wabi sabi

Says Foster of her fascination with images of decay: "From a formal point of view, it's beautiful because it reveals how there's so much time that's passed that there's now so many layers. But there's also this emotional resonance to something that looks old and abandoned."

Funny that a style that finds beauty in the presence of the human touch and the ghostly and mortal shadows we leave behind had heights of popularity in times of major change such as the Industrial Revolution and again during the end of the Cold War. Surely there is something profound in the aesthetic of decay that speaks to us of the fleeting nature of existence, particularly during periods of political and social upheaval such as, perhaps, right now.

Like the Japanese concept of wabi sabi (which celebrates imperfection and the passage of time) this new-found old, or decay by design, is all about harnessing the atmospheric aura of time and using it as the dominant decorative element in a space.

article "Decay by Design" by KAREN VON HAHN
from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060930.DECAY30/TPStory/Entertainment/columnists

Bus idea

possibly use bus advertising that fades in light or with changes in weather / seasons. could change depending on where the bus drove, the conditions, the shadows and underpasses, trees, etc.

Decomposition

This is from Ellen Lupton's article "A Postmortem on Deconstruction."

"Deconstruction asks a question: How does representation inhabit reality? How does the external appearance of a thing get inside its internal essence? How does the surface get under the skin?"

"A work of design can be called deconstruction when it exposes and transforms the established rules of writing, interrupting the sacred 'inside' of content with the profane 'outside' of form."

*inventive typography from the past has done this, and by writing that is what she means.

"For the design field, deconstruction has been reduced to the name of a historical period rather than an ongoing way of approaching design."

"Deconstruction will never be over because it describes a way of thinking about language that has always existed."

"It's not a style or a movement, but a way of asking questions through our work. Critical form making will always be part of design practice, whatever theoretical tools one might use to identify it."

style wars

"the danger is that the style of the work will be taken as a model - a common failure of communication in any theory of the visual arts. A truly exemplary philosophy of art or architecture should transcend any one practitioner's applications. It should on the most basic, conceptual level, provide a ground plan for a wider range of interpretations without losing its central message." - james wines, "de-architecture"

*Design should not ignore the existing disorder or attempt to tame it. - Premise for my project, applied from my paper.

"Although art cannot radically change the world, it can function as a sensitive chronicler, revealing relationships between aesthetic visions, social order, and natural forces. In this regard, the present climate of risk, and its effect on our lives, is another important source for a narrative architecture." - james wines, "de-architecture"

*When we show design's weak side (decomposition / age) it connects with real life through imperfection.

"...New York has never learned the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts. Its present invents itself, from hour to hour, in the act of throwing away its previous accomplishments and challenging the future. A city composed of paroxysmal places in monumental reliefs." - Michel de Certeau

*NY is the perfect climate for testing mortality design.

Death and Religion

"Let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom."
-Montaigne, "The Oxford Book of Death"

"if one knows that what is born will end in death, then there will be love."
-Sutra of Buddha Teachings the Seven Daughters

"But it is reasonable to enquire whether, in the mystical illusions of man, there is not a reflection of an underlying reality. Heaven is nowhere in space, but it is in time."
-Sir Arthur Eddington

Religion has in common (African, Buddhism, Catholic Church, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Native American, Sikhism, Taoism, Islam / Muslim):
death
ceremony - wake, funeral, pilgrimage, mourning
tradition - ways of dealing with death
explanation of what comes next - afterlife, reincarnation, transition, purgatory
**Afterlife, the transition of, the reason we are alive, the things we should do while alive, ways to behave

"The equilibrium state of life is death." - Fagg

Idea that we borrow from nature to live, and eventually must give back in the form of death (human body returns to the earth in decomposition.) No matter religious viewpoint of the spirit, the physical is a cycle that cannot be denied. Shows death as absolute necessity.

I like the idea of death /mortality / time / change as a "living moment." Every second of our lives is a living moment, and every attempt at design is a living moment, or a moment to reach and interact with other human beings' living moments.

Dirty / Sticky Project Idea

I have an idea that would show the effect of time. If I could create posters (or other mediums) that showed one message in light colors, I'm thinking type-heavy, that was printed with a light texture of shapes or words in a clear sticky substance on top, much like rubber cement, the debris / pollution / dirt from the outside world, over time, would eventually collect on the sticky substance and create a message over the printed poster's first intentional message. Possibly this could be applicable for some sort of environmental issue, the new Global Warming movie, or something humorously referencing NYC?

