Been reading Cedric Price recently. It's fun. Sharing some quotes:
- "Design is concerned with conscious distortion of time, distance and size. If it achieves none of these distortions it is unlikely to be more than the elaboration of the status quo."
Really, design is all about change. If nothing is changed, why bother?
- "Architecture is too slow in its realisation to be a 'problem solver'."
The current economy shows us the speed of architecture. How many projects are on hold, not mentioning those that are already dead? One may argue, what if I build in a good/fast economy? I would say, in that case, problems would probably change even faster.
But did CP say design is about "change"? I think the bottom line is to alter the status quo. The design may be a critique/opposition of the status quo; or a step forward; or it's some sort of brand new visionary dreamland that you would never think of as present...
- "A city is where you would be unlikely to meet a sheep in the road."
Brendan Behan, 1960
- A survey Tate Modern made of its visitors: "Most people observed spend from five seconds to one minute reading texts about the work and from two seconds to fifteen seconds glancing or looking at the work." They spend more time reading the guides than looking at the work!
- "I like the NASA museum in Houston... I like the fact that... they mention not the sponsor but the producer of the object... and also, that they have a lot of samples of things that didn't work. I think it's rather nice to see museums which save objects that don't quite work, and give them a new life just because they're history."
In the time when everybody only cares about the end result, this is rather rare but encouraging.
- "... excellence of performance does not necessarily produce excellent results unless they are viewed as part of the whole process... the need for a mediocre condition or product may demand an excellence of preparatory performance."
Didn't mention what an excellent condition or product demands... What about excellence in both process and product?
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