Homage

        
Walking into the galleries of Kunsthalle, I saw white-painted bent barriers stacked vertically to form towers that resembled Tatlin's Monument to the Third International. The fluorescent lights in the middle gave out an eerie Dan Flavin-like glow. I had an "Ah, of course!" moment when I found out this sculptural work by German artist Bettina Pousttchi was actually called Double Monuments for Flavin and Tatlin. In fact, Flavin himself had made a series of many pieces since 1964 under the name of Monument for V. Tatlin.

Continuing upstairs, I spotted John Baldessari's Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell printed on a sweatshirt (actually four sweatshirts of sizes M, L, XL, XXL nested inside one another). It was called Baldessari for All by Turish artist Banu Cennetoğlu. I couldn't help but wondering: are these just borrowing or plagiarism? Is it OK because they are art?

Bettina Pousttchi, Double Monuments for Flavin and Tatlin, 2010

Banu Cennetoğlu, Baldessari for All, 2010

Then in the afternoon, I went to the VitraHaus. The visit started to answer the question I had earlier. I remembered one of the critiques about this building was that it repeated the cliché profile of a simple pitched-roof house. It is a tired form (MVRDV, Fujimoto, etc.). But in this case, paying "homage" to the home is definitely the most appropriate thing to do.

The primary purpose of the VitraHaus is to display furniture and objects from the Vitra Home Collection. So the "stacked houses" concept makes perfect sense. It provides a unified character to the showrooms while allowing localized settings with different atmospheres for different scenarios. The massive collection was broke down into "vignettes" of domesticity - it felt comfy and homey! Now I saw the premise of borrowing: the chosen model serves the purpose and intention of a new maneuver.

These series of "places" felt like home, but they were not direct copies. The extruded volumes intersect each other on different levels at different angles, forming complex and interesting relationships both on the outside and the inside. The central open space, for example, has a unique urban quality, with bars flying above in different directions. On the inside, the angular intersection creates multiple perspectives, and the spatial experience is absolutely beyond a simple pitched-roof house. It was suddenly clear to me how borrowing is different from taking: the new product elevates its archetypal origins to a new level by creative manipulations or injected new meanings. The spatial complexity is further enhanced by spiral stairs that wind their way through the labyrinthine building. I could really feel that the visitors sequence was carefully calibrated.

When night fell, the large end windows glowed like stages. The impressive cantilevers gave the illusion that the houses were floating in mid air.

On the way back, my thoughts continued. I thought about Duchamp's Fountain; I thought about Andy Warhol; I thought about Ulysses; I thought about Jonathan Safran Foer; I thought about Bohemian Rhapsody; I thought about the fact that DJ's didn't really produce the tracks they use; and I thought about Glee. It's called paying homage in art. And to Newton, this is "standing on the shoulders of giants."

What's behind abstract art

          
In a recently published study, Boston College psychologists Angelina Hawley-Dolan and Ellen Winner showed 72 undergrad students (40 psychology majors and 32 studio art majors) a series of similar-looking paired images, one by an renowned abstract expressionist such as Mark Rothko and Cy Twombly, and the other by a child or one of the four animals: monkey, gorilla, chimpanzee or elephant. They asked the participants which one they liked more, and which they think is better.

Paintings by animals: (clockwise from top left) monkey, chimpanzee, elephant, elephant.

It turned out that non-art students preferred the professional artwork 56% of the time, while art students did so 62% of the time. But when it came to judging which was the better piece of art, the two groups had very similar results: the art students chose the professional piece 67.5% of the time, and the non-arts 65.5%.

Standing in front of an abstract painting, some people may say, "my grandson could have done that." But the research shows that participants preferred professional paintings and judged them as better more often than the nonprofessional ones. People can tell the differences between an artful human creation and random doodles, even they can't articulate the reasons like art critics and historians do. It seem the art of abstract expression does communicate - it's more accessible than most people think.

What's more interesting to me is that the two questions the researchers asked were phrased to separate personal preference ("like more," which is based on immediate emotional reactions) and and judgment ("better," which is based on cognitive evaluation). People can recognize something is good, but still not like it. Or to put it the other around, when people don't personally like something, they can still judge it as better. It makes me think about art and design criticism. Can we have more professional and objective evaluations than just saying "it dazzles me"?

