Patterns Part 2.0 – between metaphor and concrete

The first two (2) blog posts on patterns have been fairly disorganized, or in other words presented without any clear and distinct standard recognizable linguistic and pictorial patterns. More specifically, reoccurring elements of distinction that are (un)consciously put to memory and easily recognized upon future engagements did not appear to be present. 

Maybe if you look closer!!! No, not really.  No attempt on the author’s behalf was made to organize the blog’s presentation, but perhaps the reader still recognized a pattern: the personality of the author showing forth via the placement of vocabulary. Perhaps logics repeated themselves throughout the texts and if the reader is a semi-shrink-psychic-wunderkind they may have determined that the author enjoys Hacker-Pschorr wheat beer.  This of course is highly improbable but defiantly possible, or at least the statistics would suggest his, sometimes. 

The ability to discern patterns, whether it’s the stock market, the stars, or the philosophy of nature (physics) could make you a rich genius and possibly deemed insane and prophetic all at the same time. To be deemed insane you would have to exhibit certain recognizable patterns of insane behavior (obviously!) and have a bunch of experts agree that they all witnessed the same behavioral patterns.  The social importance of patterns is not a direct result of their complexity or simplicity, rather the mystical unknowns or future foretelling potential of the patterns is what impresses society.  Even though foretelling the future of the economy or science experiments appear to be fairly sane and logical applications of pattern recognition and implementation through laws and axioms; the desire to foretell the future is mystical.  Machines do not care about the future.

Patterns can be sensed and understood in many forms and experiences.  What has ‘emerged’ from this blogging experience on patterns is the author’s interest to write about the various patterns that can be sensed and understood.  Typically mathematics and numbers are employed as the best means for expressing patterns, often in the form of a formula. 

The ‘emergence’ blog texts are actually extracted from a grad school paper that was positioning itself against the philosophy of emergence in architecture (original text here).  The ‘emergence’ text on the blog is nearly identical in vocabulary and structure but is actually positioning itself in support of the philosophy of emergence in architecture.  A few Manual DeLanda lectures could do this to you, but what is more interesting is that two (2) polar opposite positions can be framed with nearly the same vocabulary and sentence structure.

The grad school paper reviewed the work of one (1) engineer in particular who is the Paul Philippe Cret Practice Professor of Architecture the University of Pennsylvania and an Ove Arup fellow : Cecil Balmond.  The two (2) books reviewed in preparation for this paper were “Informal” and “Number 9: The search for the Sigma Code”.

In “Number 9: The search for the Sigma Code” Balmond guides the reader through interesting counting tables, arithmetic problems, and geometrical patterns eventually revealing to the reader that “The sigma value of a number is the ultimate essence of a number.  It is the hidden mark which lurks within the greater construction; in this sense it is a primary code, a blueprint.”  Sounds pretty damn mystical. 

For the decimal numeral system the number “9” is the maximum single digit used.  Throughout Balmond’s book the number “9” is revealed to occur everywhere and is eventually described as the sigma code (or the number that reveals the hidden trace of pattern in counting).  The question is -  Is the sigma code the number “9” or is it what the number “9” denotes: the maximum single digit of the decimal numeral system?

To arrive at an answer to the question above a spreadsheet was created in MS-Excel– link here – with different numeral systems. The numeral system charts revealed that the maximum single digit was actually the proposed sigma code (assuming ’0′ existed as the polar opposite). 

What the spreadsheet also revealed was that prime numbers occurred in the same ascending counting location no matter what numeral system you counted in.  If you were to practice mathematics as the Pythagoreans originally did with pebbles, no matter how you laid out the pebbles you would never be able to divide the prime number pebble counts into equal counted sets of stones.  Go place 17 pebbles on the ground and divide them into equal sets of pebbles without breaking any.

Numbers are just superficial abstract formal indicators of pattern – notation for communication and translation of the concrete to the metaphor.

Drawings are just superficial formal abstract indicators of architecture – notation for communication and translation of the concrete to the metaphor.

because

Architectural Monumentality and Play – Emergence Part 2

“Monuments are human landmarks which men have created as symbols for their ideals, for their aim, and for their actions.”¹

The authors of this statement in 1943 went on to explain that modern monuments had evolved into something empty and shell like, structures that could not represent modern man; unless you believed in nihilism, which of course is impossible since the act of believing is absent in nihilism (that is the point). 

