This isn't the 'bloggy' version of assignment 2, (to come after i rework it) but I just tried this to clarify some things, as a kind of study. I'm putting it out here for public record:

Our architecture should be more responsive and engaging. This will change how environments are perceived.

Responsive architecture is interactive.

Interaction is obtained through the manipulation of motion.

Every building has motion, but not every building has motion that creates interaction between architecture and occupant.

Examples that move and cause interaction:

Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial: She gets the visitor to engage through transcending a ramp into the earth, among other things, and them brings them back out of the earth again on another ramp. There is a literal engagement as your legs move you down and back up, and a mental engagement, as you grapple with the ideas of grief that she has imbedded in the project.

Frederick Kiesler’s Art of the Century gallery/museum: Kiesler involves the occupant by having the visitor physically work devices in order to view the art in the exhibit. If they are not being asked to do something physical to view art, they must move or approach the art in an unprecedented way (art hung on tethers, for example.) The new motions change how this space is understood.

Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeannerets second Citrohan House: The way in which we move through a building can be engaging. This two story project has a very light, airy second floor, and a very dense first floor. In moving from the first to the second, the occupant undergoes a narrative or sequence. This is his ‘promenade architecturale.’ Mentally, they are interacting with their surroundings as they accumulate the short history of their travel up and into the house.

Ron Heron, Walking City: This city is meant to walk. In physically ‘walking’ over the earth, it can change the constituents of environments, and thus how people interact with these environments. It’s mobility forms new patterns of behavior, awareness and perceptions.

I thought of one more:

6. A New Bank
This would be the home for the new Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. With all the junk that is going on, new financial buildings could be built for 'new' financial institutions. An investment bank cannot, after these recent events carry on business in the same way, and neither can their architecture. new consciousness of present day existence.

Ideas

I decided to post some ideas I have on potential program. I thought it would help to put it out there and get some feedback, and also, to write in this informal bloggy way.

What Seth said of my potential program was helpful. It is true I am going for some kind of awakening - a bringing forth of consciousness. I am going to do this through movement / action / kinetics. Naturally, he recommended that I consider something perhaps spiritually based. I decided I want to do the opposite. To do something 'nonspiritually' based. I want to do this so the awakening through motion is not confused with some sort of spiritual emotion or feeling. Perhaps the feeling of being awakened will be rife with some similar emotions, and in a way, be spiritual. (i think this is what Seth meant anyway.) However, I don't want it to be SPIRITUAL (meaning... Episcopalian, Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim etc. No religion. A non-religious project.)

To be more specific, I'm looking for a program that cannot be everyday and mundane - because then the building will lose that initial sake of awakening simply because one has exposure to it daily. One can't expect some one's apartment to wow them daily with a barage of things to make them awake and conscious. People would go crazy. So while not mundane, I don't want something so extra special. I do not want some bizarre hybrid architecture with two weird programs smashed together for the sake of it being interesting. Like a zoo in a grocery or something. (Of course, i am interested in this to a point. If it is for a purpose in relating to my thesis.)

So with all this in mind, I have a few considerations (in no order):
1. A Chocolate Factory
I like this because one story, like in the movie, takes place in one place, and movement is crucial to the understanding of this narrative. the people are changed by their movements and the movements of other things. I don't think it's too feasible or fitting for my project, however. I thought of it over the summer.
2. A large City Convenience thingy.
This would have a butcher, florist, laundromat, fishmonger, bakery, hardware store, cafe, bookshop in one entity. I like this because, while everyday places for everyday tasks, if combined, and Incorporated with this movement business, they might provide something new. I think of the North End in Boston, where people actually still use butchers and bakeries etc., not grocery stores, and are so much better for it. They know their neighborhood. Yet, these places are not everyday, nor are they extra unique. They are needed.
3. A Place for Atheism
This is decidedly nonspiritual and that's why I like it. Having a real focus on the present, the real, the now. Being conscious of how you are living your life now.
4. Library / Bathhouse.
I ripped this from Luis today. But I swear, I was already thinking about a library. It sounds mundane, but I like it. I made a list of 'still' and 'busy' activities. Reading and washing can be counted as both, depending on how you go about it. (still can mean conscious, and busy can mean unconscious.) I really like the duality they have. I also like the idea of the bathhouse - a very old program that doesn't exist. I think of Boston, just because I am familiar with it, and see there is nothing like it. A public pool, which is sparse, cannot compare. It has a strong community component. Washing / swimming can turn conscious again. Imagine business people, on their lunch break, going to the public bath for a little mini-rest in the middle of the day. I like the library component because it is modern (less social, but just as communal) kind of bathhouse. People gather in this public place for a specific purpose. They can see and meet and learn. Perhaps this library is more interactive and less solitary. I just like it.

