frog costumes, her red drapes and whatever she wears. We don’t really care who she’s doing, what she’s eating or anything. We wait until Gaga throws another piece of media fodder from behind her plastic mask and we chase it rather than the perpetrator.

By creating a strange consumer product, a self-fulfilling prophecy (a song such as “Paparazzi” would have been ‘appropriate’ for someone who actually spent some time in the media’s spotlight, not on a debut album of a hopeful star), the Haus of Gaga created a myth that’s hard to bust. As soon as Lady Gaga becomes human, we’ll tear her to shreds (in the media), because that’s what we do. While Gaga’s strategy is paying off for now, it would be interesting to see how long she can keep this up, and when her current myth is all gone, she’ll have to really put in some thought on new artistic direction. Get the PR department ready.

Peter S

House Concepts Continued…

Apart from enormous pressure from all the things I have to do in my time (emails, work, school- the vicious circle), I would still like to share some things I’ve been working on. After the rather horrible sketch model, we decided it was time to make more models. I’ll only post mine, although Ceciel did a fantastic job as well, we really came up with some great things.

Double Helix House

Here I’ve taken tried to interweave two separate dwellings into a single entity. The idea didn’t really catch on, even though I insisted that the shared patio in the middle of the two houses could lead to social interaction between the two different (sets of) inhabitants. (It would also create a feeling of a very large house, simply because of the distances one would have to walk to get from point A to point B (entrance to the bedroom, for example).

Then I followed with this one…

House 1

I’m very much for roof terraces. From this view, you almost can’t see it, though its there on the left. The Spiral structure is still being maintained. We eventually agreed to work this model out, because, being the contextless thing it is, we can later impose our own limits, rather than being limited from the very start.

Then, Ceciel and I once again reshuffled the cardboard pieces to form prototype 1.01, again, with a roof terrace, though here it’s rather different and the spiral logic is somewhat warped.

Prototype 1.01

All photos by Ceciel van Rinsum.

That’s all folks!

Peter S.

One Last Collage

This is the last collage from the Formstudy series of 2009. Basically, it is the three other collages “collaged” digitally. It was meant to provide us with insight, though I would hardly claim it gave me any insight at all. The rest of the posts on this subject will involve photos of models of chairs. How fascinating, right? Well, it might be.

House of the Future collage 4

Peter S.

Huis Sonneveld, Rotterdam

During our Formstudy project, in which we have to design a chair, we went to Rotterdam, to see Huis Sonneveld, a Modernist masterpiece by Brinkman and Van Der Vlught (or so we’ve been told). It is not as cool as Villa Savoye, but hey, it’s the closest the Dutch have (if we don’t count the Schroder/ Rietveld house, which I plan to visit one of these days). I hope you enjoy the following little gallery.

Huis Sonneveld, as seen form the outside

Waiting room for guests

Dining room

Kitchen, bare and only used by the staff

The living room, with the strip window

Girls’ bathroom, in the most fashionble of colors

Guest room

Terrace from Puk’s room

Puk’s room

Parent’s bathroom

Ge’s room

Master bedroom

Master bedroom

Wardrobes with built-in lighting (that was in 1930!)

Dressing room

Stairs

Thermostat

Maid’s room

Maid’s bathroom

It’s interesting to see how high bourgeois life is served by modern architecture. But though the house seems quite comfortable, some rooms (especially the guest room) are furnished like your better hospital. The maid’s rooms, though they have the same facilities, are smaller. The Sonnevelds must have been pretty progressive for their time. Apparently, Mrs Sonneveld was the first mother in Rotterdam who picked up her daughters with a car. And that concludes your architectural education for today.

Peter S.

Where It All Went Wrong (in Architecture)

Hi there. When I have nothing to write about, I often start thinking about the stuff I’m doing, and whether it’s even worth doing it. I don’t mean whether I should eat that donut, or go to that movie, I mean my long term plan: architecture. Although I am committed to the modern project, I cannot help but feel that somewhere along the way, many things went wrong.

For example: when we question the quality of dwellings, it’s not the shoddy construction, or even the gret density that bothers us, but it’s the absence of a good space. In order to achieve maximum efficiency, rooms (they could not really be called spaces, no less places) are arranged according to functional diagrams that seldom take into accounts patterns of human habitation. The early works of Modernism, however, are often distilled homes, ie things are usually correct minus the opulent decoration.

Therefore, I was very surprised when I found out that the Villa Savoye (by Le Corbusier in 1932) follows many of the advices given in A Pattern Language (1977). For example, many rooms have light on two sides, living spaces on the south, master bedroom to the east, the private terrace, etc…

Villa Savoye, the living room flooded by light

Villa Savoye, the bathroom in the master bedroom

Villa Savoye, the private roof-terrace, view from the living room

Where did it go wrong? I believe the answer is simple. Besides the obvious fact that Villa Savoye is a detached house with a spacious plot of land, where perfect orientation was easily achieved, which is harder to do in row-housing, or flats, I believe it all has to do with generations.

The first generation of Modernists was still educated in the old system, which, although they rejected some of its features, they subconsciously held on to the lessons they have been taught about domesticity. In later stages, this was excluded from the education (we did not learn any of the stuff that is in Pattern Language, though we might argue that it’s quite elementary knowledge). Therefore, the later generations mucked it up, and only the great ones could come to those various conclusion about the pattern of human life. And that’s why so many modern architects still compared (and undoubtedly still do) their work against the Heroic Period (from 1920 to 1930).