Louis Kahn argued in his paper “Monumentality” a few years later that the spiritual and social mysticism of monuments like the gothic church could still be achieved with modern materials, but not via the modern materials themselves² (contrast this with previous blog post on Mies van der Rohe).

 In 1955 Philip Johnson listed the seven crutches of modern architecture, mainly in reference to the International Style and its rules of form through functionalism.  The seven crutches: history, seductive drawing, utility, comfort, economy, serving the client, structure were all part of the former rationalism that justified a buildings form, which in theory was a response to the social conditions.  The failure Johnson points out is that art has nothing to do with intellectualism and essentially the act of creation is a sum of artistic moves, and only this method of creation could reintegrate meaning into the forms of architecture³. 

All three of the above architectural critiques on monumentality and meaning mainly reveal the transition from the Agrarian Age into the Industrial Age, with a nostalgia towards the former, since industrial utility as monumentality lacks the ability to provide any real meaning to humanity.  It should also be noted that architectural industrialization began and flourished towards the end of the Industrial Age.  None of the above critiques offer any methods of design on how architecture could relate to the Information Age.  Rather, the notion of material monumentality is seen as a farce or oppressive in the Information Age, and any attempt at creating a monumental form in architecture reveals an attempt at recreating past ages that were not as democratic as the Information Age.  What is architectural monumentality in the Information Age? Is it even possible?  Are Event Cities the answer?  What would ‘googling’ look like as a building, assuming ‘googling’ is meaningful in the Inormation Age?

To understand intellectually the source of meaning allows the thinker to also rid the source of its meaning; this is the act of deconstruction.   If art can provide meaning, but can not be intellectualized, perhaps art can be play or is play.  As established in part 1 of this blog’s Emergence essay ‘the intellectualization of these visceral observations is prohibited. In event space, play is a method for writing and reading architecture, a method for producing a local narrative not suitable for abstract formalizations leading to linguistic methods of architectural analysis with overtones of grand narratives explaining all of space and time.’ 

Regarding current culture Lebbeus Woods states in “Radical Reconstructionism”:  “This culture is maintained at the expense of creativity that can emerge only from an imagination stirred by confrontation with every kind of experience and actuality.”⁴ Woods continues by describing a state of current affairs in which mass culture has become pacified by receiving all their wishes.  What mass culture desires is instantaneous stimuli, which is only possible in a virtual world. Where the virtual takes precedent over actual, material monumentality is translated into the cultural event.  The cultural event becomes the myth (temporary monument).

In the context of contemporary culture, an actual material monumentality reflecting any grand narrative is a feared objective, and the best means for circumventing the creation of fear is through more play.  Unnoticed, play can add more content to a trajectory of a mythical narrative no individual would be willing to subscribe to if they knew what they were subscribing to.  In order to avoid society’s discovery of the core values of a mythical grand narrative, the architecture is coupled with the cultural event, and the core value of the system is masked in signs of media consumables that mislead and deceive the reader/consumer. The monument in the Information Age has entered another realm so that it may appear more democratic.  It remains in material, but hides its true statement underneath the cloak of presented and re-presented media events.  In this monumental architecture play helps mask the logic of the narrative, which in turn prolongs the delusions and the misunderstanding of what the narrative really is, assuming there is one.  Without the virtual functioning in parallel with a physical confrontation of the monument and the Information Age, no true nature of the Information Age and what its monuments may materialize as will be understood and ultimately created and/or re-created. 

Is the Information Ago so democratic no monument for society can exist? Can play and emergence of myths  be the short lived monuments?

1.  Sert, Jose Luis. Leger, Fernand, Giedion, Sigfried  Nine Points on Monumentality   Ockman, Joan Eds.  Architecture Culture 1943-1968   New York, NY: Rizzoli, 2000, p. 29

2.  Kahn, Louis. Monumentality  Ockman, Joan Eds.  Architecture Culture 1943-1968   New York, NY: Rizzoli, 2000, p. 47

3. Johnson, Philip. The Seven Crutches of Modern Architecture Ockman, Joan Eds.  Architecture Culture 1943-1968   New York, NY: Rizzoli, 2000, p. 189

4.  Woods, Lebbeus. Radical Reconstruction New York,NY:Princeton Architectural Press, 1997, p. 13

ELEMENTAL URBANISM [NEW YORK, NY] – by James Pereira

One can argue that any object, item, space, and certainly city can be viewed by others in different ways based on that individual’s existance.  But what about the present; a realization of what you are experiencing based on the current conditions.  Does what exist, should exist? 