I had this other list, but they are getting old:
4. Arboretum
5. Seed Bank

Ok, I wrote it down, or typed it up, rather, and I'm going to let it sit for a bit. If you read this, let me know what you think.

1 - 3 - 9 Exercise

(1) Architecture is a channel of experience that wakes a comatose, jaded modern society through a designed response to action, motion and kinetics.

(3) Architecture is the means by which man experiences his surroundings. Modern man is unaware of his built environment because he has been living an over-exposed and over-stimulated life – nothing phases him. Architecture can crack through his dulled perception through design by appealing to man’s underutilized, inherent understanding of movement.

(9) The senses are crucial to understanding any experience. However, modern man’s senses have been so barraged that he can no longer register his perceptions of his environment. In reaction to this modern state, man has shut down his full faculties of consciousnesses. Architecture can be the resolution to this modern dilemma. Architecture envelops man, becomes his environment, and fits into the story of his life. Designed space must find a way to appeal to man as never before, and in a way that does not tug incessantly on the heartstrings of his senses. While man may be jaded in his sensory experience, he still understands, uses, and communicates through motion and movement. While architecture is typically non-moving, it has the ability to communicate with man through movement, whether through perceived or actual. Man’s conceptual understanding of movement must be valued, used, and reflected through architecture in order to bring forth a new society.

These are the images I have selected that best representing what I was bringing up in my manifesto.

The first of which is the moving sidwalk, as it is a literally moving trajectory, customized to modern man, which moves through a space. It's kinetic and changes a perceived experience. The cut in the earth was a large project done by the artist Michael Heizer. It is two great cuts made in the earth, but each cut is separated by a distance from the other. The eye makes the connection between the two cuts when seen in the aerial view. Up close, you have no idea that this is part of a larger composition. The human eye makes the connection, does the uniting of the two scores in the earth. The last image is a Chinese hand scroll. I like these because unrolling them is part of the experience of reading them. The content, be it a text or painting or both, is dependent on the way in which it is read. It can be rolled up, unrolled, and carried in the human hand (unlike goliath or precious pieces of western art.) It encourages a type of tactile/kinetic relationship with the person who views it. It translates the observer to the participant.

Rachel Hampton
II. A Complaint Revisited.

Man is sleeping. He has lapsed into a coma. He doesn’t shudder at rampant corruption, of a nation of excess gone terribly awry, of bloodied bodies bloating in the sun. Someone needs to grab the paddles and send a course of electricity through his veins. Modern man must be woken.

Architecture must be this bolt of energy, this surge of consciousness. It is the only prescription that exists in the everyday life of this comatose patient. This bolt must be directed through a realm of experience, because experience is what will link designed space and projects to the modern man. Humans live through a realm of experience.

Yet experiential architecture is everywhere: cathedrals, Wal-Marts, homes – every building is rife with experience, be it good, bad or banal. The key is to deliver a better experience is by directing experience. The architectural plea made on modern man’s senses needs to be more penetrating, more resonant. He needs to be made to understand his surroundings, his environment – he needs to be made conscious. How do we achieve this new, potent experience, and how to we recognize that this experience must be for the modern man, who differs greatly from his counterparts of ten years ago?

WHAMMY! KAPOW! MOVE BITCH GET OUT THE WAY!

Modern man (and woman, of course) moves.

Movement is a phenomenon that has endured since humans crawled out of the primordial seas. Years after we oozed into life, we learned to haul root crops out of the soil and how to stalk prey. Today, we pace down grocery store aisles, scooping up Cheerios and cellophane-wrapped chicken. We push down on the gas peddles with heel-clad feet, and hurry to work. We slam things when we’re angry, we dance when we’re elated, we drum our fingers when we’re bored. Our chests heave with heavy sighs. We live through motion today, more than ever.

And in living through motion, we understand through motion, especially where it is not the usual or the norm. A teetering college-kid indicates a drunken co-ed. A forehead-wiping, stuttering man indicates a potentially nervous character. A hand-clapping, squealing toddler indicates a delighted child. Whether we intend to or not, we communicate through our actions and movements. Movement is our narrative through which we read life. It is a narrative that needs no written or spoken words. It is how we first connected as a species and how we continue to understand (or misunderstand) each other.

So what is with this stagnant architecture? These leaden blobs of building? These stagnant one-liners of architecture? Of course we can’t expect them to get up and walk around and teeter around drunkenly or giddily-slap their hands. They don’t even have hands. And if they walked, we’d never be able to find them, and if they danced, how the hell would we get to the entrance. But what architecture can do is recognize motion and the kinetics of modern man, and see that as a gateway to his experience.

Society is not used having an architecture that responds to man’s kinesthetic. Of course they know paint, structure, even space. Many elements, wonderful elements, found in good design get lumped into the category that is the jaded modern experience. Architecture that subtly responds to movement, something so real, so physical and so entirely dependent on an essential human trait, can offer possibility. It is an experience that is not one of the five senses, but an action linked to all senses – and thus a mode of perception that must be utilized. To enter this gateway of experience is to wake modern society.

