Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/ en-us Design Observer Group 2012-01-14T17:29:02-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0 "idiots" against the founders of the undesirable modersim and its afttermath post-modernism.

I thick, we all as architects should learn our lessons. One would have expected that Architectural Thoughts should be wholistic to avoid the errors we are criticising. Architecture should be a PRODUCT of users' requirements, site and neighbourhood characteristics, climate, form, economy, materials, technology, and lots more, ALL blended together in the PROCESSING VESSEL termed CULTURE which is pre-eminent, pivotal, primary and predominant, as we argued in the review of Amos Rapoport's House Form and Culture published in Space and Culture blog. Such an approch will move us away from intellectual labour of locating intelligent architecture.

I agree with your academic wisdom on the position of landscape in the whole continuum. But, Prof., I know that you also believe that landscape itself is a product of culture and the historical document of human existence. If that is true, as it were, will it not be a good denominator for all architectural products since every cultural peculiarity, despite dynamism and metamorphosis, can be encoded in architectural languages. By this I mean that all architectural parameters should be considered in architectural production processes in the light of "sustainable" cultural values.

It has also been discovered through a research endeavour ( which we are about publishing as Cultural Biologism, Symbolism and Morphology of Cities) in a semiotic approch, that culture is, and should be, even the determinant of all built forms, either cities as big buildings, or buildings as small cities.

On the whole, if our focus on the complete Architectural Procces as architects is sharpened and guided by these principles we are not likely to be missing the right targets often, as we are now.

Thank you Prof.

Adedeji, J. A.
Lecturer I, Architecture Dept.,
The Federal University of Technology,
Akure, Nigeria.]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/#comments 2012-01-14T17:29:02-05:00
Overall it seems to relate more to Predock's stark home landscape of Phoenix (the best refuge is a nice cool cave) than Austin's more forgiving climate, enjoyed year-round on porches and patios.

Perhaps relating design to the abstract aspects of its context results from importing starchitects. From a distance the most readily available site information is that obtained from Google Earth and the county land office, whereas a local practicioner has firsthand knowledge of the site, the climate, and the culture.]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/#comments 2011-12-30T14:29:37-05:00
Thank you so, so much for this.

I have a reply, which I'm sending by email: the conversation is drifting further from the article itself, and I'd rather not bother the world with it.

Thanks again,
Luke]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/#comments 2011-12-14T20:00:24-05:00
It’s hard to be against honesty. I think what you are concerned about is the difference between teaching architecture as an isolated technique of obtaining (usually sophisticated) form, or as a landed theory of how construction carries meaning as a fact in place. Both have advantages (and both encourage longing in students for the alternative), and there are many alternatives in between. I think you are criticizing the teaching of technique per se, without your professors providing an explanation of why the form derived has meaningfulness beyond being a proof of its own assumptions, its own oeuvre. You should certainly be able to ask your professors for a fuller accounting, otherwise you are merely in finishing school.

But then there is a dilemma. Your professors might not have a good answer because they don't have one. In that case, run. But they might not have one because they are groping towards something new, and therefore have a reason not to know. Alternatively, they may not wish to share their answer, which is a pedagogic method used to incite ambition in an era when the (as yet unproven) presumption is that design by agreement is invariably better than design by fiat.

I don’t mean to just pick at what you are saying, but it isn’t clear if the teaching of architecture should directly seek to mirror how a building might carry meaning in place. Here, you have to be your own guide, and you should use your disagreement to clarify your own thoughts (as it seems you are doing). But be careful. It is a useful exercise to give yourself, to justify why a thing you hate but others admire is good, even if it is NOT for the reasons they give. I have tried to suggest that may be true of many of the buildings I am using as examples.

Thanks again for your thoughtful comments.

David
]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/#comments 2011-12-14T16:57:00-05:00
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. I take all your points.

Just to clarify, I was trying with my comment to do two things as well. First, I wanted you to clarify the difference between your criticism of the rhetoric of mapping and the question of when mapping does or doesn't contribute to more substantial site-sensitivity -- this question of babies and bathwater, with your reply and subsequent essays, has been more than cleared up, for me at least. Thanks for that.