I often wonder if all cities should be shaped like Rome; a city that is enourmous yet walkable with all paths leading to monumental icons.  Many major cities now look as merely a cemetery of parts; buildings, gridded streets, and parks creating a cityscape of cluster.  Even an individual apartment building can be looked at similarly to a microscopic level.  The current typical city planned is a methodology of modules subdivided amongst other modules exponentially and so on and so forth until you arrive at what is a dwelling unit.  This is due to evolution, program, and constraints which alltogether create elements that limit possibility.  Evolution is the duration of time from initial planning, implementation, then essentially to what exists today.  What comes out of this is the program that must be dealt with.  

Political figureheads have used their heirarchy to mold their cities into something that would give themselves more power.  Hitler’s megalomaniacal ideas to reshape Berlin is maybe the most explicit.  I believe if he were to draft a plan for New York City at the time of his reign, he would likely have a large Avenue running North and South, leading through Central Park and terminating at a governement headquarters structure.  This of course would be where he would give speeches as hundreds of thousands would gather in the park to hear him speak.  Yet today, our leaders focus on backing developments that produce tax revenues and green construction.  In addition, most projects are haulted due to community boards, landmarks preservation, zoning and financial issues.  The World Trade Center site examplfies how the private developer faces this epitome of regulatory adversities.

If I were planning a new development located on the Brooklyn waterfront before factories and bridges were built, I would have likely looked at Venice as an ideal model to plan from and maybe even Chicago or Paris.  Regardless, I would look into relationships between people, community, culture, access, and views of Manhattan island. Strategically placed low rise housing units would have lined the rivers edge, linked by water taxis like a necklace. Yet, if I was commissioned to look at the same project today, I would research subway lines, soil contaminants, zoning requirements, multiple codes, permitting, etc. to find out what my limitations are.

Unfortunately, most of today’s cities built by planners, architects, and visionaries are confined by rules, regulations, and many existing obstacles.   Hence, they are faced with the challenge of essentially expanding upon an existing city that does not meet the needs of current conditions, yet the era of it’s creation was practical.  Robert Moses was a mastermind in developing links from the city to suburbs.  For years, automobiles used his direct links to get from point A to point B.  Today his visions are now plagued by trucks, traffic jams, constant reconstruction, and pollutants due to emissions.  I find it ironic how one can layout a highway to connect the city to the furthest point of the suburbs in efforts to allow city dwellers to migrate, yet I wonder if he was thinking of connecting the suburbs to the city when the suburbs became overdeveloped.  The elements of the modern day car and suburban sprawl can best be to blame for this corruption.

Edmund Bacon theorizes about the city as a living organism.   Urban structure can be defined by the creation of something predicated on it’s surroundings and effects it will have on existing and future conditions.  Who is making these predictions, and what happens if they are wrong?  The current economic crash has forced many people out of their cities.   What will be left behind are abandoned high-end waterfront towers and developers will soon be drained dry.  During the building boom years ago, maybe we should have been thinking about large plots filled with cheap prefabricated habitats equipped with sustainable options, rather than pricey mortgages and stainless steel appliances.

Urbanism is the study of cities, their geographic, economic, political, social and cultural environment, and the impact of all these forces on the built environment.  Urbanism is also a species of urban planning, focusing on the creation of communities for living, work, and play.  Urbanists distinguish urban areas from rural areas by their higher population density.  They maintain that the difference in population entails a difference in the social and political order as well.  The basic concept of an elemental refers to the ancient idea of elements as fundamental building blocks of nature.  In the system prevailing in the Classical world, there were four elements: fire, earth, air, and water.  Today, in terms of environment, these elements would include global warming, economic conditions, regulations/government, and migration to name a few.