How is this channel of experience achieved? In several, crucial ways. Architecture must:

1. Architecture must recognize the movements and trajectory of modern society.
Design needs to be conscious of the physical motion of an occupant. This can mean that architecture moves itself in response to society, or that society is moved around design in some way.
2. Movement can be physical, as well as non-physical (i.e. the perception or implication of movement)
2. A building’s narrative is crucial to how it is perceived, and thus how it is experienced. As one moves through a building, they develop a relationship with the cast of characters (spaces), the setting (site), and the plot (program). While physical movement is crucial to understanding the narrative, the narrative itself is not a concrete thing that can be moved or moves, even though it depends on the built environment to give it form. It is the idea of a trajectory, of the fact that architecture can flow. Narrative is developed from within and is based on the way one uses the building. A narrative is another form of movement that affects how we perceive architecture.
3. There can be movement, and an anti-movement, motion and anti-motion. Movement and motion have implications of action. Anti-movement can be described as where there is less movement or action. It is not stillness, but it is stillness defined by the amount of mobility it contains, however small or negligible. Anti-movement is the contrast of movement. Motion can be more thoroughly experienced if it is in conjunction with anti-movement and anti-motion, as contrast brings new consciousness.

Architecture needs to subvert, to overthrow, to squeeze and cough and push its way into modern existence! An architecture for modern society, an architecture for the numb populace must be decidedly kinetic and contrasting. To have an architecture of the appeasing, stable sedentary is to smother the comatose patient with a pillow, snuffing him out of existence.

Here is a Manifesto a la Rachel:

I. A Complaint

There is nothing more depressing and terrible then being a young architect, a student, having a mind brimming with possibilities, (often ridiculous and untried, but energetic and driven nonetheless) and being stomped on by other senior architects and professors:

Why are you doing this?
Code will not permit such a tight corridor! Maybe in Europe, but not here!
Would the client want this? That is too inconvenient.
Who would pay for that!

And they say all this having dealt with the real world themselves.
And that is exceptionally disheartening.

It’s as if the young architect is beaten into submission before they even get a hold of their diploma. There will be lawsuits! There will be budgets! There will be code! And somehow, you must change the world with your design despite these restraints that are placed on you, even before you are given the opportunity. We graduate with a hoard of monkeys already on our backs – the domineering client, brandishing a glossy-paged magazine article praising the beauty of some New-England gabled-wonder. The building inspectors and attorneys and historic commissioners: moaning, groaning and making those ‘tisk-tisk’ noises as if it were the only sound they were capable of making. We haven’t even met them yet but we already feel their weight and our hands and minds sigh with fatigue.

How do we remedy this? We don’t dump the client – it for them that we build. We do have a duty to design for them. Like the mother who loves her rambunctious, pain-in-the-ass child, we can’t leave them, we’re connected. We must guide them, help them, look out for them. We can give them something that no one else can provide. We must affirm our ability to deliver what no one else can. Also, we cannot dump the regulators of building, whomever they may be. We just can’t. Unless we want to design from a courtroom or pay fines through our noses.

We must change the way that these publics see architecture. We must do this through example. We must make good design accessible to all, not just to a television network of China or the worshippers of Barcelona. Good design must be touched, tasted, experienced. It must be felt. To know good design is to want good design. I think of a good friend of mine, who detested fish. It smelled, it was slimy, how could it taste anything but terrible? And then, with encouragement, he tried sushi – beautiful, perfect, pure sushi. It wasn’t from some specialty shop in New Japan – it was from the university dining hall. It was readily available. He paid the three or so dollars, picked up his chopsticks, clumsily brought the little piece to his lips… and suddenly, the ingredient he had disdained for so long was suddenly delicious. He then craved sushi – and not just the California roll. He wanted salmon sashimi, an exceptionally fishy fish. He savored it all. He tried new sushi from new places. He was welcomed into a new culture through the food he experienced. Likewise, one can welcomed into a culture of Architecture through their designed environment.

People must be exposed to design, to live it, to breathe it, to have it pull at their heartstrings and affect their emotions and physical state. Perhaps it is not beautiful or spiritual – the people have felt this before – but it exists, it IS. It is like the smell of a gas station or that of a cow pasture, or like the annoying uncle that everyone still loves. It is so definitive and declarative in its existence. It is not rambling, and wishy-washy, and pathetic. It is Architecture, not just a building.

I AM HERE, you can LOVE OR HATE ME, just as long as you KNOW ME. To know this Architecture is to be conscious of it. To be conscious is to understand. And to understand is to be know. With an aware populace, a more flexible climate can emerge in the realm of practiced architecture, and true leaps and bounds can occur.

