no2self.net

John Massengale has been getting understandably upset about the work of the Kolatan / MacDonald studio. And so he should, it’s a fine example of how we architects love to make hard work out of something as simple as putting a few sentences together. Look:

We have two primary interests in the chimerical. One has to do with its seeming capability as a concept to help define existing phenomena of fairly complex hybridity in which categorically different systems somehow operate as a single identity. The other, is based on the assumption that the ways in which chimera are constituted and operate hold clues to a transformatively aggregative model of construction/production. That is to say, an aggregation which becomes more than the sum of its parts, and therefore is not reducible to its constituent parts. Thus, the chimerical has the potential to be both an analytical and methodological tool. In combination, the two models offer an opportunity to link dissipative/aggregative operations to transformative ones with the co-citation analog identifying similarities between unrelated sites/structures/programs, and the chimerical analog employing these initial similarities to construct new sites/structures/programs. While existing categories might cease to be useful, the paradigm of the network/chimera has the potential to open up an entire new range of previously inconceivable kinds of structures for which no names exist as of yet.

Come again?

Translation: Folksonomic tag clusters.

Isn’t Web 2.0 great? It’s even helping to unravel overly complicated architectural theory. If you’d like to read more about the paradigm of the network/chimera without feeling like you’ve had your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick¹, the groop.us tag clusters thesis and visualizations seem like a fine place to start.

According to the readability test at juicystudio.com however, the Kolatan / MacDonald Studio work isn’t all that bad. It scores the following:

• Gunning Fog Index 12.93
• Flesch Reading Ease 44.04
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade 8.63

You’ll see from the marking system on the site that it doesn’t even make the cut as an academic paper on the fog index table. Try harder next time.

Happily, I can announce that cuddly, approachable no, 2 self scores as follows.

• Gunning Fog Index 7.90
• Flesch Reading Ease 68.71
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade 5.18

Giving us a fog index somewhere in between The Bible and Reader’s Digest. Thank God.

Readability has been on my mind a lot lately as I’ve once again been beaten by the book I’ve attempted many times since I bought it about five years ago – Robert Harbison’s Theoretical Investigations in Architecture. Every year I try it and every year it drives me round the twist. I shall admit defeat.

It’s architectural history without all that tedious mucking about with such cumbersome structures as chronological order. Harbison roams freely around using only the indentation of a new paragraph to signal gargantuan leaps in time and space. Very non-linear². Very mid-nineties. Very bloody annoying. Writing this now I realise it’s also a lot like an attempt to link dissipative/aggregative operations to transformative ones with the co-citation analog identifying similarities between unrelated sites/structures/programs, as Kolatan / MacDonald would say, albeit rather clumsily.

It appears, to my dismay, that I’m just not built for it. Launched on a new trajectory by the sudden shift in subject my mind seems to just keep going, bouncing off the page and coming to rest in the mists of a reverie about something entirely different. Custard, for example. The tram doors slide open and I’ve arrived at work without returning my eyes to the page. It needs something to structure it. Some form of notation.

It’s yours if you want it. Mail me.

Tomorrow evening I shall be rubbing shoulders with the great and the good at CABE’s offices in London for the Europan awards ceremony. Be on the look out for some on the spot moblogging.

Following that I’ll be out looking for the moblogging spot. It’s the 2nd birthday party for moblog.co.uk and we’ll be in The Canteloupe bar in Shoreditch. There’s even a web cam.

I’ll be the one in the t-shirt that says ‘Architecture Sucks‘.³

Notes:
1. RIP DNA
2. related entry: non-linear canals
3. unless my current level of bravado has ebbed away by morning

this entry has more images
(link) [no, 2 self photos]

• Podbasket – the easy way to build podcasts
  

  ‘…Podbasket allows you to create your own podcast feed just by providing the URLs for offsite audio files…’ – Strewth, this is good. Very good. (via tesugen.com)

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

eversion posted a photo:

(link) [sketchmore - eversion's Tagged Photos]

• Groundhog Day The Movie, Buddhism and Me
  

  ‘…The movie illustrates the power of practice. When you practice, change happens. Phil unleashed his creativity by selflessness…’ – via dailydose

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

• www.charade.org.uk
  

  ‘…Volunteers attempt to memorize a chosen piece of music, film, tv programme, play or book; through a process of walking, memorizing, remembering and reciting, they each attempt to ‘become’ their favourite ‘media asset’…’ – Paging Ray Bradbury

(taken from my del.icio.us. linklog, broadcast using deloxom)

Received in this morning’s post:

Dear Mr Annable,

We are really glad you were able to attend the MADA Onsite Exhibition, Birmingham last year and hope that you enjoyed it.

As sponsors, we were really pleased to be involved with such interesting and international design. We intend to continue with a similar idea, possibly with another practice, later on this year, keep an eye out for information on our website at www.zumbotelstaff.co.uk

We hope to see you at the event.

Well isn’t that nice of them to keep in touch? Revisiting my MADA Onsite entry at the end of the above link I discover that it also carried another Alsop link. I think that’s quite enough coverage for him for a while, shout if you catch me doing it again any time soon.

More image/text mash ups.

‘…seems to admit more affinity with construction photos than with images of finished buildings … divisions haven’t yet been filled in … leaves openings for life to develop and lets the architect suggest an unpredictable future … The design remains an idea, or a net in which various bits have got lodged like bugs in the radiator grille of a car. Like these insects, the gelled or completed elements of the structure are significant as clues to a process, signs of activity which buildings can’t entirely contain. So this work is like a machine not in its strict logic but in its absence of extraneous baggage and its unprogrammatic linkages…’

Image: Fawood Children’s Centre by Alsop and Partners (photo credit – Alan Lai)

Words: Robert Harbison describing Cedric Price’s Interaction Centre in Thirteen Ways: Theoretical Investigations in Architecture.

I attended an Alsop lecture last year and I remember very clearly one of the first things that struck me as he got up to speak. As he headed towards the laptop/rostrum, glass of red wine in hand, before a single image had been shown, I thought to myself ‘This is what it must have been like to see Cedric Price lecture’.

Moments later he started the lecture by talking about the time he spent working with Cedric Price. Perhaps I was just sub-consciously remembering that connection, but for a moment it seemed like Price was with us again for the evening.

Piers Gough and the rest of the judging panel were wrong. The Fawood Children’s Centre should have won last year’s Stirling Prize.