Urbanism is universal in concept yet isolated geographically.  All environments are made up of the same fundamental parts yet many environments succeed while others do not.   Up until 2006, in New York City restauranteurs where emerging and real estate was peaking.  Presently, New York  faces economic downturn impacts, infrastructure corruption, traffic conjestion, abundant taxing, pollution, energy insufficiency, overcrowding, building safety regulatory issues, homelessness, etc.   In addition to the mortgage crisis, many of these problems are direct impacts of poor planning.  Like other cities, what exists, must be reinvented to accommodate the elements now and ones to come.

Mies van der Rohe – materials, qoutes, and significance of fact

Crown Hall, IIT Campus, Chicago, IL - Mies van der Rohe (1956)

Mies wrote little, but there is a lot written about him.  (Wikipedia link: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)

860-880 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL – Mies van der Rohe (1951)

Often refered to as the father of modernism (Architecture), many have read classicism into his works, others have read his works as framework and stage or even derivatives of the context and site; none of these readings being accurate.

860-880 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL – Mies van der Rohe (1951)

In his own words:

 ”The attempt to revitalize the building art from the direction of form has failed.  A century’s worth of effort has been wasted and leads into the void.  That heroic revolution of extremely talented men at the turn of the century had the time span of a fashion.  The invention of forms is obviously not the task of the building art.  Building art is more and different.  Its excellent name already makes it clear that building is its natural content and art its completion. [card 1] Construction not only determines form but is form itself.  Where authentic construction encounters authentic contents, authentic works result: works genuine and intrinsic.  [card 2]“  (p. 164 Architecture Culture 1943-1968, Joan Ockman)

860-880 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL – Mies van der Rohe (1951)

The following paragraph from Ignasi de Sola-Morales book “Differences“

“Mies’s work is developed not out of images but out of materials – materials in the strongest sense of the word; that is, the matter from which objects are constructed.  This matter is abstract, general, geometrically cut, smooth, and polished, but it is also material that is substantial, tangible, and solid.  And at the same time, it implies a wider materiality that takes in the gravity and weight of the elements of construction, the tensions in their static behavior, their hardness or fragility, and the material artifice of the technology that prepares and handles the elements from which the building is raised.  This is a materialism, finally, that sets out from the origin of the material problems of lighting, air conditioning, sealing of the outer skin, and the satisfactory function of the building in relation to the use for which it was designed.  The whole tremendous body of innovation in Mies derives neither from imitation nor from the abstract discourse of concepts of space, light, or territory.  In Mies, the realities are, from the very outset, material for the work of architecture.”

860-880 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL – Mies van der Rohe (1951)

“It then became clear to me that it was not the task of architecture to invent form.  I tried to understand what that task was.  I asked Peter Behrens, but he could not give me an answer.  He did not ask that question.  The others said, ‘What we build is architecture’, but we weren’t satisfied with this answer…since we knew that it was a question of truth, we tried to find out what truth really was.  We were very delighted to find a definition of truth by St. Thomas Aquinas: ‘Adaequatio intellectus et rei’, or as a modern philosopher expresses it in the language of today: ‘Truth is the significance of fact.’” – Mies van der Rohe (quoted by Peter Carter in Architectural Design, March, 1961) taken from Kenneth Frampton’s – Modern Architecture a Critical History

patterns part 1.5 – the spirograph progression

Patterns 2.0 to come, but in the meantime some stuff  I am attempting with spirographs.

My first spirograph exprience was in Berlin, Germany at some Burger King…I  think I got the kid’s meal.  The stuff fascinated me, but was easily lost in transportation by my 7 year old handling skills of materials… 

More recently in pursuit of actually finishing a competition, the need for spirograph construction of buildings has been developed.  Whether the competition entry is submitted or not is still in question.

Below are developments in 3ds Max Scripting that are being termed “Typical Spirograph Sections”.  The goal is to achieve “Threading”.  The quotations mean “made up concepts”.  “Threading” would look like threaded cables, full tubular threaded “ropes”, but constructed “spirographically”, like DNA helixes on crack. These are 3-Dimensional spirographs….

pointillism, plywood, radiator covers

Pointillism:

The pointillism referred to in this post is an Adobe Photoshop Pixelation function (see photo below), but nearly all functions done in the computer once were done manually by humans.   George Seurat(1859-1891) developed a system of painting based on the color theories of Eugene Delacroix, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Michel Chevreul; a disciplined and calculated use of pure colors and dots to create an optical mixture, methodical divisionism to ensure maximum color intensity and harmony. This approach to painting has great potential for quick and easy translation into algorithmic instructions for the computer to perform.  If you have Adobe Photoshop try the other pixalation functions or artistic filters over a photo to obtain various artistic styles and techniques for presentation.

