GRGR(29) - The Grid, The Comb

[jbor]

> you
> accept the world and work with what you have

OK:
epistemological question - what is the world like?
ontological question - which (and whose) world is this?

>> Isn't one criticism of the sort of architecture that Venturi & co.
>> have
>> built that people get lost for months at a time in the malls and keep
>> hitting their heads on things while they're walking around?
>
> Venturi and co (who do you mean?  His partners and colleagues?  His
> imitators? His admirers?) don't build malls, and people don't "get
> lost" or hit their heads in his buildings. I'm sorry, but this is a
> silly thing to say...

Well, no, I read a not altogether negative critique of one or another
postmodern shopping complex/something else (hotel I think, with maybe a road
through the middle of it or something), which made the point (the critique
that is, not the building) that the disorientation effects of the internal
spaces were such that it was almost impossible to get your bearings once
inside and moving from area to area. The catalogue of effects Venturi says
he is striving for -- "vestigial elements, circumstantial distortions,
... exceptional diagonals, things in things, crowded or contained
intricacies, ... redundant spaces" -- certainly sounds like there'd be
things I'd be hitting my head on. The idea of "good *and* bad spaces" also
seems to imply that there is meant to be some level of discomfort or
inconvenience for the reader/user.

>> Escher, Kurt Schwitters, the Dadists, Piranesi?
>
> He is indebted to none of these.  You are thinking, I believe, of the
> "Deconstructivist" strain of moderist revival so popular in the 1990's.

Not really: I was thinking about the list of effects you cited.

> corinthian facades no,

Actually, there's some nice-looking cutlery with corinthian columns for
handles designed by Venturi at that banaldesign website david pointed us to.

best

----------
>From: Mark Wright AIA <mwaia at yahoo.com>
>To: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
>Subject: Re: GRGR(29) - The Grid, The Comb
>Date: Mon, Jul 3, 2000, 11:58 PM
>