ruminations about architecture and design
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
eichler is not greene and greene
Towers of ilium doesn't trust Eichler. He was not Greene and Greene. He was not Frank Lloyd Wright. His brand of ranch housing is overblown and uneconomical. If you need a ranch house, don't hire an architect, unless you want a ranch house that looks like a Cape. Or a bungalow. Bungalows work well. Towers of ilium receives funding from the Bungalow Association of America.
the last starfighter
Towers of ilium has still not made a decision as to whether or not the movie "Lucy" should be added to the list of architecture themed films. The committee is cool towards the idea, because although Luc Besson crafts a competent mix of action and religious jargon posing as science he never lets the scenes speak.
Should abbreviations be phased out? More on this later. NASA owns space, but ABAA is not a rock band from Scandanavia.
Should abbreviations be phased out? More on this later. NASA owns space, but ABAA is not a rock band from Scandanavia.
Friday, March 20, 2015
death in an afternoon
Michael Graves and Jon Jerde died within two weeks of each other. Thus, the icons of post-modern architecture are left orphaned. Who will carry the vision forward? Modernism is the defining aesthetic for commercial design. The delivery of construction projects demands a more direct approach that doesn't leave room for irony or whimsy.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
more graphic literacy tests
Eventually, architects will stop issuing formal drawings. This will be a good thing. Some paper copies of information will be retained for legal purposes, but their existence will be a function of cultural stupidity, not logic.
Towers of ilium contends that detailing in particular will be converted to a 3d representational medium within the next few decades. 2D information will persist as guide to 3d details. Internet maps are the basic analogy.
graphic communications
Quite appropriately, no graphic today. A picture is worth only as much as the view can recognize. The most effective graphics that towers of ilium employs often bear little resemblance to reality. The image does not have to be the truth, it merely has to tell it. In this respect, Pablo Picasso was partly correct. Art is not a lie, it is a narrative that cannot be disassociated from context.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
balancing a mattress on a bottle of wine
Towers of ilium is adopting a reporting posture of quality over frequency and quantity. In a perverse analogy, Daesh/ISIL/ISIS employs the same strategy. They selectively display actions that cause the greatest impact in the media. This has the effect of distracting attention from outside forces that are supplying and supporting them. It also helps them conceal their weaknesses.
Their destruction of museum artifacts, and lately, of portions of the city of Nimrud, is sad and annoying. All of that antiquity is worth less than one human life. But, it may turn more opinion against them.
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