Plywood and Radiator Covers:

The task at hand required me to create radiator covers with the tools available to prevent the kids from running into the old metal radiators. The material of choice was plywood given its cost effectiveness.  With no router available to make long thin lines in the wood a drill was employed.  Both grade type A and D 1/2″ thick plywood was purchased, which was too thin.  The majority of millwork (cabintry) is done in 3/4″ wood.  The higher grade plywood splintered less than the lower grade on the back side when drilling.  [update: to avoid the splintering affect employ multiple vice grips to attach the plywood you are drilling to  flat scrap backboard] The higher grade plywood was also less warped and just looked better and smoother.

My 3 year old daughter chose a butterfly as the design for the radiator cover. To achieve a readable butterfly pattern using drill bits many filters and pixelation functions in Adobe Photoshop were explored and finally pointilize was settled on given its output was in the form of circles at varying sizes that approximately matched the drill bit sizes.  The setting for pointilize had to be adjusted until there were only two (non)colors – black and white to match the physical construction language – hole or solid.  It was also easier to arrive at this simple language by starting with an image that already was black and white.

The image was pointilized in Photoshop and then scaled to fit the radiator cover size in AutoCad.  If a CNC machine would of been available that would of been the end of it, just send the CAD to the machine and let it do the rest, but only a drill was available.  To avoid marking all the hole locations and  drill bit sizes the pattern was printed out and taped to the radiator cover.  Letter size paper was used since no plotter was available.

With the layout taped to the plywood, the drill plugged in, straight edge ’x’ cuts at holes, and fingers pressing the surrounding paper to the hole locations the pointilization began.  A battery powered drill will die quickly and the paper will shred if you do not prec-cut the holes and press the surrounding area down near the drill bit.

Once all the holes were drilled at different sizes the paper was removed and hand sanding commenced.  The mistake made was applying Bondo to patch inconsitancies and gaps in the plywood cover construction.  If you don’t have a machine sander or the patience,  do not waste time applying Bondo to gaps and cracks.

To make the holes a little more interesting paper was taped over the holes on the visible side and a color spray paint was sprayed from the back to give the hole outlines a nice sharp contrast to the white painted covers.

While installing the covers a light was positioned behind a radiator cover, the pontilized plywood would also make interesting light boxes. Enjoy.

minimalism…music…memory…Patterns Part 1

Minimalism: Finished a new tune recently inspired by the likes of Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt , and Ø.

Music: david hume alcohol memory (7:12 min)

Memory:

The spoken qoute in the tune is from the movie Memento.  It’s not easy figuring out who you are and where you are going  on a few minutes of memory.

The philosophical reference: A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume (1739), SECTION XIII. Of unphilosophical probability:

“There is a second difference, which we may frequently observe in our degrees of belief and assurance, and which never fails to take place, tho’ disclaimed by philosophers. An experiment, that is recent and fresh in the memory, affects us more than one that is in some measure obliterated; and has a superior influence on the judgment, as well as on the passions. A lively impression produces more assurance than a faint one; because it has more original force to communicate to the related idea, which thereby acquires a greater force and vivacity. A recent observation has a like effect; because the custom and transition is there more entire, and preserves better the original force in the communication. Thus a drunkard, who has seen his companion die of a debauch, is struck with that instance for some time, and dreads a like accident for himself: But as the memory of it decays away by degrees, his former security returns, and the danger seems less certain and real.”

Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance. 

When the music and films repetitive structure evolves, what do you remember or do you notice the change? 

“The role of the imagination, or the mind which contemplates in its multiple and fragmented states, is to draw something new from repetition, to draw difference from it.  For that matter, repetition is itself in essence imaginary, since the imagination alone here forms the ‘moment’ of the vis repetitiva from the point of view of constitution: it makes that which it contracts appear as elements or cases of repetition.  Imaginary repetition is not a false repetition which stands in for the absent true repetition: true repetition takes place in imagination.” – Gilles Deleuze (Difference & Repetition)

So what is pattern and mathematics?