Playboy Architecture

"The approach to the past only becomes creative when the architect is able to enter into its inner meaning and content. It degenerates into a dangerous pastime when one is merely hunting for forms: playboy architecture."

-S. Gideon from "Space, Time, and Architecture" p xliii

Propose we are experience Playboy Design.

Do I need a section on Pop Culture?

If so, I would include:

Movies:
*about time travel, distopia
-Back to the Future
-How to Draw a Bunny
-Bladerunner

Music:
-Pink Floyd
-Forrest Gump Soundtrack
-Simon and Garfunkel

Products
-Secret Deodorant - use of decades as representative of smells

Quotes about Ruin

"The ruin does not supervene like an accident upon a monument that was intact only yesterday. In the beginning there is ruin. Ruin is that which happens to the image from the moment of the first gaze. Ruin is the self-portrait, this face looked at in the face as the memory of itself, what remains or returns as a specter from the moment one first looks at oneself and a figuration is eclipsed. The figure, the face, then sees its visibility being eaten away; it loses its integrity without disintegrating. For the incompleteness of the visible monument comes from the eclipsing structure of the trait, from a structure that is only remarked, pointed out, impotent or incapable of being reflected in the shadow of the self-portrait."- Jacques Derrida

"The ruin is not in front of us; it is neither a spectacle nor a love object. It is experience itself: neither the abandoned yet still monumental fragment of a totality, nor, as Benjamin thought, simply a theme of baroque culture. It is precisely not a theme, for it ruins the theme, the position, the presentation or representation of anything and everything. Ruin is, rather, this memory open like an eye, or like the hole in a bone socket that lets you see without showing you anything at all, anything of the all. This, for showing you nothing at all, nothing of the all. 'For' means here both because the ruin shows nothing at all and with a view to showing nothing of the all."- Jacques Derrida

"We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings."- Alfred Jarry

"Whence the love of ruin. And the fact that the scopic pulsion, voyeurism itself, is always on the lookout for the originary ruin. A narcissistic melancholy, a memory- in mourning- of love itself. How to love anything other than the possibility of ruin? Than an impossible totality?"- Jacques Derrida

"Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin, comforter
And only healer when the heart hath bled;
. . . Time, the avenger!"- Lord Byron

"We moralize among ruins."- Benjamin Disraeli

website: http://www.brynmawr.edu/visualculture/journal/t_ruins.shtml

for memory quotes: http://www.brynmawr.edu/visualculture/journal/p_benjamin.shtml

Architect's view on the environment

This is from Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's book "The Architecture of Signs and Systems":

"There can be little doubt that the art of illusion, the art of the television screen and of electronic fantasy, will play a considerable role in the architecture of the future, much as painting and sculpture did in the architecture of the past. Perhaps the appropriate use of computers for architecture in an Electronic Age is not to compose contorted forms but to validate valid surfaces, for an Information Age." (p100)

IE in planning for the future, technology and new electronic mediums will lead the race

"...Today we would discuss as well how patterns of living, working, leisure, educatioN, commerce, and production are evolving in relation to computer-generated changes in the technology of communication and in response to global economic and social forces." (p153)

IE life evolves in relation to technology

In his argument about whether form follows function, and also relating to planning for the future, he stated, "In many projects, sacrificing some adherence to the specifics of present programs may be worthwhile for the flexibility this offers the future." (p153)

Kevin Lynch - suggested ways to design buildings that plan for the future by:
1. providing extra space so that structural and mechanical elements could change over time without interrupting activities they were currently serving.
2. structures strong enough to take a range of uses
3. lighting systems allowing for a variety of activities
(p154)
"Lynch felt buildings planning for changer per se had a better chance of satisfying over their lifetime than those based on predictions of specific changes to come. He recommended PLANNING FOR THE UNPREDICTABLE." (p154)

From "Learning from Las Vegas" by Robert Venturi:

"The integration of the arts in Modern architecture has always been called a good thing. But one did not paint on Mies. Painted panels were floated independently of the structure by means of shadow joints; sculpture was in or near but seldom on the building. Objects of art were used to reinforce architectural space a the expense of their own content." (p7)

IE you can change a space with art / design. the art works as an evolving part of the environment because they are free standing or floating pieces that are able to be moved and replaced / changed.