"Analysis of the justifications revealed that when participants preferred the professional works, and judged them as better, they did so because they saw more intention, planning and skill in those works than those done by nonprofessionals," Hawley-Dolan and Winner write. It seems there are certain patterns behind successful abstract art and design, and an objective criticism is possible.
          

The trash master

            
In my first artsy weekend in Basel, I went to the Museum Tinguely for the Arman retrospective. As expected, the show was full of stuff, not in the sense that it's too packed like those in MoMA, but that there was no distinction between the objects and the art pieces. As one of the founding members of Nouveaux Réalistes, Arman saw the object, especially trash, a new ways of approaching the real. By making art from thrown-away or manufactured objects, Arman voiced his provocative reactions to the consumer society of his time.

The trash collector

Starting in the late 1950s / early 60s with his Poubelles (French for Trash Cans) series, Arman collected trash, put it in glass or plexi boxes, and showed it as objet d'art. To Arman, rejected objects are not just trash; they reflect characteristics of a place or personalities of their former owners. With that in mind, I was not surprised to see some vibrant blue and a judo uniform in a "portrait" he made for his fellow New Realist Yves Klein.

Hommage a la Cuisine Fransaise, 1960

Premier Portrait-robot d'Yves Klein, 1960

Another series around the same time was Accumulations. Unlike the colorful and diversified collages of Poubelles, Accumulations present the repetition or serial conditions of the most mundane everyday objects. They relate to industrial working methods such as standardization, automation, assembly lines, and mass production.

Malheur aux Barbus, 1960

La Colère Monte, 1961

Infinity of Typewriters and Infinity of Monkeys, and Infinity of Time = Hamlet, 1962

The trash maker

As seen in terms like "Fordism," the automobile was considered the ultimate product of mass industrial society. With grants from Renault, Arman worked for almost two years on the parts produced by the assembly lines, creating over 100 pieces. Art making here became an alternative way to consume mass produced goods. The paradox of value and devaluation turned the artwork into an act of direct confrontation.

Accumulation Renault #101, 1967

Accumulation Renault #180, 1972

In a more straightforward way, devaluation can be direct destruction of an object. Arman smashed, cut, or burnt objects, often music instruments, to make his Colères (Anger) and Coupes (Cut) series. In fact, he was not really angry when he broke the objects. "It was more like judo throws than enraged outbursts." After destruction, he would carefully rearrange the fragments and give the piece a poetic name. In later series, he would cast the remains in polyester resin or concrete, aiming to "preserve" destruction and freeze the scene of catastrophe as an impulse to stop time.

Subida al Cielo, 1961

La Courtillière, 1962

Le Grand Cello, 1963

Chopin's Waterloo, 1962

Complimentary to Yves Klein's immateriality and void, Arman's obsession with the object and plentitude represent his unique sensibility towards the real. Surprisingly, it seems to be still extremely relevant today, when wastefulness is still one of the most pressing issues of our time.
          

Learning from cats

    

Do you have cats? Before they lie down, they would struggle for a long time, trying different positions until they find the most comfortable one. Then they just stay there for hours and refuse to move.

This was brought up during a discussion about the rooting of a building on its site. There are a lot to consider: sun, wind, topography, landscape, view, vehicular/pedestrian access, existing buildings, zoning regulations, subsurface conditions, etc. It takes time and requires rigorous studies to find the optimal solution.

[Side note 1] Other fun facts about cats:
- They usually spend about 16 hours a day sleeping, and 30% of their waking hours grooming themselves.
- In some extreme cases, especially when they are scared or hiding, they could stay still for 7-14 days!

[Side note 2] From ARE "Site Planning & Design" sample questions:
After sight, which of the following senses is primary to conveying information about a site?
_ Touch
_ Hearing
_ Smell
_ Taste
 

Style or substance

      
At the Oscars ceremony on Sunday night, Tom Hanks presented the first two awards: art direction and cinematography. He mentioned the fact that Gone With the Wind, which swept the Oscars in 1939, was the first movie to complete the Academy Awards "trifecta" - Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Picture. The last movie to accomplish this was Titanic in 1997. He said, this is what it takes to make a good movie. I was a bit bugged by this statement. What about the story and screenplay? What about directing and acting?

