catalysts & catalysis

Cybernetics Committee of The Fun Palace, Cybernetics Report, 1965

Manuel De Landa, Material Evolvability and Variablity - Catalysis, The Architectural Variation edited by Lars Spuybroek, p14.

writing by searching (or surfing)

I. Picked this up from the CCA bookstore:
On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, 1945

this led to:
On Growth and Form - Organic Architecture and Beyond
edited by Philip Beesley & Sarah Bonnemaison 2008
7 Why Rebisit D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's On Growth and Form?

54 The Forces of Matter by Hadas A. Steiner-
has C.P.'s "precise time factor into the process of enclosure"
(Works II, London:AA 1984).
'the possibility of sudden and dramatic collape' of the bubble's structural properties. (Adrian George, Cover of Architectural Design October 1970) p59

100 Naturalization, in Circles: Architecture, Science, Architecture by Reinhold Martin >
further reading - Christopher Aleander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form 1964.

For fun: Alexander C. and P. Eisenman, @Contrasting Concepts of Harmoney in Architecture" 1982, Lotus International 40 1983, 60-68

Then to Philip Beesley
Kinetic Architectures & Geotextile installations by Philip Beesley 2007
Hylozoic Ground- liminal responsive architecture, Philip Beesley 2010

II. Searching with the key words, Tracing:
Lines - a brief history by Tim Ingold 2007
1. Language, music and notation
2. Traces, threads and surfaces
3. up, across and along
4. The genealogical line
5. Drawing, writing and calligraphy
6. How the line became straight

notes on the Intensity

Intense
Intensely
Intensive
Intensity
Intensity mapping
Intensities
Intensify
Intensifier
Intensified
Intensification
Intensive thinking

book - The Architecture of Variation

edited by Lars Spuybroek

consists of three parts:
Essays on Uniformity and Variety
Figure-Configuration Taxonomies
Textile Catalog Houses

lecture - Citizenship by Design

Kadambari Baxi discusses the passport, a travel document whose design is often taken for granted, and presents excerpts from her recent project Citizenship By Design (in collaboration with Irene Cheng). The project investigates the design of international passports, identification technologies and travel regulations to raise critical questions about the contemporary nature of citizenship. These official objects, bureaucratic procedures and personal documents function at a paradoxical intersection of nation “branding,” security technologies, individual identities, and dispersed communities.

http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/education-events/1221-expert-in-the-galleries-citizenship-by-design

script evolving from the archives

script as a base narrative

colour coded archives

differentiation by notes

work in progress before note-posting changes the perception of a noticeboard, a wall, a corner, a window, a shelf and a table.

Research on the Fun Palace of Cedric Price in progress
one month research residence
- February, Canadian Centre for Architecture,Montreal

design by story-telling: Other Space Odysseys

Other Space Odysseys:
Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, Alessandro Poli
accompanies the 2010 CCA exhibition of the same name.
illustrated interviews with architects Greg Lynn and Michael Maltzan.

the original text Nearing the Moon to the Earth,
a fictional interview between astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Zeno,
a Tuscan farmer and frequent subject of Poli’s research
(Alessandro Poli)

youtube - Manuel Delanda

Deleuze and the use of the Genetic Algorithim in Architecture,
Columbia lecture from YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50-d_J0hKz0&feature=related

More to look up
- his interpretation on Deleuze's assembly theory
- three reasooning styles: 'population thinking', 'intensive thinking' and finally 'topological thinking'

book - Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis
Composer, Architect, Visionary
THE DRAWING CENTER

Check Youtube - Iannis Xenakis, Metastasis

Also Ligeti Atmospheres

talk - on exprimental writing

CCA (the Canadian Centre for Architecture)event
http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/education-events/1237-on-experimental-writing

extracted from the web:
about different approaches to writing about architecture, ...borrowing from the logic of other genres and forms like narratives, short stories, novels, science-fiction, journalism, poetry, tourist guides, ethnographic descriptions and others.

new forms that can introduce a varied panorama and allow for unexpected perspectives on a specific topic....new understandings with a mix of real and imaginative ‘facts’
that add an emotional character. ...The traditional reading of a city or a building is brought new layers
such as atmosphere, objectivity, and fantasy.

My notes:
- Is it only about 'writing'?
as the introduction of 'active user' of Roland Barthes affected the way of writing, this 'fictional writing' into architectural criticism may imply a new attitude in design?
- Beatriz Colomina, 'we need to learn from a fiction' or Tafuri's Utopian fantasy
I asked the speakers if:
we are witnessing the evoution of a profession, a cross-over across a critic, curator, publisher, an artist,activitst, design researcher breeding a new species by moving to more a creative side such as fiction-writing as a writing of architecture.
And as there was a shift from an author to a reader, when Barthes posed an active reader, there may be a shift from an architect/creator to an architectral reader/critic?
Pedro agreed that such an evolution is now happening as the speakers show, and it is a much harder job than imagined, which I agree to. But he said it's only the matter of architecural writing - not architects' job. But as the notion of active reader changed the reaml of writing, I believe the fictional writing will affect the architectural practices.

It reminded me of the moment when Peter Eisenman declared that current designers/students of a certain trend) they do not care a grammar any more but only a rhetoric in one of the AA lectures. Maybe the context may be different but the implication on the 'rhetoric' can be a cross-path.