Thesis Statement as of Halloween, 2010:

Michigan Central Train Depot, Detroit Michigan

Architecture as a timestamp, an expression, a diagram, an artistic reflection of a culture; this is my idea of the perfect building type.


Sick of utopian ideals and standardized building typologies, I want to see more architecture that pushes the building to do something for the people who occupy it.


Boston(for example) needs to ask itself why do I have 6 billion bricks in my city? Suburbia needs to ask itself why do I have shutters on my house if they don't close? The point is that (most) Architectural design no longer uses the ideas that art(of any medium) is based on, a foundation of reflection and expression.


Let's make more interesting buildings, and let's do it for/with our communities.

Site Searching

In my thesis investigation, I have begun to hone in on why architectural interventions are important to me and I think I have found something very simple: ARCHITECTURE HAS THE POWER TO CHANGE TO WAY PEOPLE VIEW PROPERTY. So to follow this idea, I am in search of site that once valuable to the American people and are now somewhat forgotten.... (keep in mind i am just scratching the surface)
I have already expressed my interest in the PAFB, but today I am beginning to look at another of America's forgotten cities, Detroit. I am very interested in the history of the city as an automotive mecca, as well as the large artist population that exist there.

Below are a series of videos I found that do a pretty good job of revealing both of these.

Reviewing Delirious New York: Part I

Delirious & breaking barbarism

Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York.

New Edition. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1994. Print.

Philosophers and philologist should be concerned in the first place with poetic metaphysics; that is the science that looks for proof not in the external world, but in the very modifications of the mind that mediates on it. Since the world of nations is made by men, it is inside their minds that principles should be sought.¹ So begins a retroactive manifesto of Manhattan’s architecture as a religion for the twentieth century urban dweller. The year is 1978 and Rem Koolhaas has recently transitioned from the world of writing screenplays and journal articles into one of built environments and a public audience; he has entered the world of architecture. It is with Delirious New York that Koolhaas begins to celebrate the theatrics of Manhattan without chapters or literary structure but rather a linear organization of the climactic acts of architectural history, this document reads more like a script than a work of non-fiction. Mildly egocentric and slightly energized by a “culture of congestion” ², Koolhaas is quick to declare himself the ghostwriter of Manhattan and it is this autobiographical approach that clearly fuels the richness of his research and analysis in his development of explaining the Manhattanism.  

This review of aims to breakdown the first three acts of Delirious New York, from the vantage point of a student of architectural design and theory, and reinforce this manifesto as a pivotal piece of published literature in the career of architectural studies.

ACT ONE: INTRODUCTION

Manhattan is “a mountain range of evidence without manifesto” ³ in the eyes of Rem Koolhaas when he describes the years between 1890 and 1940 as an age of the machine where a new metropolis has become a large scale factory for social experiment, shameless architecture and man made experience. It is here where Koolhaas sets the stage for his first architectural drama and his audience can begin to build their own abstract ideas of the story of Manhattan’s build up into an urban catalogue of architectural superiority. In declaring the city’s paradigm of density and congestion as a strength of urbanity, Rem Koolhaas begins to bring more characters into his play on theory and ecstasy as found in the development of Manhattan’s architectural ambitions.

ACT TWO: PREHISTORY

A glimpse at the early scenes of what will become the world’s most influential architectural experiment, Manhattan’s strength originates in a few simple gestures of development. First, Koolhaas explains how Manhattan as the idea of a new city begins to spread through very vague stories and illustrations that point more towards an act of science fiction than an effort to make a functional urban system, at least compared to any existing (European) system. Such provocative stories of a new city are later proven to be very successful for New York in marketing its real estate for development. Secondly, the introduction of a grid as the only parameter of development in this new city is described as an idea so simple that even the most unsophisticated mind could become interested in building within a city that is free of boundary and makes no claims towards a manifesto or building cannon. What is refinement one moment will be barbarism the next. Therefore, the performance can never end or even progress in the conventional sense of dramatic plotting; it can only be the cyclic restatement of a single theme: creation and destruction irrevocably interlocked, endlessly reenacted.⁴  It is through this language that Koolhaas has persuaded me to believe that Manhattan was the spark that ignited the public’s frustrations with outdated (European) city planning and building typologies.  For me this is the most important moment of the play as the director is about to summarize the entirety of his work with one simple graphic, an advertisement for New York’s first World’s Fair. The graphic depicts a needle and a globe as symbols of opposite architectural form working together to strengthen each other as competitors in the same game. The idea of coexistence of form fuels each archetype in attempting to achieve a equal to or greater than value of the other. This simple diagram can be used to explain the success of Manhattan, as it exists still today; an architectural playground populated with buildings that each make an effort to exceed the success of its predecessors.

