tirsdag den 9. april 2013

P1.2 08/02/13_15/02/13

P1.2 Who? What? Why? / constructing_fiction


Metaphorical nomadism and post-urban society

„The permanent discrepancy that exists between our society, which is in perpetual movement, and the professional – indeed, institutional – architecture, that is to be found everywhere.
(...)The subsequent generation has been viewed since the Eighties in terms of the concept of the urban nomad who, according to work requirements, quickly moves his domicile to the vicinity of the place of work.
 
(...)Without going into details, let us note that Japanese consumer society goes much further than Europeans imagine: cities and urban life have undergone extraordinary upheavals in Japan. Although everyone has the impression of sharing the same sort of happiness, there is growing inequality within the different social categories. (...)Japanese society goes beyond the consumer society; it has become the first post-consumer society.
 
(...)'Nomad' is nothing other than a metaphor to describe the way of life of the inhabitants of a metropolis.

(...)Toyo Ito has radically changed the tradtional idea of architecture as something static and lasting. If he were asked to define the difference between architecture and fashion, he would reply that the difference is minimal.

(...)A pao can be easily folded and transported; it is therefore highly suitable for the life of the nomad. I intend to invest the word 'pao' with the connotations of a primitive house which can wrap around the inhabitant like an oversized coat; it is a sort of transportable residence.

(...) Architecture becomes mobile like fashion design. (...)If we take Toyo ito's metaphor to the extreme, architecture is reduced to something that covers the human body as comfortably as clothes.(...) He is also interested in fashion and the 'pop' world. 'Pop' is, moreover, the word he uses to describe urban life and life itself.“

(...)The metaphor of the 'nomad', which is the fruit of his observation of city life, is the result of his own imagination.

(...)The city is split up, is fluid, dynamic, and within such a context the house has lost its symbolical meaning. (...)In Tokyo, the inhabitants do not want to stay put; they are forever on the move.

(...)The residents of Tokyo can, I believe, be compared to nomads wandering in artificial forests.(...) No one stays at home during the day.

(...)If you life alone, your house is just the space where you sleep. (...)Even if it is only a place for sleeping, there should be a bed, a table, a chair, a minimum of comfort, as it is a place of rest.

(..)Of the three pieces of furniture installed one is for gathering information. The nomad woman must know what is going on, and where. (…) The second is a dressing-table, where she can make up and get ready to go out. (…) The last piece is a table, where she can sit down and sip a cup of coffee when she comes home for a short break.

(...)A city is the result of a concentration of populations; but today the city centre is almost deserted by its inhabitants. This centre now functions like an economical-political-cultural machine, producing information. The city has become a sea of signs, without any shape or limits.

(...)In the ephemeral urban space, (…) meaningless symbols are accummulated in expectation of pleasure; but can we not do anything other than reproduce these symbols as attempts at architecture, and play like a nomad with these meaningless symbols?“

                            
 source: Toyo Ito - Architecture of the ephemeral, Sophie Roulet and Sophie Soulet




„The nomad girl does not act or pressure the environment, but rather is prepared to be the object herself of the actions and offers proposed by consumerism.“ Inaki Abalos and Juan Herreros                                                                                     

 

P1.2 10/02/13


„All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.“
                                                    Friedrich Nietzsche

P1.2 10/02/13


"Short lived Habits. I love short lived habits, and regard them as an invaluable means for gaining knowledge of many things and states, to the very bottom of their sweetness and bitterness; my nature is altogether arranged for short lived habits, even in the needs of its bodily health, and in general, as far as I can see, from the lowest up to the highest matters. 
 
I always think that this will at last satisfy me permanently (the short lived habit has also this characteristic belief of passion, the belief in everlasting duration; I am to be envied for having found it and recognised it), and then it nourishes me at noon and at eve, and spreads a profound satisfaction around me and in me, so that I have no longing for anything else, not needing to compare, or despise, or hate. But one day the habit has had its time: the good thing separates from me, not as something which then inspires disgust in me but peaceably, and as though satisfied with me, as I am with it; as if we had to be mutually thankful, and thus shook hands for farewell. And already the new habit waits at the door, and similarly also my belief indestructible fool and sage that I am!  That this new habit will be the right one, the ultimate right one. So it is with me as regards foods, thoughts, men, cities, poems, music, doctrines, arrangements of the day, and modes of life.
 
On the other hand, I hate permanent habits, and feel as if a tyrant came into my neighbourhood, and as if my life's breath condensed, when events take such a form that permanent habits seem necessarily to grow out of them: for example, through an official position, through constant companionship with the same persons, through a settled abode, or through a uniform state of health. Indeed, from the bottom of my soul I am gratefully disposed to all my misery and sickness, and to whatever is imperfect in me, because such things leave me a hundred back doors through which I can escape from permanent habits.
 
The most unendurable thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without habits, a life which continually required improvisation: that would be my banishment and my Siberia."

                                                       The Gay Science / Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, Friedrich Nietzsche
                                                                                                                             First published in 1882.

P1.2 09/02/13


„Even if I am only in a place for a short while I quickly build up a routine: I want not just to visit a city but to inhabit it as rapidly as possible.“



„We are always taking the same routes through cities. The tube or the metro forces us to do this, and so – less claustrophobically – do buses. Even on a bike, when we can take any route, we allow ourselves to get funneled along familiar paths, preferring the often slightly longer but nicer cycle lanes because they are ostensibly safer, even though they can actually be more dangerous because one is in a state of less than heightened alert. As pedestrians, too, we not only stick to the same routes, but prefer to cling to the same side of the road.“



We tend always to approach a given place from the same direction, via the same route. I am always surprised how thoroughly disorientating it is if I arrange to meet someone at a café I know well but, for whatever reason – an earlier appointment somewhere else – end up approaching it from an unusual direction. It's completely bewildering. As if the place we are supposed to be meeting at has disappeared. What's happened to it? Psychlogically, the location of a place is not fixed. It is determined not by where it is but how we get to it.“



„But even if nothing changes, even if the place and the food and the staff remain unchanged, there is still no going back, even though, of course, one does exactly that: one goes back.“



„Nietzsche loved what he called 'brief habits', but he so hated 'enduring habits' that he was grateful even to the bouts of sickness or misfortune that caused him to break free of the chains of enduring habit (though most intolerable of all, he went on, would be 'a life entirely devoid of habits, a life that would demand perpetual improvisation.“

                                                                                                   Inhabiting, Restless Cities, Geoff Dyer


P1.2 08/02/13


 
„No one wants to be part of a fiction, and even less so if that fiction is real.“
                                                                The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster

lørdag den 6. april 2013

P1.1 04/02/13-08/02/13

P1.1 The Williamsburg Trilogy/ constructing a scenario

atlas/constructing an archieve

locality, affiliation, atmosphere - approaching the atlas as abstract tool, the focus lies on the intangible, social, personal, emotional level. Connecting past and future scenarios to create a narrative.


NY Williamsburg mappings

Williamsburg notes

North west and east corner of Keap Street and South 4th Street, Williamsburg, New York.
Mappings on site:




"ten steps 1" series of photographs one taken
 every ten steps around the north west corner
site.                                                              

"ten steps 2" series of photographs one taken
every ten steps around the north east corner
site.                                                              
 
 
 
 
 
Categories of typographic signs in the immediate area of the site.