#on architecture

[cytwomblyss]

novitiate oratory, a ionic detail in a stairwell, and the most beautiful cloister in the world (claustro grande)

convento de cristo, tomar, portugal (c.1530-1560, several building campaigns)

[acekive]

- death on the nile, agatha christie

[alteracqua]

Daniel Libeskind, "Memorials and Their Voices," in MEMORIA ROMANA: Memory in Rome and Rome in Memory

[universitybookstore]

Born this day, 14 March 1921, Ada Louise Huxtable, renowned Architecture critic and the first person to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (1970). She wrote for both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and is widely considered to be the person to popularize her discipline. "Before Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture was not a part of the public dialogue," her colleague Paul Goldberger once said of her. A lifelong New Yorker, she was an outspoken critic of the city’s decision to demolish the original Penn Station in 1963, which became a catalyst for landmark preservation within the city and around the country.

“Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.”

[jaw-aches]

realisation: the dwelling is the crux of the problem. all our modern woes come from our relationship with the spaces and environment we inhabit. real estate is in a fucked up place and that makes us all miserable. we are all obsessed with houses in one way or another. the development of urban centres is something we're all implicated in. the earth, the soil, the asphalt, the space! vertical, abandoned, virtually empty or tragically overcrowded. it's all meeting here.

[morrak]

So there’s this building I frequent, right? And it has an elevator.

4 floors, yes? No. The second level is 1, except we’re in the US so it’s not, and the ground floor (which is actually below grade, though it’s not called a basement) isn’t served by the front steps. The core of the building comprises a library stack unit — Snead-pattern cast iron shelves, mostly — which is, of course, structural and cannot be altered like the building around it. There are 5 levels in the stacks, into which a much newer (but shit) central HVAC system, fire suppression, and a hoistway have been delicately cludged.

Consequently there are 9 distinct levels, though actually there are 10 because of misalignment in the basement ground floor thresholds. Why 11 buttons? I do not know. The S2 calls are identical as far as I can tell, unless there’s some higher-dimensional fuckery afoot. The car is old enough to have a mechanical bell, which of course echoes up and down the hoistway every time a portal gets passed. 10 dings in ~40 feet, the poor thing.

[arkiiiiiiiiiii]