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origins of architectural pleasure
the situationist city - constant's new babylon
malcolm wells earth shelter resources
designmobile
steinmann-schmid
SYSTEMSarchitect
welcome at variomatic
the photography of charles sheeler
herbert muschamp on the richard meier perry street towers
appropriation art
richard prince links images
modularity and the number of design choices
Abstract. "Nikos Salingaros and Débora Tejada analyze one aspect of what is commonly understood as "modularity" in the architectural literature. There are arguments to be made in favor of modularity, but the authors argue against empty modularity, using mathematics to prove their point. If we have a large quantity of structural information, then modular design can organize this information to prevent randomness and sensory overload. In that case, the module is not an empty module, but a rich, complex module containing a considerable amount of substructure. Empty modules, on the other hand, eliminate internal information, and their repetition eliminates information from the entire region that they cover. Modularity works in a positive sense only when there is substructure to organize."
"Junkspace is what remains after modernism has run its course, or more accurately, what coagulates while modernization is in progress, its fallout. Modernization had a rational program: to share the blessings of science, universally. Junkspace is its apotheosis or meltdown. . . . Junkspace is the sum total of our current architecture: we have built more than all previous history together, but we hardly register on the same scales. Junkspace is the product of the encounter between escalator and the air conditioning, conceived in an incubator of sheetrock (all three missing from history books). . . . It substitutes accumulation for hierarchy, addition for composition. More and more, more is more. Junkspace is overripe and undernourishing at the same time, a colossal security blanket that covers the earth. Junkspace is like being condemned to a perpetual jacuzzi with millions of your best friends."
bat's piss
Alles ist
Architektur (everything is architecture)
hdm spring/summer 2003 #18
back issues
funhouse
metafilter on modular