People recognize images of our image-culture in buildings that have a unfamiliar form. I think strange forms puzzle us and trigger a process of trying to find analogies to try to understand the form.
When an architect realizes that the human mind works that way, he tries using Iconography. Here are some examples:
The well-known Burj Al Arab..
The London Olympic Stadium proposed by FOA uses the iconography of the muscle.
The Beijing Olympic Stadium designed by Herzog & de Meuron derive from the birds nest concept. The name of the stadium is Beijing Olympic Stadium, but due to the concept, the public tend to refer to is as the bird nest, which goes to show that how powerful Iconography is in masking the idea in architecture.
The Yokohama Cruise Terminal and the Hokusai Wave.
The ING House in Amsterdam of the Dutch architects Meyer & Van Schooten must be the worst architecture ever in the world, I bet a first year student can come up with something much more interesting. The building resembles a shoe or an ice skating shoe.
Concept in architecture should be abstract, the theme or idea should not derive from a physical object. Selling an architecture idea that was extruded from an existing object is a wrong move, I have to admit that famous architects tend to do this due to the sellable idea to the broader public. Iconography is a cancer in the architecture world.
Design is all about ideas and it doesn’t matter if the end products take the shape of a man or an object, it is how well one can persuade their listeners to agree with them.
Happy new year everyone!
The problem of form-making
Criticism in Architecture..
Lecturers can sometimes be nasty, I hate it when they bang you like a dog or a bitch.. I mean its okay to criticize a student if their work are not up to standard, but there is always a limit to how one should criticize. Use proper words, words that do not hurt feelings.
The worst critic I’ve ever heard from a lecturer would be to ask the student to quit, saying that he/she is not qualified to be an architect.
Here are some of the best comments by lecturers and professors I’ve come across, some of these are first hand experience, while others are from online blogs reading:
- “Hey, everyone, gather round this project, come in close…because this is a great example for everyone of exactly what NOT to do..”
- “This drawing isn’t worth the paper it is printed on.”
- “Why are you here? Don’t come back next semester.”
- “You should go straight to Poultry Science.”
- “Here’s a quarter. go call your mom and tell her you’re not going to be an architect.”
- “So your parents are pay 2000JDs a year for this.”
- “When I went to school, at a different school than this one, there were students who would present projects like this one. And they would fail.”
- “Who sketched that, your ten year old sister?”
- “Your project looks like something that’s been through a trash compactor”
- “This space that you’ve designed is the type place where beggars and dogs go to die”
- “This (model) is great…..just don’t let your dog play with it next time.”
- “Have you ever considered a career in accounting?”
- “Your theory is bullshit. You don’t need that”
- Prof pointing to part of a model, “Did you chew this?”
- “You don’t care about this project, do you? So I won’t say anything about it”
- “You have good sense of humor but architects don’t…”
- “Anyone got any matches… so I can burn this”
Well... to be fair, criticism is not a simple matter of declaring a work “good” or “bad”. Good criticism involves interpretation, interpretation varies depending on the background and interests of the critics. Effective criticism brings varied types of knowledge and experience to bear on a work. It opens a project to the wider world. The best criticism tells both architect and listener something they didn’t already know...
Do not praise me, praises kills my determination.Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas!
Do not backstab me, because you are pushing yourself to the end.
Do not support me, critique me, I need that to complete myself.
Do you know JUST? Part II
Finally got the time to return back I know it's been a while since my last post...
but anyways... our new project is a branch Library in JUST campus and it was one of our tasks to analyze and study the concept of JUST and such things about it - thanks to Laith's post about JUST -
What I found lately is a book from Jafar Tukan's Library about Kenzo Tange's projects. and guess what? I found a never-seen-before, extremely rare imagery about JUST concept and the original masterplan.
You have to pay me so you can have a look at them!! hehe no just kidding, I'll leave you with the images...
[Click on images to enlarge]
The Academic Spine running through the administration and the central library
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this building here is the intersection point of the two spines where the administration, the central library and the computer center will be or WOULD'VE been located.
Earlier this month, Arch. Jasser told us the story behind destroying the masterplan and according to him it was due to financial problems that the masterplan wasn't fully constructed but ruining the masterplan was due to an upperhand interfering in the architectural designs by relocating the stadium to where it is now.
Rasim Badran tried to make it up for us by his new library but I guess that it will not replace Kenzo's original masterpiece, first because of its location and second because it doesn't follow up the concept that Kenzo proposed.
I say if Kenzo Tange to be alive now I guess he would have committed suicide for what happened to his masterplan!
I'll be back with more someday soon....
sexiest… WOOHOO!!!
Found this survey done by a London dating agency ‘Drawing Down the Moon’ on the web undated, and I couldn't believe it. Its such a funny thing, i mean really? do you really think that male architects are sexy?! well sure they are funny and tend to be smooth ( yea.. pretend to be smooth, pretty all of them.. ) lol!! well all men in creative fields are all pretty much the same anyway, balanced, well-rounded, mysterious, sexy and caring, but believe me they got scary things hidden behind those sexy looks. ISSUES!! to be fair (especially MEN) got issues, yea creative people are usually very smart and can push their issues to the next level of madness. Yes MADNESS, most of the genius architects ended up mad and committed suicide, one of the most known architects, Francesco Borromini, committed suicide right after completing his last chapel in Rome.
In the summer of 1667, Borromini, suffering from nervous disorders and depression, committed suicide in Rome, after the completion of the Falconieri chapel (the main chapel) in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where he was buried.Well.. to cut it short, architects are sexiest for many reasons:
- Architects are trained to be heroes, there are very, very few professions that still have a ring of heroism about them, and architecture is one of the few that does. If an architect is portrayed going off the deep end, it's always because they are so committed to what they're doing and that's an honorable thing. And it's one of the last manly professions.. They build something outdoors!
- Architects are creators, our works stand in reality and last in time, famous wonders were done by genius architects.
- They are passionate, they think the world revolves around them, they work for sleepless nights for a project and sell their idea with high enthusiasm. “Passion for your work does carry over to a passion in real life. I don’t know of any architect who has not been passionate about life, particularly trying to figure out how to design one’s own life.” John Powers.
- Architects are rich!! well… not really, but in the impression of the public, they earn by percentage of a project’s cost, count 5% out of a multi million project and you’ll figure it out.
Human scale?
Wow! it has been a long time since i posted something here, anyways.. me and my group of urban design (Abdallah, Roaa, Omar and Mariam) at the stage of SWOT analysis were discussing the strengths of Al-Fuheis with our instructor and we talked about the building heights and how they are human scale… well don’t ask me what does that mean, we actually got that phrase from a SWOT case study (but don’t tell anyone..), well he interrupted me asking “so what?” so i answered “why so serious?” (no.. the last answer did not occur, but it makes the conversation a bit interesting) well the truth is that I paused for a while… and as usual he started talking about something off topic (forgot what it was…), but anyways, when i got back home I started searching about the meaning of “human scale” to not be in that moment of silence again… well from the end (a Jordanian phrase meaning -in summary-) i found nothing about what it means or what it is used for but i found something interesting that actually made me laugh out loud, I’ll leave you with these pictures…
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