While I do not advocate the return to the old forms, or any form of formalism, I do believe that architects should rediscover the simple living patters, so that all could benefit from a home, whether one lives in an apartment, row-house, and not just those who can afford a world-class architect (though after watching Koolhaas Houselife, you might have some doubts).

This should also work the other way. While A Pattern Language argues for an almost traditional(ist) way of life and almost a hippie like society (What can you expect from a book written in 1977 in Berkeley?), this shows that the vocabulary of modern architecture is not always at odds with ‘home’.

Peter S

PS: My hypothesis is not substantiated by anything but a hasty conclusion from half-deducted facts. Sometime in the near future, I hope to show you the photos from Huis Zonneveld (not as cool as Villa Savoye, but still pretty good).

“H” 1

My instructor said: I have a website, but still all of my work comes from social contacts. I guess it is probably true for many smaller architectural firms.

A friend of mine wrote: “you should build me a log cabin”. Why, is a mystery to me. Cabins have been frontier outposts and served a primitive dwellings during European colonization of America (let’s not pass judgments). However, log cabin are not really vernacular American architecture, they’ve been imported from England, Germany and Sweden. These simple dwelling, and the reclusive, contemplative lifestyle that is romantically associated with them (not questioning the reality) even took hold of Le Corbusier, who built himself a little cabin 4 by 2 by 2 metres near his holiday home at Cap St Martin, where he “live[d] like a happy monk”.

I did a little research, took out a book from the library about log cabins and went ahead. I did the little design in a couple of hours over the last few days. It’s still very sketchy, not everything is worked out, and the details have not even been considered. The log cabin is just for one person, with a guest perhaps crashing on the couch.

The cabin consist of a kitchen, living space, alcove for a bed and a simple bathroom. Unlike the usual layout, the hearth placed as a focal point of the living space, which means that less heat is lost to the outside. The hearth and chimney provide stability of this house. The storage units are under the kitchen counters, the window seat (in the living space), when you come in (to hang up the coats) and under the bed.

The large porch (2m) is oriented to the south, the bed alcove has a little window to the east, while the kitchen and the living space are glazed as much as possible, for the light and views (the privacy is maintained by the porch).

While the cabin is not traditional, it is constructed from traditional materials, has a low beams, it is flooded with light. It is not a frontier cabin, yet its main intention is to try and live up to the natural and contemplative atmosphere that is supposedly inherent in the log cabins of the bygone days.

PS: Not everything is solved. Let me know if the thing is too small, I’ll see what I can do. Sorry about the colors, the green-yellow should be light green, but the scanners suck.

Peter S

Of Mirages, Striptease, Temples and WhatNot

Why so many things in life happen tangentially, I do not know. Sometimes, my life is  bit of a watered down version of Family Guy, where two diametrically opposite things happen within very short period of time. This summer, I had a conversation with my cousin which started with mirage, followed by a smack in the eye and ended with a discussion on public space and religious structures. For your info, my cousin is 12, so what I write here is partially comes from my poetic license.

One night, as we went to a restaurant, my cousin asked me to explain what a mirage is. Since I am no mirage-ologist myself, I tried to explain what i could without saying something stupid and wrong. So I said, due to dehydration, people’s brains start working funny and they begin having hallucinations. People who are stranded in a desert often see oases where there is water, when there is no oasis and no water. And then my cousin (by the way, same cousin  who talked about lagina) said: “So people see what they want to see, like water?”

“Yes,” I replied, “or striptease clubs”. By that time, I was in a jolly mood, not because I’ve been drinking, bust because feeding time was approaching, and I’ve survived the day’s grueling hike. My cousin then proceeds to smack me in the eye (which he says was accidental, he meant to hit me on the cheek, but I was stupid enough to try to duck) . He said that striptease doesn’t square with his religious beliefs. After having him admit that there is no “Thou shalt not strip” in the Bible, he added that there is a bit in which the body is described as a temple for the Holy Spirit, which should not be violated.

I beg to differ. Any architecture student would be able to tell you that it is quite the opposite. Temples, are, or at least used to be, considered public spaces. A look at the famous Nolli map will show you.

Here you see Rome of the 18th century. Notice the temple of Pantheon. It is white, the only solid space is its ground-plan. By depicting the city’s churches thusly, Nolli shows that temples are de facto as public as streets and squares, even though not legally so. Therefore temples are places people could enter, where they would go to conduct business, where they would come and go at different times of the day (all puns strictly intended). Nowadays, these public spaces have been replaced by shops, restaurants, whatever… But the last time I was in Leiden, one of the churches was actually used to house some stalls selling books (there was a market on).

And all that stuff about modesty of one’s body is obviously bullshit. One look at St Peter’s in Rome, Gothic cathedrals, or baroque churches in Austria shows that temples need to be shown off, be carefully constructed, in order to impress. We might argue that while some people have a body like St Peter’s, it’s a masterpiece and they show it, while some people prefer their bodies to be modest chapels, which are only ever entered by a few people. The temple metaphor therefore applies very widely, and is not limited to the whole modesty, meekness, and no striptease policy.

As Frank in Educating Rita said, every analogy breaks at a given point. It’s just this analogy breaks right away.

Peter S

PS: You might like to know, that my cousins and my brother remained unconvinced while the proof is clearly on my side.