Event Space and Play: A Definition….Emergence Part 1

Until the Information Age, the cultural event took place in physical localities.  Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrilliard observe that cultural events now take place in the virtual world and the artificial light; or media.  The cultural event has gone beyond real space and time¹.  The cultural event is embedded in all information that dissipates the environment by means of the artificial light, especially in dense urban areas and occurring globally simultaneously.  This instantaneous global space is a result of the Information Age. 

 The importance of the Industrial Age space and its readings still influence cultural events and are not to be forgotten or avoided.  According to Henri Lefebvre “By the late 1920’s the great philosophical systems had been left behind, and, aside from the investigations of mathematics and physics, all thinking about space and time was bound up with social practice – more precisely industrial practice, and with architectural and urbanistic research.”².  The formal linguistic reading of physical space concerning cultural events and moments became popular in architectural academic discourse in the 1970’s.  Contrary to this approach, space is actually first produced and then read. Architects tend to fail at designing spaces that can be read by the inhabitants in the language the architect chooses to write in. Typically the architect’s rules for signifying space are based on artificial abstract constructs aggregating conceptually in formalisms and functionalisms³. These abstractions are sometimes derived from experience in materials, construction, and structure; yet these abstract constructs rarely confirm the readers experience of the space produced.  This disconnect is so large between the abstract constructs and the experienced space that in the end no one ever believes the architect.

Bernarnd Tschumi in the Manhattan Transcripts explores these disjunctions in a situationist like manner⁴.  The transcripts suggest that space, movement, and events are completely independent and thus the reading of physical space concerning cultural events and moments in architecture can be broken down and rebuilt along different axes.  Tschumi also mentions that the concept of architecture can precede its construction or be derived after its construction.  Similar to the French philosophical movement ‘situationism’, this method of architectural analysis is far from producing a method for reflecting on a grand narrative, rather it produces a local narrative from observations; not reflections.  This local narrative can be exponentially exaggerated by the virtual world and artificial light. This over exaggeration of information leads to global formal myths and ultimately becomes superfluous to the core meaning of the architecture.  The core meaning of the architecture is the core meaning of culture’s space and time values locally, which as Lebbeus Woods suggests must be physically confronted;  not just virtually⁵.  You have to be there yourself. 

 This very situationist act of writing and reading architecture is play itself; it revolts against logical analysis of any grand narrative and pretends to be the act of freedom. The intellectualization of these visceral observations is prohibited. In event space, play is a method for writing and reading architecture, a method for producing a local narrative not suitable for abstract formalizations leading to linguistic methods of architectural analysis with overtones of grand narratives explaining all of space and time: myths. 

yet…Play is free to allow emergence (of myths), the ultimate quest of the genius creative.

 References:

1. Books mainly referenced: Paul Virilio’s Polar Interia and A Landscape of Events, Jean Baudrilliard’s Impossible Exchange and The Illusion of the End

2. Lefebvre, Henri.  The Production of Space Hays, K. Michael eds., Architecture Theory since 1968 Cambridge,MA: The MIT Press, 2000.  p. 179

3. Lefebvre, Henri.  Writings on Cities   p. 152

4. Tschumi, Bernarnd Manhattan Transcripts 

5.  Woods, Lebbeus. Radical Reconstruction New York,NY:Princeton Architectural Press, 1997, p. 13

new music + where the crash happened

New Metamechanics music up on Last.Fm and free for download of course.

Paper Architecture Album

• smells like pumpkin taste like beer (ode george jones-2010) – made on the computer overnight after  some pumpkin beer
• play and sleep – took well over a year to finish, and probably still needs a lot of work.  Chris’ daughter Madison on the vocals.
• the orange 8-bit tribal crash – overnight to avoid workload, the image above is where the Nintendo and the native american crashed as you step out of a Colorado rocky mountain diner. to fully experience track play real loud on at least 12″ woofers.

Inception, Design, Frank Gehry, Practice

 

Inception 

The following discourse on memory, time, dreams, and design will reference a movie instead of available works by philosophers and psychologists so that we may avoid unnecessary references to written texts that no one these days has time to read or verify, unless of course you are a paid philosopher.  This approach also allows me to make arguments in first person based on personal experience.

