phạmv

Victoria A. Phạm Artist | Designer

[phamvictoria]

untitled

looking up and out of an urban pavilion at the American Institute of Architects Convention in 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

© Victoria Pham 2016

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The best works are often those with the fewest and simplest elements...until you look at them a little more, and things start to happen.

Clyfford Still, American Painter

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So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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In one sense the 'project of urbanism,' if we can call it such, runs counter to that of ecology, with its emphasis on the interrelationship of organisms and the environment – an emphasis that invariably excludes human intervention. And yet it is relatively easy to imagine a city that is more careful in its use of resources than is currently the norm, more energy-efficient in its daily operations – like a hybrid car. . . As important as the question of energy is today the emphasis of quantity – on energy reduction – obscures its relationship with the qualitative value of things… In other words, we need to view the fragility of the planet and its resources as an opportunity for speculative design innovations rather than as a form of technical legitimation for promoting connectional solutions.

Mohsen Mostafavi, from Ecological Urbanism

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It is the physical changes - and above all the change of view - which creates the psychological transitions of your mind. . . Make a transition space between the street and the front door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance through the transition space, and mark it with a change of light, a change of sound, a change of direction, a change of surface, a change of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view.

Christopher Alexander, from A Pattern Language

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If the transition is too abrupt there is no feeling of arrival, and the inside of the building fails to be an inner sanctum.

Christopher Alexander, from A Pattern Language

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The city is so vast and we have so much to say to each other.

Francois Perier, from Nights of Cabiria

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‘Decay’ implies death; making these pictures is more about giving these structures a new life.

Jade Doskow, on her exhibit of World's Fair: Lost Utopias

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...the primary medium for analyzing examples, for acquiring and practicing the common language of architecture, for playing with ideas, is drawing. For architects, drawing is a non-negotiable essential skill. An architect who does not draw is a politician who does not speak.

Simon Unwin

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A collectively used building can stand independently as an object with a pronounced entrance, or open itself up so that the city is carried into the building, so to speak, and the building can be regarded as an indoor continuation of the city. So there is every reason for allowing buildings that play an explicit part in urban social life to express that function to the city at large. The main issue is to make them look inviting, and to draw attention to the fact that they can be accessed by the public. It is of essence, then, to make as much as possible of the internal urban organization legible from the outside.

Herman Hertzberger, from Space and the Architect

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"The study of minute points pushed to its limits. Progress."

Le Corbusier, from Towards a New Architecture