Second, though, I was trying to push a little at the question of responsibility, amongst architects and educators, to be more sensitive and honest -- in the exact ways you so admirably are, within these essays -- in their building, in their thinking, and especially in their teaching. I acknowledge this agenda, a broad one, may not be exactly yours, but it seems pretty related. Either way, I'm really interested in your opinions on it, and think many other readers (especially young readers, students, who care deeply about this set of issues but struggle to find them front and center in architecture programs and related professional tracks) would be too.

I'm quite sure all human beings -- architects, professors, whoever -- have their reasons, but some of those reasons are more honest and well-thought-out than others. Whether or not a world with more honesty in opinion and conversation and work, around the exact issues you're raising in these essays, would result in everyone agreeing -- and lord I hope not, what fun would that be!? -- such a world still strikes me as a worthwhile goal. And in a very pointed way, I think architecture educators are failing every minute they continue to run their schools without being conscious of your line of thinking here, or of much of the work of geographers and historians, or of what art really is, or of how people in different neighborhoods and communities live their lives, or of any number of other well-considered agendas more rooted in people and place than starchitect-diagram-foam-foam-wow-zone. If that's already the case, I'd be thrilled to hear any of them craft a thoughtful reply to your essays that defends their pedagogical approach -- but til then, I call shenanigans, and so do a lot of other young people I know.

In the mean time, thank you again so very much for these... can't wait to think more about them.

Luke]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/#comments 2011-12-12T18:59:22-05:00
I would caution the reader to please not assume their agenda is mine because they sense a resonance with one or the other side of an argument; for example, that between New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism.

There are only two points this essay makes absolutely. Mapping does not guarantee site sensitivity (though it can be used to that end; see: Michelangelo, Campidoglio). The mapping of natural systems does not in and of itself promote sustainability (though is can be used to that end; see: Murcutt).

The essay points out the troubling rhetoric associated with mapping, which assumes both of the above, and the use thereof. It does so primarily because I would like architectural discourse to move beyond that rhetoric. But that does not mean I do or do not admire the buildings.

Almost every agenda comes with a troubling rhetoric. Place making rhetoric, for example, invariably seems to come with the assumption that we will all be able to agree if we just use common sense. But your professors have their deep reasons too, even if they are not able to articulate these clearly.

I am interested in how buildings serve in making landscape, and am trying to take apart that complicated topic in these essays, which are a small part of a larger manuscript. I am grateful for the opportunity to share this ongoing writing, and for your response, and those of other readers.

David]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/#comments 2011-12-08T21:47:29-05:00
I certainly buy that "mapping" -- or otherwise directly incorporating abstract, visual/aesthetic lines and forms of a given landscape into the abstract, visual/aesthetic lines and forms of a building's design -- has become a common technique for claiming site-sensitivity. But there are also many other ways to actually *be* sensitive to site, some buried in the past and some (hopefully) buried in the future... most of which, in my mind, begin with deep understanding of place, participation in community, and involvement of actual people, all as part of a process that can eventually, carefully, inform aesthetic and formal decisions, mapped or otherwise... and I worry that you throw this contentful baby out with the formally misleading bathwater, by alternately addressing the ideas of "mapping", "site", "context" and "landscape" without clearly keeping the concepts distinct (as the previous commenter alluded to).

The examples you actually like within the "mappings" strike me as projects that used that formal technique, but also may have been sensitive to place in more substantial ways, whether by accident or on purpose. Other projects, like Louis Kahn's Salk Institute (interesting to compare to the Morphosis high school, I think) in La Jolla or Carlo Scarpa's Brion cemetery, deeply honor their places without having to borrow literal lines. If that's the case, it's not really the technique of "mapping" you're taking issue with, but rather its power in unfairly pretending to be something more than what it is, which is just a single, sometimes useful sometimes pointless, formal strategy. Do you agree with me that there really is a baby behind all this, and if so, can you clarify what you think it is, maybe with some examples?