The main plot and theme of the recent movie Inception (starring Leonardo Decaprio) dealt with the possibility of entering other people’s dreams to plant an idea that the person dreaming would be convinced was of their own creation.  Planting an idea in a dream is easier the deeper you go into someone’s dream (as per movie).  Going deeper and deeper into a person’s dream and mind requires creating dreams within dreams.  At each level (dream within a dream) time would ‘slow down’ based on the commonly understood and accepted feeling that dreams that may only last a few minutes in real awake life feel like hours or even days in the dream.

I agree with most of the movies explanations on the dream state except for the ‘slowing down’ of time concept, which really wasn’t explained that well other than at each level of dreams within dreams time slows down.  

My simple counterpoint: Time does not slow down in a dream state.  It’s not like you are moving at the speed of light when dreaming, so any relativity theory is pretty much irrelevant bad mis-thought analogies - garbage.  Consciousness in dreams only occurs at intense moments creating memories and then consciousness ties the memories together to create the feeling of time lapsing.  If you try to remember what you did yesterday from noon to dinner time you will only remember snapshots at best and not all of it (and if you could remember all of it you would waste about 6 hours of your life re-living yesterday), but because you were fully conscious between each collected intense moment stored as memory you were able to create a feeling that helped you define and gauge the time lapse.  Tripping mushrooms seems to mess with this feeling.  Memories in dreams are just instances of consciousness coming up and out of a sub-conscious states.  Consciousness registers the virtual moments as memories even if the intense moment is an event that has never existed or can never be registered by the dreamer as having existed.  As John Fogerty says in a Creeedence Clearwater Revival  song “let me remember things I don’t know.” Dreams and imagination are faux memories, or intense moments of virtual experience remembered.

A dream memory can be as real as a real memory.

Back of Millenium Park, Chicago by FOG

I have had dreams within dreams.  I have died in dreams to either wake up or continue living in the dream world – assuring myself in the dream it was not real by merely thinking and therefore I must still be.  I have had memories created in dreams strong enough to actually convince me when I awoke I actually did have a new car sitting in the driveway.

In the movie Inception the process of projecting your imagination into someone else’s dream causes the dreamer’s characters and environment to begin attacking the projector and ultimately collapsing the dream. 

Which brings me to some interesting moments in my dreams where I do attempt to project a new reality in the dream just to have it usually surprise me or collapse into another storyline.  By storyline I mean the end of one rational time lapse of consistent memories to a new lapse that as hard as I try can not be connected.  For the last decade I have been trying to read pages in books in my dreams, just too usually become so conscious I wake-up and seemingly feel like I forgot something important.

A blog/half ass essay to come about prime numbers and sound frequencies is a direct result of reading some Iannis Xennakis, falling asleep while reading, dreaming a concept into my memory and awaking to quickly write it down so I wouldn’t forget.

So based on the movie Inception my consciousness is projecting against my sub-conscioiussness and my sub shuts me down. Wait who am I really then? I’m going to go with Satre on this one “For man to be able to question, he must be capable of being his own nothingness; that is, he can be at the origin of non-being in being only if his being – in himself and by himself – is paralyzed with nothingness. Thus transcendences of past and future appear in the temporal being of human reality.” (Being and Nothingness, p. 85, probably completely out of context…bad faith)…errr that one hurt my brain as I sat on a bench reading it outside one of those Chateaux’s in France.

Still the back of Millenium Park, Chicago by FOG

 (Note if you drink lots of Red Bull the vitamin B12 will increase dream intensity).

Design

This leads me to the process of design in architecture; naturally.

Working with all kinds of designers in my academic experience and professional experience has led me to believe that there are two extremes in the spectrum band of the design process.
The beginning of the spectrum is design-by-design as I will call it.  This process involves copious amounts of research, then much documenting in diagrams, texts, sketches, and finally extracting via abstraction a concept.  This concept then informs or creates the language the designer will speak as they further do research and documentation.  This process is tedious and clinical.  Frankly, it’s hard to make a living as an architect if you practice this way.  But, design-by-design can be taught as it is well documented by those who practice this way.  Design-by-design can be easily communicated.  It can also be extremely boring and easy to deconstruct. It can lend itself to alternate methods of analysis based on fields exterior to architecture, such as linguistics and critical writing.  We can and usually do get lost in the design-by-design alternate methods, almost to the point where we have forgotten about architecture – a matter/energy construct and not a virtual game of logics and linguistic constructs.

