Re: Pre-Fab Topologies/Light Construction

>Steve,
>Will Gunnite wonders never cease! I've only read a tiny bit about PJ's
>new building; I have to wonder what this means to the ol' guy. Is this
>a way of facing his mortality? Reparation for his past?
>
>And more importantly: What can it do for us?
>
>Mark

Dear Mark,
I had the pleasure of congratulating Philip on his latest work (my god the
fella is into his 90's and still smokin) at the MoMA 'Light Construction'
opening the other night (spare me the elitist-snickering please).  The
house is exemplary of the new topological architecture that I have been
alluding to on this list for some time now.  The house is informed by
Ghery's work and a new architect in our midst-surface artist, Frank Stella.
While Philip's new construct attempts to be the "ultimate referent" for
this new smoothness in architecture, he has only done what he always does:
keeps in close contact with the theoretical discourse hovering in and
around certain academic scenarios and of course his good friend Peter
Eisenman.  Peter is able to convince Philip of what the edge is and Philip
goes after that like a young turk.  The topology sensibility, somewhat
different yet totally related to Lightness comes from a very few younger
theoreticians namely, Greg Lynn, with the support of Sanford Kwinter (Zone
editor), and philosopher John Rajchman's reading of Gilles Deleuze...and
they all hover around the ANY magazine.  Columbia and MoMA just sorta
joined forces to second the motion with an emphasis on built work and
program instead of form.  And let me say, and I will go on further about
this later, Muschamp as usua,l misses most of what the stuff is about. So
to as certain extent a good deal of his comments are pointless and
superfical in their engagement with what is truly an important show.

I would like to include another facet of this new sensibility that I have
been personally involved with since around 1990 alongside philosopher Mark
Taylor, Bernard Tschumi, Hani Rashid/Couture, and Toyo Ito, that I call
Hypersurface. (a mix of light and topological thought that digs out the
role of the vulgar image and its ability to problematize structure).  Of
course we all know that Lightness is to be found in Nietzsche and in Italo
Calvino's _Six Memos for the Next Millenium_. I recommend Calvino as
essential reading for contemporary minded thinkers. Anyway, to answer your
question, few know that Philip Johnson is a Nietzschean scholar.  And
therefore is existentially committed to his architectural gestures.  He is
a lightness thinker.

As far as what it can do for us....Lightness, Smoothness or Topological,
Hypersurface architecture has much to do with a brilliant comment made by
philosopher Mark Taylor last night, here at Columbia.  He said something
like, "If God has gone away, he reappears as Infrastructure." (necessarily
electronic).  I understand that to mean that the formal boundaries of
architecture, design and subjectivity are being folded and redeployed as a
Hyper Surface, a topological interconnectedness.  This is the end of the
category. The end of the dichotomies between MAN and NATURE, and a host of
many, many dualisms in our assumptions about architecture as an object.
Like the intenet, it is beyond reason, beyond comprehension and thus a
form-image, self generating with emergent properties.  This is nothing less
than a shift in consciousness (definitely more bottom up) brought about BY
the avarice and greedy forces of humanism and the aspirations of the
enlightenment.  This is not an avant garde plot.  Technology and has pushed
things to the point of complete distortion and thus reconfiguration.  This
is the main thesis in Rem Koolhass's forthcoming text _Sm, M, Lrg, X-Lrg_.
Particularly the chapter in Bigness: The era of post-architecture.  What it
means is that there are new opportunities for our relationship with nature,
and each other,  sans divisions.

Mark, thanks for your question. Always a pleasure.

spNetwork

Stephen Perrella
Columbia University