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Building Forum
"Some have dubbed it the "Bilbao Effect"; others, "the rise of design." However one refers to it, the relationship between art and architecture has undergone significant change in recent years. Though the association dates back to the very origins of both fields, a number of factors have recently conspired to raise new questions about their boundaries, premises, and cultural goals.
The theoretical principles defining modern art and architecture as self-sufficient, sustainable fields have come into question anew in the '90s. In the place of "isms," an eclectic complex of ideas and working methods have arisen, perhaps supplanting "theory" or, at the very least, relying on unstated rather than stated theoretical premises. Part of this transformation, the rise of "design" as an intellectual and pragmatic concern in art and architecture, has been aided by the emergence of new media, which have opened up new spaces of convergence and interaction. "Virtual design" may already be a decade old and remains as fuzzy a concept as "new economics," but it continues to challenge old notions in both art and architecture and significant creative energy continues to be invested in its development. Asymptote Architecture, for one, is currently designing the Guggenheim's "Virtual Museum." Yet what a virtual museum might mean remains to be understood.
Moreover—and not for the first time—artists and architects have infiltrated each others traditional spheres of activity: Architects and designers such as LOT/EK, Karim Rashid, Diller + Scofidio, Rem Koolhaas, M/M Design in Paris, and Open Office have been exhibiting in galleries, while artists such as Rachel Whiteread, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Franz West, Liam Gillick, Mike Nelson, Atelier Van Lieshout, and Jorge Pardo—to mention just a few—have followed in the footsteps of Dan Graham and Vito Acconci by turning to architecture and design in search of new agendas and vocabularies for contemporary art. Finally, all this has been unfolding in the wake of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao, which is only one of several prominent museums that have become iconic architectural showpieces, and as such, another point of contact between art and architecture.
In order to consider the causes and consequences of some of these interchanges, Artforum has invited the following critics, curators, artists, and architects to participate in a twelve-day online symposium: John Rajchman, philosopher and critic; Jeffrey Kipnis, architecture curator at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio; Hans-Ulrich Obrist, curator and critic; Ronald Jones, Provost, Art Center College of Design; Catherine Ingraham, critic, professor of architecture, Pratt School of Design; Henry Urbach, gallerist and writer; Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, artists; Galia Solomonoff, partner at Open Office Art and Architecture Projects; and Vito Acconci, artist and designer. The symposium is moderated by Philip Nobel, contributing editor for Metropolis magazine. Nobel has written on art and architecture for the New York Times, Architectural Digest, Artforum, and other magazines. He is currently writing an essay for a forthcoming book from the Princeton Architectural Press on the New York firm LOT/EK."
—The Editors
Eduardo Catalano House Raleigh NC
"SURVIVAL THROUGH DESIGN, to ameliorate by the
fast-advancing insights of all sciences, the human setting in
which to live, to work, to rest"
- Richard J. Neutra (1892-1970)
King Kong meets the Gem of Egypt
cabin in the dark
cabin on the prairie
Lisa Law photographer
New Buffalo (new)
Obsolete 100 years of Electronic Music
SF Tape Music Center
"Donald Buchla started building and designing electronic instruments in 1960 when he was commisioned by the Avant Garde composer Morton Subotnik to build an instrument for live electronic music and composing. With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation Buchla started building his first modular synthesisers in 1963 under the name "San Fransisco Tape Music Center", the name of Subotnik's music studio. Buchla's early synthesisers were experimental in design to accomadate the experimental music they were intended to produce, utilising unusual control features such as touch sensitive and resistance sensitive plates. Buchla's early pioneering work included the first analogue sequencers."
One-Log House
SF rocks
Diggers SF
Bleed this
Stroboscopic Trampoline
"Big Daddy" Don Garlits
Electronic Music Foundation
Vint Synth
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Moon
Off Grid
Felix Wankel father of the rotary engine
remember The Alamo
Moshe Safdie and associates
In Every Dream Home a Heartache
Exquisite Corpse
"Among Surrealist techniques exploiting the mystique of accident was a kind of collective collage
of words or images called the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). Based on an old parlor game, it
was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the
paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.
The technique got its name from results obtained in initial playing, "Le cadavre exquis boira le
vin nouveau" (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine). Other examples are: "The
dormitory of friable little girls puts the odious box right" and "The Senegal oyster will eat the
tricolor bread." These poetic fragments were felt to reveal what Nicolas Calas characterized as
the "unconscious reality in the personality of the group" resulting from a process of what Ernst
called "mental contagion."
At the same time, they represented the transposition of Lautréamont's classic verbal collage to a
collective level, in effect fulfilling his injunction-- frequently cited in Surrealist texts--that "poetry
must be made by all and not by one." It was natural that such oracular truths should be similarly
sought through images, and the game was immediately adapted to drawing, producing a series of
hybrids the first reproductions of which are to be found in No. 9-10 of La Révolution surrealiste
(October, 1927) without identification of their creators. The game was adapted to the
possibilities of drawing, and even collage, by assigning a section of a body to each player, though
the Surrealist principle of metaphoric displacement led to images that only vaguely resembled
the human form. One, by three hands, begins with a spider, which gives way to a man's torso
the feet of which are formed by two jugs. Other, more interesting cadavres exquis were
reproduced in a special issue of Variétés titled "Le Suréalisme en 1929" (fig. 288). One of these
begins with a woman's head by Tanguy, which dissolves in to a jungle scene by Max Morise,
returning to a female anatomy schematically indicated by Miró, and terminating in "legs" in the
form of a fishtail and an engineer's triangle by Man Ray."