Toes can be stepped on, people can be made uncomfortable. True invention is never absorbed without a qualm. The sushi is strange – it is slimy and cold. The gasoline is heavy and flammable. The cow manure is thick and sickenly-sweet. But it’s there and you know it. And with these things, you can feel full and content, you can drive to new places, and you can fertilize the corn that will find its way into your morning cereal.

It is thus through the restrictions the everyday has placed on design that Architecture will conquer. Architecture must find a way to slip through the back door, creep into the minds of the modern man, whisper in his ear, slap him in the face, tickle him under the chin and tackle him to the ground. It must do this all through the experience it provides and/or contains. Because experience is what will link designed space and projects to the modern man. Humans live through a realm of experience.

If Architecture can grow some balls and be this experience, then people will become conscious of design. Children will play in the sandboxes of architecture and Amersterdam will not be the only city where good design is offered on par with food and air and water.

Thus:
1. Architecture needs to stop being everyone else’s bitch and do something. It’ll be hard to overcome the initial protest, but it must be done.
2. Architects must realize that architecture must communicate through experience and narrative. It must appeal to the way the humans perceive. Intellectual, formal approaches have a place, as they push the envelope and lead to stimulations, discourse, and invention, while, at the same time, the way humans live cannot be discounted. We live through sensory experience. This includes context, program, and siting strategies.
3. This architecture must be applied to the modern everyday and to the special. The everyday, to get mass exposure and experience, and to the special, so it will not be forgotten and become part of an already jaded experience. The everyday and special will offer different, but equally innovative and good, design, albeit in different ways and levels.

Good Architecture and design will thusly be more incorporated into mass modern society, and a greater climate for architecture will ensue. We not be trying to go on endless missions to the moon. We shall go to mars. We will explore the galaxy and quest to travel at the speed of light. We will Invent.

Know what drives me nuts? When architecture is wishy-washy, namby-pamby. When it tries to be everything to everyone all at the same time. When it wants to be quiet and blend into the site, but at the same time, it wants to make a song and dance so you know it exists. When it wants to reference the historic, and when it wants to be avante-garde. It's okay if you can do this, and do IT WELL. But precious few do it well. Don't be ashamed to take a side if it steps on some toes. No La-Di-Da Archtiecture. You can make La-Di-Da, wishy washy buildings, but not Architecture. Barf.

I am overwhelmed by this manifesto business. I realize that, yes, after four years of architectural education, complete with design studios, theory and history classes, etc. etc., I've amassed enough information that I can form some opinions/beliefs on design. I'm going to write a few of them out, either from things I've read or things I have always felt, just to put some ideas out there. From these, perhaps I can make a bonified manifesto. In fact, I know I will be making a manifesto, because, isn't that the point of this whole thing. Here's some thoughts:

Architecture should be...

1. Architecture should be experiential. It should foster or create experience. Good, bad, pretty, ugly or just quiet and 'neutral', it has to do something experiental for the people, places and events it affects.
2. Along this same line of thought, architecture should be a narrative. What this really means I'm not too sure, but I feel its important. It's doesn't mean that architecture necessarily has to be a story, but it has a life. It has a trajectory, and it is in the process of existing always.
2. Design should be intentional. Even 'accidental' moments should come from some thought, idea, or propostion. Design can start with instinct, but elvolve into an intention. If it's bad, let it be bad on purpose, for Christ's sake.
3. Architecture should take what was good about past architecture, and push it forward. New architecture should collide with evolving experimental ideas. For example, we aren't continually trying to go to the moon. We did it. It was great. We might go back, but for a different purpose. Maybe we'll use the same ideas of travel to get us there, but our intent has changed. Anyway, we should be trying to get to Mars instead of the Moon anyway - In a space ship of course. Like they used to go to moon but obviously not the same one. (Obviously!) As science progresses to better our lives, so should design.
4. Architecture should respond. People, site, culture whatever.

Architecture should not be...

1. Confused with engineering or interior design or any other discipline. I know, I know, I know. Architecture is one comprehensive beast. How can I exclude these things when this is a comprehensive studio. As architects, we study the arts, history, theories, sciences and mathematics. But... we are not strictly artists, historians, theorists, scientists, and mathematicians. We are Architects. We design space. Space is affected and is affected by structure and paint, but we make the space.

I suppose that is it for now. I was reading Zumthor's Thoughts on Architecture and it is proving pretty helpful. Also, I was reading something for my Asian Art and Arch history class on Confuscianism vs. Zen Buddhism. It seemed these ways of thoughts could apply to how you experience a building (ex: in buddhism, experience trumps intellect.... in architecture, perhaps how you intially feel about a space as a designer trumps anything you should feel, according to what you've learned.)

Ok, I guess that's it. I don't know if this is what this blog is to be used for....