design, architecture, urbanism… with a grain of salt

As I try to establish the Grain of Salt blog on Blogspot, this one continues to pick up momentum at an alarming rate. 

If you are visiting this blog still, make sure you get over and check out some of the new posts that I’ve listed below;

Two time lapse videos were posted.

Some photo montages from downtown Milan are up

Two articles that I’m working on are as follows. I hope to get these up by the end of the day.

Web Urbanist has posted some great photos on abandoned airfields. An short musing on the conversion of airfields and airplanes follows.

Dezeen recently posted a forum on comments (through the comment section). I’ve expressed my point of view, and paraphrased some of the best ones.

…to a bigger network of blogs, and a better support system with more flexibility.

Google Blogger! 

Google are yet to allow cross-pollination of blogs, so for now all the old posts will remain as they are, and the new posts will be at this link;

http://dau-grainofsalt.blogspot.com/

You can also access the new blog directly from http://www.grain-of-salt.net. The first post in the new environment has a couple of youtube time lapse video. Check it out here.

WE ARE MOBILE.

Thanks to Tumblr, we have an iPhone/Blackberry/other mobile device interface. To read the posts without all the sidebar jazz, add this to your phone’s bookmarks.

[image via arqui.tectura]

Architect: Eduardo Souto de Moura

Completed: 2001/2002

Location: Ponte de Lima, Portugal

Just over 500 unique visits this month for the first time. Thanks to all the visitors. I’ll keep it interesting.

Beijing Hides Dilapidated Buildings - The New York Times 

unknown weegee photography exhibition

water main burst uproots madison avenue around 1938

Click on the Book Store link in the top bar.

[Corbusier and Einstein]

We will feature a new book each month.

Click here to visit images of the CCTV tower in Beijing being used as an advertising mechanism. 

[Nike Beijing - CCTV. Image from Sartorialab]

Nike Beijing - CCTV. Image from Sartorialab]

This post is via Archinect

Had a fair response from people regarding the 5 questions. Please answer them if you have a minute.

lunes 22.46pm | Tuesday 4.47am

The chosen moment to describe with words and photos, some tenuous threads between 2 cities. Well, official links - no. Just the ones I see at this moment, in a search for meaning. Nothing revolutionary, after all, in the notion that two cities described and disputed as Mediterranean… might have a few common points worth noting.

The stuff of architecture we were trained in provides a starting point. Light. Form. Street. People.

Light: We have the same types of light to play with.

Harsh light. White light. Light to be filtered. Light for silouette.

Notes on beauty:

Noticing that there is a fragility between being surrounded by beautiful things and learning to see the beauty in ordinary things. This is a clue to being inspired…

I think this thread is something of Robert Venturi and Simon Anderson and perhaps José Antonio Coderch. But that needs investigation.

Post-Script on people in architecture: If you remove humanity from a project, why build it at all? I´m going with the suspicion that humanity is in all facets and all phases of a project. Looking for humanity,

could be as easy as inviting it.

Don´t you love the idea that we could harness the mess of peoples dreams, mistakes and emotions and put them in a building?

I don´t know - surely without that, a building can only be object less beautiful, less functional and more of an aberration on the landscape than what would have grown there by itself. So, its my belief that you squash people and their mess out of the process at your peril.

So, never quite got around to mention “form”. Light. Beauty. Humanity. Is there a case for making form, simply incidental, and subservient to these other preoccupations? Or is this exactly the type of introspective garbage to be left to those people who spend their evening writing blogs about ephemeral things, while the real architects prepare for the next day of form.

Ok, next entry about form.

I remember whilst studying back in the early 2000’s, an Academic by the name of Julian Raxworthy was running a Landscape Architecture class, or a studio, on the Landscape of Clouds. 

I wasn’t enrolled in this class, but it interested me. As per usual I only really paid attention briefly, enough to pick up on the title, and ponder a little on what it meant. I should have read on. There is a plethora of these moments that litter my memory, and all I am left with is the ability to draw my own conclusions from a title I remember from a distant time. I suppose its enough sometimes. I read other things. As the other day, whilst skim reading BLDGBLOG I came across the more than stunning images that are in this post, and it triggered my memory and the thought that if Clouds form landscapes, then these landscapes could be captured in building or landscape projects. A transient piece of landscape that is forever still, vicious, ominous and beautiful. Nothing is more relaxing than staring at the sky. I need more skylights. 

It also triggered a plethora of questions relating to; the indeterminant nature of Nature. Thoughts on manicured gardens, macro landscapes and the image, Gaia and micro landscapes and control (e.g. courtyards).

 It then led me to think a little more about another question, “can Architecture (or Landscape Architecture) be taught?”. My answer is no. I believe it can’t be taught, but the teaching of Architecture is essential to Architecture itself. Architecture is tacit then… but if it is tacit, how can you teach it? 

   I was fortunate enough to work with Julian Raxworthy, Rene Van Meeuwen and Laura Rossi as well as other Landscapers from the ALVA school a couple of semester’s later than the Cloud studio on the entry to the National Arboreturm Competition, and was really fond of JR’s and RvM’s approach. RvM went on to be my honour’s supervisor. I got to explore the project tacitly. To apply one’s self to a project or a part of a project. I came to the conclusion that you aren’t a designer until they are completely your own designs and ideas that are on the page, in the music, in the product etc.etc. That is what I took from that experience.

So there you go. I came into this post at cloud, and left on tacit knowledge.  

Photos by Carlos Gutierrez for UPI, I saw these on BLDGBLOG