You may remember that Apple™’s products of the ‘90s are often dealt as forbidden; the e·World™ (don’t forget the middle dot) is one of them. The e·World™ internet service had endured just 2 years and disappeared over 20 years ago, but I loved the hello screen with sweetly illustrated buildings symbolizing the featured services, such as e-mail, community and marketplace. Inspired by the graphic design of that dot era, I have tried to recreate that ambience within simplified drawings. Mostly used for the presentation, these small icons are handy to characterize the projects.
Landless merchants on mighty fleets, once the Venetians were ambitious and vicious; with four horses from Greece, with a winged lion displacing a speared dragon, with a tetrarch leaving a foot at the end of the West, the great cave prospered over trunks rooted in the clay. The Pillars of Hercules declared a gate to the sealed ocean; Venice proclaimed a node in between two worlds. The blind conqueror built a bank of warfare with the precious gallery and destroyed the firm empire with an arrogant republic; alas, the boughs dropped and the merchants grounded.
Statues of the Palazzo Vecchio (source: wikipedia.org)
David, the statue that Michelangelo had intended to place on the roof of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore finally laid before the Palazzo Vecchio, the then city hall of Florence. David has thereby been revalued not only as a splendid sculpture, but also as a testimony of the era. The work of art is experienced differently depending on where and how it stands; many creators didn’t hide their anxieties and persistence about locating their achievements. This preoccupation often influences even after the creator’s passing. Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota, director of the Tate art museums and galleries, wrote in the media guide for the exhibition of Donald Judd;
… he made very simple decisions about the way in which the spaces were organized and then progressively installed his own works in forms that were satisfying to him, sometimes it took years to get the right combination, and, of course, in making the installation of this show we had about two weeks rather than several years but what we’ve tried to do in the exhibition was to reflect some of the principles that Judd himself adopted in organizing the spaces in the first place and then in the way in which works are installed in particular spaces.
Five buildings and Italo Calvino’s “Six Memos for the Next Millennium” (2, revised)
Quickness: Moritzkirche, Augsburg, Germany
This will kill that, the book will kill the edifice; says the Archbishop pointing at a printed book*. This is a scene from “Notre-Dame de Paris”, a novel written by Victor Hugo during the turbulent period after the July Revolution of France in 1830. The scene is so significant that the author takes up a considerable number of pages to carry on with his own argument. The assertion about architecture and typography is an interesting part of the novel with the detailed description of the Gothic cathedral at the introductory chapter overlapping him with the background of the story; his life in the world of chained revolutions parallels the church in a sudden innovation.
Victor Hugo reportedly didn’t hide his anger toward the imprudent demolition of the old buildings and the disorderly reconstruction in a destructive manner; accordingly, his argument proves his profound perception about history and architecture. Through various metaphors, he says that the mankind has engraved the legacy within the edifices and has conveyed those achievements to the following generation; then he declares that the role of architecture will be replaced by the publication unleashed by the invention of type printing.
Five buildings and Italo Calvino’s “Six Memos for the Next Millennium” (1, revised)
Lightness: Anthony Browell Magney House, New South Wales, Australia
While the mud is nothing more than a bunch of sodden dust, the land as its origin is a full gravity. The dried clay turns into the hardened cuboid, with which people achieved a 122 m tall stupa Jetavanaramaya in Sri Lanka 1700 years ago. Familiarized for its commonplace raw resources, convenient manufacturing process and straightforward building method, the brick is one of the oldest construction materials of human history.
Jetavanaramaya, Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka (source: wikipedia.org): approx. 93.3 million bricks were used
The story of the three little pigs reveals why; their other houses made of straws and sticks are blown away by the simple breath to demonstrate that solidity and durability are crucial for the construction material. In reality, numerous ancient monuments preserved today are mostly made of elements proved for these conditions. Aula Palatina, as known as the Basilica of Constantine, was built with fired bricks around AD 310; in the Colosseum of Rome completed in AD 80, we can easily find the traces of brick arches.
J-W.H/A+U&D 