PRUITT-IGOE

A younger man than myself helped me remember this beautiful piece of music, written by Philip Glass for the film called Koyaanisqatsi (1982). The title derives from a scene in which the failed housing project named "Pruitt-Igoe", designed by Minoru Yamasaki (mostly known as the architect of the Twin Towers), is being demolished.

Although frequent attempts have been made by architects to blame the failures of the project on other aspects than the architecture, it has remained a symbol of  how ideology-driven, de-humanizing thinking in our craft can result in horrible and uninhabitable places. The famous architecture historian and theorist Charles Jencks has even claimed that the tearing down of Pruitt-Igoe nailed the moment where Modernism's optimism on behalf of the future and itself ended, and post-modernism started.

The site is now mostly empty, but suggestions have been made for it to be rebuilt in completely different ways, for example in the charming and thought-through master plan developed by architect Samuel Lima. He suggests applying traditional architecture, extracted from examples in the nearby area, and is firmly planted within the New Urbanist approach.

VISUAL STRUCTURE FILM

Almost three years ago, I wrote a short post explaining about our particular academic discipline at BAS, called visual structure. Today, I was made aware of this video, showing an assignment usually done in Decembre first year, where uniformly coloured geometric shapes are given a contrasting treatment of different colours in non-geometric patches. The idea is that you should be curious to find out what the next side of the shape looks like, so that you'll be intrigued to look all the way around it. Quite charming video, and I think it expresses this concept clearly.

A CALL FOR ACTION

Surfing Wikipedia looking for cool pictures of monasteries, I found this picture after reading the article about the Ursuline order. It bears the title "Looking North from Ursuline Academy, Showing Wrecked Negro High School Building" (very direct language, don't you think?). The 1900 Galveston hurricane is the deadliest natural disaster ever to have struck the United States, with an estimated death toll of between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

While this was happening, Barack Obama's second inauguration was taking place in Washington, DC. (If you're bothered by me posting a picture with a title containing the word "negro" while writing about Obama, please remember that he's not any more "black" than "white".) Here, he finally spoke of the main challenge of this age in human history:

'We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries — we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.'

Although this picture was taken long before the scientific proof of climate change was established, please let it be a reminder of what lies ahead, if this generation fails to take action.

SCALE (AND ARPEGGIOS)

In architecture, we talk about scale a lot. In my first year spring project, I added a tower to an already quite large barn that I remodeled into a house. The tower was twice as tall as the barn, and I was accused of not understanding the scale of the place.

This autumn, I've been working with urban fabric in a part of Bergen where the buildings and streets have very different scales.

I even have a book called "Scale in Architecture, and let's not forget the architect's scale!

The only problem is this: Every time someone mentions the word 'scale' (including yours truly), I immediately start humming this song. It's unstoppable. Help me.

PS. I love "The Aristocats" (and their house).

INSIDE THE TOWER

Happy new year! The world didn't end this time, either. The above picture was taken by yours truly in September, in a strange room behind the clocks of the tower of Nykirken ("The New Church") in Bergen:

I like how things sometimes are much more weird than we believe them to be.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: ROOFED CITY OF THE YEAR 2000

I can't read the text properly, but this is obviously a "*something* city in the year 2000"! Under a wet and rainy sky (Who knew that a chocolate factory predicted climate change 112 years ago?), people are leading happy suspiciously well-lit lives under a roof, enjoying green grass, fountains and masonry buildings with domes and pediments, as well as bicycles, horses, and trams for transportation. Is this vision to blame for the phenomenon of shopping malls? Never mind, Bergen is cold today, so bring me to the year 2000!

PRESENTATION

Today was my first presentation about architecture at BAS without drawings or models. I was presenting my essay concerning sustainability and the use of local materials, showing mostly pictures and telling about my findings and my views, and the response was good. I've done loads of presentations before, but this one was the first about architecture in a theoretical perspective, so I was a bit nervous. All the more rewarding when people came up to me afterwards and told me that it was exciting and focused!

The picture is of the village of Rocamadour in France, a great example of how the use of local materials (in this case limestone from the cliff on which the village itself stands) can result in "an unrestrained harmony", to quote the essay. (Ha ha, I'm so pretentious!) Picture credits: Wikimedia Commons.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: KITCHEN CLIMBING

I want this!

(Thanks to my classmate Mats Børseth Østang (who by the way is very talented and nice), for showing me this video.)

DESKTOP/NYKIRKEN TOWER

This is my current desktop background picture, taken with the "starry sky" function on my camera, which spends 30 seconds taking in the light, and then 30 seconds putting it together to form a picture. It was taken inside the tower of Nykirken, Bergen, in the room behind the clocks. The colours are not adjusted, it's really that blue. One of the most beautiful rooms I've ever seen.

PS. Wondering about what all that concrete is doing inside a 17th Century church? The roof and tower were reconstructed in the fifties after having been bombed in the WWII.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: LIFE ON MARS?

For reasons unknown, I've been listening quite a lot to this amazing song lately. However, as it has the the most boring music video in the history of the planet Earth (with no architeture whatsoever, except for a white void which I'm sure Le Corbusier would have loved), I'm throwing in a couple of pictures with designs for a Martian city, made by the brilliant visual artist Thomas Denmark:

CRADLE TO CRADLE

A riddle: Why is Palau Güell (1888) like Siljustøl (1939)?
Hint: It has to do with the origin of the materials.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: PUSHWAGNER'S SOFT CITY

In the early 1970s, the Norwegian artist Hariton Pushwagner created a dystopian vision of the modern city, with cars, monotony and soulless architecture, called Soft City. In this amazing series of drawings, he showed a day in this horrible society where identity is history, variation is fault and likeness the prime virtue. In many ways, this was probably nor only a reflection of Pushwagner's political views, but just as much a reaction to how Norwegian architecture was developing at the time.

One example can be found in Fantoft student hostel in Bergen, where repetition, uniformity, lack og scale and boring and ugle materials are combined with boring setting to create something that could easily have inspired Pushwagner.

The artist kept returning to Soft City, and not all of these drawing come from the original series. A book with the first edition of Soft city was published some years ago. I own a copy, but I'm not sure if it can be bought online. The ISBN number is 9788291187785, and the book is very much recommended.

Finally, a short film version of Soft City: