RECAP: The first part of this post ended with an overview of how roles within the building design and construction industry have changed to streamline the process but with competition for control of the BIM model. This is not control for control’s sake but can be justified in terms of higher quality, quicker response to […]
This, the first post of 2022 is a joint effort between Mohammad Saad Ahmad, an Estimator at Versus Construction in the Greater New York City area and myself. In our respective ways, we are both industry observers. We’ve all watched BIM become mainstream and our relationship to it evolve and but, until even until relatively […]
I was on the verge of ditching AppleMusic because its algorithms continually failed to understand what music I like and, for my part, me not being bothered to train it by clicking “Like” and “Dislike” and pretending to have any agency over what appears in my NewMusic mix every Friday when I know full well […]
Much like fire and the fuel, heat and oxygen triangle, in order for buildings to exist there has to be 1) Land, 2) Money and somebody with 3) The Will to make something happen. Land is always land but Money is another way of saying resources. We could think of Will as the urge of […]
Everything in the world is a expression of its place and time and so it’s not wrong to think good architecture is an expression of its place and time. It’s just that every other kind of architecture is too. Unworried, we understand it to mean good architecture represents its place and time. There are many […]
It’s almost twelve months to the day since I scared myself reading a 2013 book that, it was claimed, re-theorized Post Modernism. “FML,” I thought, “of all the things that need new life breathed into them, we get this one!” Anxiously watching for further signs, I began a draft. About the book, The Graham Foundation wrote [underlines mine]: […]
US7540120 is a United States patent for a Multi-Level Apartment Building. Patent attorneys aren’t likely to be apartment plan geeks so I pity the one whose desk this landed on. Perhaps I shouldn’t, because patent attorneys are skilled in untangling real novelty from mere claims to it. They also understand the importance of precise language because patent language is designed to accurately […]
Pallasmaa, Juhani “The Eyes of The Skin: Architecture and The Senses“, 2nd Edition, Wiley-Academy, 2005 It’s easy to see why this book is essential reading in many schools. It makes architecture sound like a very noble pursuit. Its argument is simple. Western culture has, since the Greeks, emphasised our sense of vision to the neglect of our other ones. […]
New Realism implies a Realism just as Neo-rationalism implies a Rationalism, or Post Modernism a Modernism that once was. They’re all moveable feasts. Neorealism we know from Italian cinema, the most widely-known films being Obsessione (1943), Rome, Open City (1945) and Bicycle Theives (1948). Neorealism kept it real and gritty but, as the memory and reality of WWII […]
“We believe in a nutritious architecture that does the shelter thing well, makes us feel good because it is good for us, doesn’t cost the earth or cost us the earth.” This has been at the top of this blog for five years now. It’s a statement of priorities – about getting the physical things about our […]
“Architecturally, nothing can be said about it” is what we hear when there’s no fallback context. For most people this is a truism but it’s really only a tautology. Not having a context for understanding a building as architecture means it can’t be architecture. This’d be no problem if it weren’t for the inconvenient fact that buildings with no value as Architecture can still have value for humanity. […]
Architectural phenomena are like quantum interactions and solar eclipses. You see more when you don’t observe them directly. The relationship between architecture and the media has now left the Chicken-Egg Era and firmly entered the Cart-Horse Era. In the past, I’ve used the World Architecture Festival as a symbol of an increasingly dysfunctional architecture. This year’s is the 4th-6th of November at Singapore’s Marina […]
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) lived through Impressionism but, rather than taking the delicate play of light upon whatever as the subject for his art, is best known for his graphic paintings and illustrations of people in their working environments. Much of his work was for advertising. This particular poster is from 1891. This next image is possibly the first instance of […]
DYSFUNCTIONALISM: Current state of architecture; characterised by an absence of relationship between form and stated reasons for its generation. It’s the start of a new year and I feel the need to make sense of the one gone. Sometimes it’s clearer if you squint a bit, lose focus. Sometimes it’s better to not try to observe things directly and instead compare a current state with a previous state, […]