I gave myself a little exercise: go through the Academy Awards database and list all the 83 Best Pictures to see what other awards they got. Here are the stats:

All 83 Best Pictures in other categories

The numbers are telling. It turns out that directing and writing are the two top elements of a Best Picture. 62 out of all 83 Best Pictures (74.7%) also got directing awards, and 54 (65.1%) got recognition for writing. In the last five straight years, all Best Pictures got the statuettes in both categories. In the entire Academy Awards history, there have been only 15 Best Pictures that got both art direction and cinematography, but 43 got both directing and writing. (Hey, that's more than half!) 47 (56.6%) movies got some sort of acting nods. 42 (50.6%) got awarded for some of the technical aspects (editing, sound, make-up, etc.), and film editing ranks at the third most important place - more than any art aspects.

If art direction, cinematography, and costume design represent "style" (how it looks), screenplay, directing, and editing are on the "substance" side (the story and how it's told). For 83 years, the Academy has certainly proved its position: substance over style. Or maybe, style and substance is not a question of either/or - we can, or should, have both. In fact, many Best Pictures excelled on both ends. In addition to art direction and cinematography, Gone With the Wind won awards for writing, directing, and editing as well. So was other all time favorites like Gigi, The Last Emperor, and Schindler's List.

Gigi and The Last Emperor scored every single award they were nominated for. Same was The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which took home 10 awards, tied only Ben-Hur and Titanic for the biggest winner of all.

Of course, awards are just awards. Winning doesn't make it the absolute best. As Steven Spielberg said at the ceremony, 9 of the 10 Best Picture nominees this year would "join the list that includes The Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, The Graduate, and Raging Bull."
    

The Metamorphosis

            
BIG has finally made its North America debut with a 600-unit condo tower on West 57th Street at the Manhattan riverfront. The design takes a funny distorted shape. According to BIG, it's trying to merge the forms of a typical Manhattan tower-podium typology and a European-style perimeter block.

As usual, BIG tells the story through a series of diagrams, showing how the building morphs into shape. This reminds me of the recently completed 8 House project in Copenhagen, where Bjarke explains in a video how the design becomes a figure 8 knot. If we look further back, the same approach can be seen back in the PLOT days like in the VM Houses.

The morphing of W57

The morphing of 8 House

The morphing of VM Houses

This is certainly a pretty convincing presentation technique. But the more I see it, the more I find it problematic. Let's run though the process again.

The origin
Where do butterflies come from? There are always origins. It could be the building envelope regulated by zoning, but it's not what BIG chooses to start with. Sometimes it's a platonic shape (like a cube or an extruded trapezoid) and sometimes it's a kind of architectural type (bar building or perimeter block). This suggests a bias towards simple forms. It seems in BIG's philosophy, the default solutions have no potential for good architecture. Architecture is all about strange forms.

Driving forces
As we've seen so far, BIG uses sun, privacy, view, and urban connections as parameters that drive the morphing process. It seems objective and analytical. But are these all we need to consider when we design? Clearly there are already personal decisions made here in terms of preferences and priorities. The bigger problem is, this seemingly objective process makes design always a passive act. It seems architecture can only respond to external forces. I don't think architecture should be purely subjective. But at least it should be more active. It should do more than just react to constraints.

The result
A simplified narrative of morphing omits layers of information behind usually complicated design decisions. It appears to be a linear cause-effect development, and the end result inevitably appears to be an easy one-liner. It's just a "big gesture" and it's almost purely geometric. (You see they can only name the project after its shape.) The plain straightforwardness makes the design attractive at first glance. But over time, the lack of sophistication actually makes it boring and dated pretty soon.

Conceptual clarity is important, and optimism and playfulness are good qualities for a designer. But I think it's a very fine line between that and being superficial and naive.
        