ACT THREE: Coney Island: The Technology of the Fantastic

Declaring the genius of Coney Island as a formless theoretical playground, Koolhaas shines light on the important ways in which Manhattan could not be what it is today without the carnivalesque⁵ social experiments that filled the cultural voids of early twentieth century urbanization in the U.S. The strategies and mechanisms that later shape Manhattan are tested in the laboratory of Coney Island before they finally leap towards the larger island.⁶ Rem Koolhaas very effectively constructs his retroactive manifesto to the Manhattanism in a way that builds up and breaks down his argument regarding the success the city as if it were a piece of installation artwork; starting from the basic ideas, moving through the realities of design in response to cultural desires and landing on a statement about the historical facts. Where Koolhaas gains momentum is in the resurrection of a forgotten history. By addressing Coney Island as the “clitoral appendage” ⁷ of Manhattan, Delirious New York presents a point of view that is hardly ever addressed in the historical narrative of New York’s development. As it is revealed by Koolhaas, Coney Island, Luna Park and Dreamland are experimental precursors to the current tower city of endless cultural blending, sexual exploration and social expansion that is New York City. This rhetorical tactic is effective for Koolhaas in gaining the interest and trust of his audience through establishing a literary structure similar to that of an architectural grid, clear and logical. In the end of the third act, the thought provoking activities that occured at Coney Island are proven to have laid the foundation for the rest of Koolhaas’ argument. Rem Koolhaas is either a research genius or a luck stricken journalist-screenwriter-architect, who has created a piece of literature that is still refreshing to new architects and the profession as a whole over thirty after its original publication date. Rem Koolhaas has not only constructed a design declaration, he has redefined the greatest city in the world for what it truly is, not what it wants to be projected to be.

2.    1. Giambattista, Vico. Principles of a New Science,(1759)

2.    2. Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York. New Edition. p. 10

3.    3. Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York. New Edition. p. 9

4.    4. Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York. New Edition. p. 15

5.    5. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1941). Rabelais and his world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

6.    6. Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York. New Edition. p. 30

7.    7. Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York. New Edition. p. 30

Project 04 : Programming

Programming a building may seem like a simple task to anyone who has ever been inside of building (I hope everyone) and to a modern designer, the task may seem even simpler. Follow in the footsteps of architecture's great Louis Sullivan, and his "form follows function" campaign and everything works.

One problem with this philosophy, form doesn't always follow function. Especially during today's hard economic times, where architects seem to be working on more adaptive reuse projects than new buildings. Architects are facing an era of re-programming building with functions that were never conceived of when the form was generated. Whether in a church converted into condos, a factory into working studios for artists / designers or simply reconstructing the corner store back into a trendy hang out for young people, the idea of program is being given a new look. 

For me, when I think of programming, I want my architecture to RESPOND to the existing conditions. Sometimes (in new construction) Mies' ideas are still very applicable. Whether the opportunity calls for a cultural, architectural or economic response to a site, I would like to break each step into stages that look at things from two points of view [1. the practical response  2. the opportunity to do something fun and creative.]

Below you find a series of diagrams that attempt to touch on this very idea in a new construction:

1. The program as presented by a client, competition or any number of unpredictable situations. Here the form is what it is. Nothing more than the bare minimum example of architecture. 

2. The given program in response to interior activity: here I am looking at ways in which the form of the building can begin to subtract masses where program deems appropriate. Usually this gesture will respond to a number of site forces. Here there are no "real" forces so architectural gestures reduced to hypothetical activities such as that of a school or office.

3. Isolating again, the next form of program found in all buildings: circulation. Here I am taking a literal response to how one may move through a building that has three floors and two forms of egress.

4. In this diagram, I am visualizing ways in which both ideas can come together to express a single expression of activity and circulation programming that works with a synergy of function.

5. Here, we are looking at my program expression faced with issues of adjacency of neighboring program, probably of a completely separate function.

6. Finally, I am expressing my desire to bridge all types of programs within a given context. It is my hope that my architect is always performing with a social agenda. An architecture that connects the public, the community, and the neighborhood.

On Tuesday, October 26, Bjarke Ingels spoke about B.I.G.'s process of designing an architecture that is both programmatically rational and formally beautiful. This lecture was very helpful for me as I begin to investigate the ways in which my Artitecture can respond to issues of programming. After the lecture, I created the above diagram to combine the rational of B.I.G. and the exploration of my theory studies. 

Bjarke Ingels speeks at the BAC from ryan philbin on Vimeo.

Program Thinking

program |ˈprōˌgram; -grəm| ( Brit. programme)

noun

1 a planned series of future events, items, or performances : a weekly program of films | the program includes Dvorak's New World symphony.

• a set of related measures, events, or activities with a particular long-term aim : the nuclear power program.

2 arrange according to a plan or schedule: we learn how to program our own lives consciously. New Oxford American Dictionary

SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

In my building programming, the role of social engagement in architecture is brought to the front line of attention. In the ways that the firefighter is expected to serve the public’s safety needs, the architect should be expected to serve the emotional needs of his occupants. I believe that an architecture that introduces an element of art will always address the public desires to engage with the architecture either through views, operable elements, climate controls, and ergonomics.

¿Public Servant vs. Artist?

Things I can't Live Without...[continued]

I am revisiting an older assignment and reanalyzing the way I view the process of making. Through a series of quotes, I am attempting to define a mindset towards a new Artitecture*. 

"You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat." - Renoir 

"I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on." - Mark Rothko

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

 - Winston Churchill

"Beauty is at once the ultimate principle and the highest aim of art."

• - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"While our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all." - Ray Bradbury

"Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad." -Salvador Dalî

"Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence." - Henri Matisse 

"Art does not imitate, but interpret." - Giuseppe Mazzini

In collecting the above quotes, I am getting closer to finding the meaning of my artitecture; an architectural methodology, deeply rooted in spontaneity and a response driven creation. 

*artitecture: the process of designing that starts with any form of expression or application of human creative skill and imagination