Re: HRH Design

Responding to msg by dsucher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (David Sucher) on



   Do chide us, David, and John Massengale also.


   There were several photos of the proposed schemes with the
   article, we shall someday have the ability to see such
   here.  And sunshine our differing biases magnificently.


   Some of us have seen the astonishing HRH digs scattered
   about the bog, and what has been done to the properties and
   regions in the course of installing modern services and
   accommodations for the adoring subjects and wannabes who
   dream of replicating, mastering such subjectivity at home,
   or erecting mercantile spoofs.


   One should see the HRH families and architecture in situ
   with the crowds of servants and guards and out-buildings
   and carparks and commercial accretions, cheek by jowl or in
   the old-timey villages nearby.  Gaze at the posters, the
   brochures, the royal appearances and processions, the
   domestic scandals.  Our puny celebrity mill pales by
   comparison to this amazing ur-artifice of bounteous
   publicity.


   What billionaire, thousandaire, centaire copyist would not
   drool at this high-minded fluff.  And the world-wide
   royalists stay in close touch, um, like the real estate
   internationalists who adore the ur-propertied class, and
   the way they pump up the value of that mud, location,
   location, yah, yah, yah.  Gander the specialty royalty mags
   and Robin Leechs, ech.  See the Hogwash Design article.


   John Massengale aptly raises the question of honestly
   borrowed value, lifting from exemplary history what one
   cannot improve on by oneself.  Craven design, some might
   argue, but not wrong necessarily.  Different strokes.
   Which master to serve -- anxious creativity or comfortable
   copying.  Better a bit of both, the wise advise, is that
   not what all our heroes have done?  Architectural and
   philosophical and nation-state-hood?  What's this eng-
   language we use with its copious historicisms and
   neologigisms and freudian bustiers?


   My lament is not with the artists and designers but the
   sponsors, the clients, whose faint-heartedness is palpable
   these days. They so much want to fit in to the dominant
   culture, whatever it is.  No controversy wanted, especially
   at museums and private banks and and civic buildings and
   luxury residences and commercial mega-development, those
   centers of high culture and wealth and power and
   heterosexual family values and sure profits.


   Probably, this fear is due embarrassment of the sordid
   milieux just beneath the cultural surface which could not
   survive exposure.  So, by all means, copy the way this
   offal has been concealed for centuries -- classicism,
   diverting novelty, scandal, superficial exposure to mask
   the deep.  My point about personal dress and corporeal
   shame, translated into architectural, philosophical,
   cultural, political, aspirations.


   Anxiety of the new, the untested, the inauthentic, the
   unknown, is too burdensome, hurray for religion in all its
   diabolical decor.  Why would anyone but a mad person ever
   face what is without some cosmeticizing idolatry?


   Better we copy the modernist giants, the historicist
   giants, the creative giants, jump on  media bandwagons,
   pick some large or small like-minded herd, anything except
   the risk of one's own puny effort being ignored and
   forgotten.


   As a last refuge, we try obscurity and babbling wit.  They
   fulfill a niche demand, if transient, of the high-culture
   crowd bored stiff with their sham and each other.


   Now, no defeatism or cynicism from this corner, it seems to
   me there are ways to siphon off this bounty of resources
   squandered in historicism, modernism, creativity,
   obscuratism, witticism and the stew of posts- and neos- and
   retros-.  Say, the courage to concoct something here.


   Let me cite the thoughtful offerings in recent months of
   Brian Carr and David Reddy and David Eisenberg and Stephen
   Spinella and John Massengale and David Sucher and Randolph
   Fritz (no slight of others meant).  In return a fair amount
   of nitpicking and ridicule and faint praise.  How to bypass
   these dismissals and patter and silent indifference?


   Maybe the burden is on each of us to periodically restate
   our offerings in a concise form for constructive response --
   from newcomers and from those who've forgotten or may
   want to respond later.  Not like this ramble.


   Howard and Suzan have raised architectural education as a
   topic.  That could be the main point of this list if
   considered broadly enough.  It's worth taking another look
   at the forward Suzan sent, for reflection and improvement,
   if we dare to commit such effort.


   The notion of the net as a new architecture has been raised
   several times.  The forward of the contents of the MIT book
   on cyberspace looked promising.  Stephen's of his work too.
   What say?


   Then, does anyone but me on this list think that the HRH's
   of the world, Prince Charles only one, are open to a truly
   new architecture to back?  Kiss of death?  Probably, we all
   seem to need some devil to justify our new gods of
   salvation.


   But I've never yet met a patron -- private or public, rich
   or poor -- who would not jump at the chance to get a jump
   on the competition.  They all bitch about the poor material
   offered them, kind of like this list.  Then they steal it
   quietly.  Count on it, they and their agents prowl
endlessly,
   more like us than is easy to face.