Digital Commons Network^™

Michael’S Mouth, Peter Olshavsky

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

“Michael’s Mouth” examines the virtuoso performance of small mouth sounds (“um,” “ah,” etc.) in MOS’ 2006 video, Alternate Ending 1: The Glimmering Noise. In this performance, “Michael” deftly uses non-words to advance a non-discursive argument about architecture as a form of attention in the post-critical imaginary.

Reconfiguring Architectural Agency, Peter Olshavsky

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

This essay, for the exhibition "Steven Holl: Making Architecture,” argues that matter, things, and technologies are increasingly seen as co-constitutive of human agency. Studying this expanded conception of agency in the architecture of Holl reveals three opportunities. It enables us to re-describe the architect’s relation to architectural phenomenology beyond materiality. It reveals architecture’s active comportment in socially embedded settings, and it advances the idea that architecture makes us what we are.

Letter On "Urban Mining", Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

“Urban mining” (in “Source material”) may be a new term, but we have a long history of repurposing layers of a building that has become obsolete. Ise Shrine in Japan is rebuilt every 20 years; each time, dismantled columns, beams, and other components are bestowed upon other shrines, which reuse them in high veneration. The Coliseum had been a mine for stone and metal since the fourth century, and in 1452, Pope Nicholas V, intending to rebuild Rome, reportedly removed 2,522 cartloads damaged by an earlier earthquake. The ancient arena’s travertine can be found in buildings throughout the city.

In …

Untimely Thinking Of Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Peter Olshavsky

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

This is the foreword to the two-volume collection of essays by the eminent architectural historian Dr. Alberto Pérez-Gómez titled, Timely Meditations: Select Essays on Architecture (2016). It examines his work on hermeneutics to reconsider "innovation" in architecture by privileging architecture’s performance of cultural orientation over innovation for its own sake. This shifts attention from action based on information to a hermeneutic position that draws on a less articulate background.

Aspen Art Museum, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

'I hope when people come to the New Aspen Art Museum they will sense that this building is very much at home in Aspen and could only live here', Shigeru Ban states in a short essay to visitors included in the museum brochure. Indeed, the way in which Ban's design fits uniquely within its context is nothing less than extraordinary. A full appreciation of his accomplishment, however, requires a study of Aspen's history.

What strategies are available to the architect who intends to design a museum that fits well for a community with keen interests in arts but lacking in …

Coelum Britannicum: Inigo Jones And Symbolic Geometry, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Inigo Jones’s interpretation that Stonehenge was a Roman temple of Coelum, the god of the heavens, was published in 1655, 3 years after his death, in The most notable Antiquity of Great Britain, vulgarly called Stone-Heng, on Salisbury Plain, Restored.¹ King James I demanded an interpretation in 1620. The task most reasonably fell in the realm of Surveyor of the King’s Works, which Jones had been for the preceding 5 years. According to John Webb, Jones’s assistant since 1628 and executor of Jones’s will, it was Webb who wrote the book based on Jones’s “few indigested” notes, on …

Experiencing The Architecture Of The Incomplete, Imperfect, And Impermanent, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

For some time now architects have operated with the notion that the building is complete when construction is finished. They strive to make the building perfect and wish to keep it so permanently. Seen from this point of view, any subsequent alterations seem to degenerate the original. And yet, buildings never stay the same as they take part in politics, economics, and religion through the course of time. Their changes may be caused by natural forces or artificial means, and may manifest physically or in meaning. For example, immediately after the inauguration of the Colosseum in Rome, structures were added …

Sen No Rikyū And The Japanese Way Of Tea: Ethics And Aesthetics Of The Everyday, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Sen no Rikyū (1522-1591) was a tea master who consecutively served Japan’s two warlords in the turbulent feudal era. Rikyū synthesized wabi tea into ethics and aesthetics by applying it to every aspect of the ceremony, from the tea setting to the physical environment, and from the manner of making and drinking tea to the way of interacting with the environment. By producing artifacts and environments that clearly showcased the incomplete, imperfect, and impermanent nature of their physical aspects, Rikyū succeeded in guiding tea participants to the ontological contemplation of their own imperfect and transient existence. Henri Lefebvre (1901- 1991) …

Sir Walter Scott And Kenilworth Castle: Ruins Restored By Historical Imagination, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

This is a study of how the architectural ruins of Kenilworth Castle contributed to the historical imagination of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and how he forged their literary restoration. The castle, located between Warwick and Coventry, was first constructed in the early twelfth century by Geoffrey de Clinton, the royal chamberlain to King Henry I (r. 1100-1135). Major additions were made by King Henry II (r. 1154-1189); King John (r. 1199-1216); John of Gaunt (1340-1399), son of King Edward III and Duke of Lancaster; and Robert Dudley (1532-1588), Earl of Leicester. The castle played a number of important roles throughout …

"Introduction" To Conjuring The Real: The Role Of Architecture In Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Rumiko Handa, James Potter

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Buildings give an immediate presence to the historical or fictional world, which otherwise is unknown or unfamiliar to the audience. The portrayal of a building’s concrete and specific substance makes the world come alive, although the building itself is a mere segment of the world that it represents. This book will trace the genealogy of this representational role of architecture, going back through the history of film and then further in literature, art, and theater, and identify its pedigree in the nineteenth century, where authors, artists, and stage managers used thorough depictions of buildings to effectively feed the audience’s historical …

Appropriation Of Architectural Ruins In Britain During The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Each year all over the world, from Acropolis to Jerusalem, from Angkor Wat to Machu Picchu, tourists flock around ruins. They are fascinated by the lives of the people who are long gone, displaced for political, cultural, or unknown reasons. Ruins entice the visitors' imaginations because of the physical and metaphysical incompleteness - missing roofs, decayed stones, or lost way of living, which once kept the buildings alive. While some ruins of historical significance are set for preservation by lawful designations, some buildings are turned into hotels and other tourist facilities.1 New buildings are also constructed mimicking the form but …

Contemplation On Built Heritage In Ireland: Between Destruction And Preservation, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

This paper will examine the fate of several buildings in Dublin, Ireland, constructed during the British rule. The decision between destruction and preservation of such buildings naturally rested heavily on the governments' political attitudes after the Irish independence of the 19205. For example, while the City Corporation let many Georgian row houses fall to vandalism and/or destruction, the Office of Public Works recovered a number of buildings as part of a national built heritage. For example, the former Royal Hospital now serves as the Irish Museum of Modem Art. A number of questions arise, however, concerning architectural signification, which bear …

Mu In Details Of Japanese Contemporary Architecture: Can The Void Represent An Idea?, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Although the idea of what architectural details should be varies among the entries in our survey, a common thread runs through them: they all implicitly agree that the form of an architectural detail represents a particular idea of what the detail should be, or, in the negative, that when details are to be excluded or ignored for either ideological or practical considerations, they have no particular form. This seems quite rationa~ even obvious. But in some contemporary Japanese an:hitecture there is anothercase altogether, of details that paradoxically, embody an intention to represent but at the same time to present no …

Design Through Drawing: Eero Saarinen's Design In The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Competition, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Drawing has the power to generate design. It is not only the depiction of an image in the architect's mind, but also, more importanlly, drawing, either the act or the product, can contribute to design as a physical counterpart to architectural imagination. Many architects might agree with this proposition, based on their daily practice. This research is an attempt to cast light on this phenomenon, offering a rigorous analysis and concrete yroofs. The study begins with an attempt to define architectural drawing, which ieads to an extensive investigation of the characteristics of repri::!sentation in architectural drawings. Eero Saarinen's winning entry …