order
Excursus: Homage to the Square^3
I know the deep night ballet and its seasons best
This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance—not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.
Same name in the same basket
Does a concert hall ask to be next to an opera house? Can the two feed on one another? Will anybody ever visit them both, gluttonously, in a single evening, or even buy tickets from one after going to a performance in the other?
In Vienna, London, Paris, each of the performing arts has found its own place, because all are not mixed randomly. The only reason that these functions have all been brought together in Lincoln Center is that the concept of performing art links them to one another. The organization is born of the mania every simple-minded person has for putting things with the same name into the same basket.
Complex systems of functional order
To see complex systems of functional order as order, and not as chaos, takes understanding. The leaves dropping from the trees in the autumn, the interior of an airplane engine, the entrails of a dissected rabbit, the city desk of a newspaper, all appear to be chaos if they are seen without comprehension. Once they are understood as systems of order, they actually look different.
The order of life
Like the housers who face a blank if they try to think what to do besides income-sorting projects, or the highwaymen who face a blank if they try to think what to do besides accommodate more cars, just so, architects who venture into city design often face a blank in trying to create visual order in cities except by substituting the order of art for the very different order of life.
The dishonest mask of pretended order
There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.
The Sense of Order
A Book by E. H. GombrichTendrils of Mess in our Brains
An Essay by Sarah PerryA ruin and a mess.
Watts observes that elements of the natural world – clouds, foam on water, the stars, human beings – are not messes, though the nature of their order remains inscrutable, and Watts doesn’t try to pin down its precise nature. Mess seems to be somehow a property perceptible only in the presence of human artifacts. Is this the result of some kind of aesthetic original sin on the part of humans, uncanny beings severed from the holiness of Nature? I hope not. “Humans are bad” is a boring answer.
How am I doing, wonder?
A Quote by Louis KahnForm comes from wonder. Wonder stems from our 'in touchness' with how we were made. One senses that nature records the process of what it makes, so that in what it makes there is also the records of how it was made. In touch with this record we are in wonder. This wonder gives rise to knowledge. But knowledge is related to other knowledge and this relation gives a sense of order, a sense of how they inter-relate in a harmony that makes all things exist. From knowledge to sense of order we then wink at wonder and say How am I doing, wonder?
99% Invisible
The Worst Video Game Ever
A Podcast by Howard Scott WarshawSome Other Sign that People Do Not Totally Regret Life
An EpisodeThe Help-Yourself City
Astoria Scum River Bridge. Photo by Jason Eppink.
There are lots of actions that skirt the boundary between “formal” and “informal” urbanism. In the last decade, there’s been a rise in tactical urbanism and guerrilla urbanism, where regular people make interventions in their communities. This ranges from hastily painted bike lanes, to do-it-yourself park benches in under-served communities.
Lawn Order
In communities across America, lawns that are brown or overgrown are considered especially heinous. Elite squads of dedicated individuals have been deputized by their local governments or homeowners’ associations to take action against those whose lawns fail to meet community standards.
Call them—lawn enforcement agents.
Names vs. The Nothing
This is the first site along the tour. In here we have a void. I remember the building that used to stand here, it was painted blue. Passing through it, you can imagine how us, as ghosts – should the building be standing here – would have to actually be invisible to pass through these walls and now it’s the reverse. The building is the ghost and we’re passing through these walls.
Rain Chains & Musical Drains
A rain chain in winter; Dresden Kunsthof Passage; Drainage planters near Pike Place Market in Seattle.
If there is a larger takeaway here perhaps it is about paths of least resistance, with regards to both the actual flow of water and design decisions. On the one hand, it is easy to blindly follow regional precedents and traditions with long histories (or grab whatever is handy at the hardware store). On the other hand, sometimes it makes sense to take a step back and decide consciously how to reveal (or conceal) a natural process.
Thermal Delight
DIY Space Suits
Cameron Smith is building a space suit in his apartment.
Tracing Power Lines with the Pylon Appreciation Society
According to Emma Ailes of BBC News, the first pylons in the UK were designed by architect Sir Reginald Blomfield in 1928, with a “lattice” approach that “sought to be more delicate than the brutalist structures used in Europe and the United States.” Reportedly, he was “inspired by the root of the word pylon – meaning an Egyptian gateway to the sun.”
Take a Walk
Now that many of us are working from home, we’re walking in order to fill up space … to clear our minds … to cry … to talk on the phone … to entertain our kids … to do nothing … but walk.
Here Be Dragons
Dragon hole in Hong Kong by Tim Hill.
Such “dragon gates” are designed to let these mythical flying beasts pass from their hilltop homes down to the water each day and then return again each night. Considering the flow of dragons, air and energy is just one part of a much larger phenomenon: feng shui.
The Right to Roam
This walk across private land was not unusual. Thousands of distance walkers in Britain, regularly do the same thing , which is different from what people typically do in the United States. If you wanted to walk across America, you’d have to do it on a combination of public trails and roads and you certainly couldn’t cut across Madonna’s property.
In the United Kingdom, the freedom to walk through private land is known as “the right to roam.” The movement to win this right was started in the 1930s by a rebellious group of young people who called themselves “ramblers” and spent their days working in the factories of Manchester, England.