The other extreme is design-by-vision.  I’m going to state with little academic scholarly support; the best architecture created always has some visionary created elements.  This is where arriving at genius is easiest.  One can arrive at genius the route of design-by-design, but that takes serious effort and dedication and years of study. 

Architecture is mainly a visual ontological endeavor. Sure it’s tactile and audio sometimes, but ultimately the experience of architecture is best documented and remembered visually and viscerally.  Visionary architecture requires moments likes the memories created in dreams, but while one is awake.  In my academic years at Kansas I always felt the goal was to work the design-by-design route while you waited for that vision to appear – the moment when a memory is created that never existed.  A memory that could be experienced like the spaces created in dreams.  This moment would be the inspiration, the base concept that needed no explanation in studio jury, the idea a juror either liked or didn’t like.  Inspiration can not be taught of course and therefore if your inspiration is not to your professors liking you will have to think of ways to justify it in your professor’s language and make them giddy about it somehow. 

The problem I experience and I imagine most do as well unless your brain capacity for dreaming while awake is off the charts is most visions are like the memories in dreams, fairly incomplete.  You need other visions and memories to help you tie the architecture together or you just need to go the design-by-design route and draw it out.  Drawing is something even in the profession most avoid as it takes time, but inevitably finds the gaps in the vision or concept.  Making money this way is hard in the current US market, you’re better off crossing your fingers hoping the contractor gets it right.   Anyway, let’s agree visionary architecture gives design-by-design architecture that creative spark and design-by-design architecture helps complete the vision.  In the movie Inception, Dicaprio would argue some design-by-design routines can be processed by your sub-consioussness faster than you can consciously be aware of them.  So sometimes its worth waiting for your sub-consioussness to figure the design problem out for you.  Go to a bar and have a drink or work on another project while you mull over the problem.

Bigger picture of the back of the Millenium Park, Chicago by FOG

Having practiced architecture for about a decade now and having seen the inside and outside of standard construction, most my visions of architecture can be tied together fairly quickly and often it is a waste of my time and clients money to bother drawing since I know the fabricator speaks the same language and can via design-by-design complete the vision…..fingers crossed…so

Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry has surely been described as visionary somewhere (google it), but probably not in the sense I speak of.  Whether his scribbles or sculptures render the vision or he envisions the architecture that’s something he only knows.  Either way I have always felt his buildings (visited Guggenheim, Vitra, Walt Disney Concert Hall , and Millennium Park) were powerful visions on the exterior with incomplete interior spaces.  Experiencing Gehry’s architecture is similar to experiencing architecture in a dream, but since it’s real you can go inside or walk to the back of the powerful silver swishes and check out what is going on behind the ‘scene’.  If Gehry was the architect in Inception, everything would be intense and incomplete.  The front would catch your eye and the back would intrigue you and invite you to explore the design-by-design logic required to support his vision.

Frank Gerry’s Millennium Park in Chicago manages to create the vision and show off the design-by-design.  A dream you can check out.  Unlike the museums and music halls I have visited the Millennium Park only needs one side and thus further exaggerates the intense vision and incompleteness of this vision by Gehry.  The logic developed to support the vision is for me more interesting than the Gehry vision.  The design methods required to create Gehry’s vision have actually pushed the envelope more than any intentionally technical architecture has.

Practice

Perhaps the most fun one can have practicing architecture is doing the tedious and critical work of fleshing out the vision.  I imagine most architects would like to spend a lot more time working the vision through, but this is hard to bill as most clients think the vision is all that there is  and they don’t understand why its necessary to make sure everything ‘works’.  As cheesy as this conclusion to this rambling can be, its pretty much accurate – most clients are dreaming and architects get stuck completing the dream just to have their own projections collapse the dream most the time, but occasionally Inception occurs.

(I am laughing at myself, but that’s where this process of vision and design-by-design can lead…)

Rem Koolhaas is probably really good at Inception.

The front of FOG's Millenium Park, Chicago.