architecture WAS Re: GRGR(29) - The Grid, The Comb

[pporteous at worley.co.nz]

I haven't been following this thread until now, but it looks interesting.

Regarding the notion of ruins, etc (Doug, I think you are refering to simulacra,
which is indeed tied up with simulation, and hyper realities, etc - see
Baudrillard for this stuff), some good subject matter is the "Picturesque"
English landscape tradition - followed by Capability Brown and the other
landscape architects of the 1800's. The idea was that you would populate your
large country estate full of Greek temples, ruined castles, pagodas, pyramids,
etc,  placed amongst trees, so as not to be viewed all at once. The experience
of walking the estate would be that of discovery, and the discovery would be all
the world's cultures, represented architecturally. The estate owners had
generally done the Grand Tour of greater Europe, as it was called, and the
garden worked on several levels: it worked as a visual "photo album" memory
trigger, it showed off to others where the owner had been, but most importantly,
it symbolised the Victorian ideal of compartmentalising and collecting, and thus
taming and making safe the . As an aside, these garden estates also had their
fences concealed in large ditches below general ground level, called mini-hahas
(yes!). This gave the impression that the owner's land stretched on forever.

The postmodern architectural fascination with ruins is, I think, part of the
general re-embracing of history. There are many bad examples of post-modern
facadism, etc, in the commercial world. Of course, architects have always liked
ruins, maybe because (among other things) the ruin exposes the structure of the
building, makes seen what was hidden, and allows the imagination to fly in terms
of what is no longer there!

As far as tying this back to Pynchon, I would have to do some re-reading.
Postmodern architecture is very grounded in theory and storytelling, and has
been too theoretical for most (similar to post-modern philosophical writing). Re
GR, I guess you could apply some generalisations about the chaotic bombed
post-War architectural landscape reflecting the disparate lawless groups
traversing the Zone, and the labyrinth-like Rocket City reflecting the
impenetrable beauracratic structure of that place, but that seems sort of
simplistic/obvious.

anyway, more later.

peter, typically slightly random