I think perhaps the problem here is that architects -- who you very usefully point out are rarely intellectually or morally responsible at all, and certainly not in any rigorous way -- see very little difference between an actual, contentful understanding of people, place, community and history as a driver for an understanding of site, and an arbitrary, purely aesthetic understanding of site. In some architecture schools, for example -- I noticed this often as a grad student at Michigan, despite the sensitive and comforting points of Professor Kelbaugh above -- efforts to actually visit a place, talk to people, and attempt to build an understanding of what matters for citizens are met with a kind of "you *could* do that if it floats your boat, but if it means leaving your studio desk and foam models for long, beware my wrath" from professors, while others who look at a map of a place, take all its lines like sticks, and arbitrarily rearrange them into the form of a building are met with abject glee, or at least no less enthusiasm. If schools run their studios this way, only students who happen to care more deeply about people and places from the outset will emerge with the kind of honesty to cut through the bullshit. It's on the architects and educators, I think, to recognize the power they have to mislead real people in real places, but choose instead to build real values slowly and together, from the ground up. Do you agree? If not, where does change come from here?

Thank you.

Luke Joyner
BA, Mathematics / BA, Urban Geography / University of Chicago
M. Arch. / University of Michigan (in process, on leave)
Chicago, IL]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/#comments 2011-12-07T15:07:09-05:00 http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/#comments 2011-12-05T16:44:07-05:00 "That is, you cannot understand what generates the order by simple inhabitation. You have to be told. "

Does inhabitation suggest instrument/usage?

A certain type of instrumentalism would rely on or create knowledge on the instrumentor, whereas here it is external... You must be told and here is a difference at the personal scale in knowing.

The idea of sculptural landform as building though, as equating landscape seems also to ignore the real possibilities of landscape. Instead of landscape as constructed view, Landscape as use-scape, which relies on a bi-directional relationship of making/mapping. It also suggest landscape not just as picturesque and recreational but factory or at least ecological machine.]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/#comments 2011-12-04T11:59:38-05:00
To me, the key is not just that they are abstract-able but that they are _participate-able_. It's not enough to look like the balcones: why is that water dripping into the parking garage? Where does it even go from there? Really, the footnote to the dead tree falling says it all: trees most often fall as a complete entity, meaning yes, the bit underground too, thus the edge of the root ball will be the fulcrum most of the time.

Until architects (landscape and otherwise) spend enough time observing how nature works, all the diagrammatic analysis of this that and the other will miss. Maybe that'll be Richard Louv's next book: the last designer in the woods...

Molly Phemister
MLA, UVA 2007
www.eatcology.com]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/landscape-is-our-sex/31228/#comments 2011-12-03T11:39:07-05:00
In many cases it HAS facilitated good, even great, buildings. But the naked use and abuse of allusions to "nature" and natural landscape in the design "mapping" of Hadid, Libeskind and others is too slippery and disingenuous by half. It's still a post-structuralist hall of mirrors and subjective narratives, despite its claimed or, more insidiously, imputed rootedness in unique landscape place and ecology. It is a patronizing purity and untrustworthy goodness.

And the Landscape Urbanists aren't far behind when they sell their tilted planes, sinuous stream forms and abstracted landscapes as ecologically derived. They ARE right to assert that earlier conceptions of "nature" that divide and contrast the "man-made" and "natural" are romantic and outdated, but the post-structuralist form-making persists in spite of the rhetoric to the contrary.

David is right that abstraction and abstract form-making often IS alluring, empowering and intoxicating, but the planet and its ecological cycles, loops and chains could not care less about the theoretical architectural games and diversions, which have become more strategic than sincere. We humans need to get serious about quickly and sensitively understanding, restoring and congenially co-existing with the other natural life, resources and climate on which we have depended and will depend if we want to remain the planet's most dominant and successful species. We can learn a great deal from the ecological web (even more than from the electronic web, despite its growing richness).

And one of the most paradoxical of these lessons is that compact, walkable, transit-friendly urbanism is ironically more environmentally benign than spreading humanity across the countryside in low density if leafy settlements, which are too often agonizing compromises between city and country. And dense cities without diverse land uses and demographics, as well as traditional streets that form a connective network, are the worst of both worlds - neither green and private or urbane and convenient. Sprawl "in seductive green drag" - no matter how sophisticated the design or tall the buildings, still has an unsustainable if grassy footprint. One has to ask "where is the urbanism in Landscape Urbanism?" Highrises in the park do not a city make.

It's past midnight and my ramblin' rant needs to end.
Thank you, Professor Heymann,

Doug Kelbaugh FAIA, Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning
Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
U of Michigan


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