Fwd: Fwd: Grounding the Construction

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Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 23:42:56 CST
Subject: Fwd: Grounding the Construction

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Date: 22 Dec 1994 06:34:46
Subject: Grounding the Construction


         Hello, this is my introduction, and my reason for subscribing
         to this list.  I am a student of architecture and have great
         interest in the ability of architecture to synthesize ideas
         and technologies within and without buildings.

         In school I was introduced to the idea of architecture, from
         classical times, where buildings and infrastructure reflected
         comprehensively the social, economic and political nature of
         the perceived space and time.  This historical idea of what is
         architecture is also the highest definition in academia, and
         symbolizes when "architecture" began.

         Today, there seems no such belief that architecture can once
         again be so comprehensive and cohesive in its reflective nature.
         The era of classical understanding has passed, and will never
         return.  But then, I have always wondered why the architect has
         the status of one who better understands this classical relation
         in the present, if there is no architecture to prove this.

         So, inadvertantly, I set out to discover what I thought this
         architecture might be, or become, and i discovered artifacts of
         the modern landscape that architecture has never given any value.
         Indeed, electricity itself has had no impact on the idea of a
         comprehensive cohesive economic, political and social architecture
         reflectent of the present space and time.  Of this influence,
         architecture treats this as science, objective, and engineered.
         But one look across the global landscape reveals this other design
         of metal transmission towers and mostly wooden distribution poles
         which mark this new landscape.  This aesthetic has many qualities
         that surpass those of any one building or architect, and these
         also indicate a presence of technology and science, those which
         support all things modern, economic, political and social.

         Recently, after posting and replying to this idea online, I have
         been aided in the understanding that architecture, once believed
         to be a subjective/objective evaluation of humans and nature, has
         now become a subset inside the objective scientific landscape.
         Not only this, but that architecture cannot address or understand
         the landscape or the rational universe of objects it lives in.
         Architecture has an "antiquated" idea of nature, unlike engineers,
         and this limits the idea of what architecture can be...and how
         architecture can sense the condition of being human in this nature.

         So, I work on the relationships between science and architecture,
         to find this core division over landscape, so that the relation
         between technology and architecture can be better understood in a
         descriptive and rational sense.  Then, after recognizing the other
         objectivity of science, the idea of architecture takes itself into
         the 1880s with my work, The Architecture of Electricity, where new
         building types have evolved and changed the order of buildings.
         And with this influence and history, including typological studies
         and aesthetic evaluations, I delve deeper into the mystery of the
         present, giving up abstraction for a rather involved critique of
         The Architecture of the United Nations, which will ennable others
         in the Humanities and Sciences, with hope, to have a framework of
         architecture, from which to realize themselves and their ideas.

         This idea of architecture may regain some of its past relevance
         as a history of building on a scale relative to its nature, and
         in this universe of ideas, hopefully regaining the perspective
         of humanity above it all, if only in spirit.

bc



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