Found humanity

  
Totally unplanned, I went to the Davy Rothbart event at the CAC when I visited Cincinnati. Davy is the creator of FOUND Magazine, a yearly publication that collects discarded notes, letters, memos, written chats, doodles, etc. At the CAC, Davy hit the audience with one after another funny notes picked up from various cities, seasoning them with his energy and extraordinary reading skills. The event turned out to be two sweet, hilarious, and amazing hours well spent between some art and a fancy dinner.

It all started after one snowy winter night in 1999 when Davy went to his car and found a note on his windshield. It was addressed to another guy named Mario:

Davy was fascinated by this mixture of hate and love. There was clearly a love triangle but Amber was still somehow hopeful at the end. With this passion, he set out to collect more found stuff and made it into a magazine. Then the readers started to send in their finds as well. After a decade, FOUND has become almost like a cult that worships little scraps of paper.

Here's one that seems to be a monthly budget typed up by a neat person. The list starts with rent 600, cell phone 50... food 500, liquor 600 (!), and... crack 600 (!!)... Another one is a comparison made by a woman trying to decide between two men. Andrew or Paul?

After a good laugh, I realized it was more than just something funny. We humans have all sorts of emotions, sometimes conflicting ones (like Amber). It's interesting to see how people would/could think and how they decide. These found notes give glimpses into other people's personal and intimate moments. As Davy's mom puts it, it's like "people watching on paper." The notes were written without any self-consciousness or pretense, since they were not meant to be public. So they reveal humanity in a rather raw and unfiltered manner. Through these notes, we can get a sense of all the kinds of lives being led around us, even if we don't necessarily connect with each other on a daily basis or in meaningful ways.

Davy saved his all-time favorite find to the end. I think it's about friendship. (Video found online, taken from another event.)

            

It's all about the twist

            
At the beginning of the month, I went to a Ben van Berkel lecture at the Cooper. Stan Allen did the introduction and the two joined force in a conversation after BvB's talk. I had the feeling that the whole evening was just about two words: "twist" from BvB and "diagram" from SA.

SA started off the introduction by talking about diagrams, saying that UNStudio's use of diagrams cuts across the usual program-form dichotomy. Then BvB took the stage. He looked back to the IFCCA competition entry that UNStudio did in 1999, where a series of diagrams mapped the performance of Manhattan and extracted parameters that defined the design of West Side. He said, diagram is in a way a "twist" of information, instrumentalizing it as a tool to organize program and infrastructure. He explained the method of
"deep planning," which means to plan in a formally rich way. By doing this, infographs are turned into abstract design models. They are like mathematical models that adapts easily. They give orientation to the design but not illustrating it. This mathematics of UNStudio's design models reminded me of their early Mobius House. Similarly, the Mercedes Museum clearly follows the geometric model of trefoil knot.

Cross Section of Mid-town Manhattan

Mobius House, Het Gooi

Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart

Among the many design models, the twist is perhaps the most consistent in UNStudio's work. It appeared frequently across scale and typology. In Villa NM, the twist materialized as a physical expression of the spatial organization, visualizing the intertwining of domestic and social programs. In the Star Place in Taiwan, the atrium becomes a vertical twist - a "seamless organization of disconnected parts." (Yes, BvB showed that snake-horse-lion-man head again.)

Villa NM, Upstate New York

Star Place Atrium, Kaohsiung

Burnham Pavilion, Chicago

One of the recent works BvB showed was the Burnham Pavilion in Chicago's Millenium Park. He referred to it as a prototype, some sort of a 1:1 diagram rather than a building. He argued that there are currently too many external references (politics, economy, art, etc.) in our profession. He wants to concentrate on the internal forces of architecture. And geometric design models give him the opportunity to group the projects into series. Here I have some doubts. Is this autonomy all over again? Maybe he has cut across the usual program-form dichotomy and reached the side of pure forms.

        

Word play

      

Apologies for the lack of new posts in the last month… I was planning something important - a very complex sequence of events that needs attentive arrangements. There was stress, mistakes, and regrets, but in general I found myself enjoying the process. Perhaps it's occupational obsession. After all, architecture is mostly about planning complex sequences of events.

In addition to describing a person who designs buildings, the word "architect" also means a creator who devises and guides a plan in general, like in "the architects of the constitution," or "the architect behind the Italian job." So when we use the word specifically for architecture, it still indicates the planning of where to put things, how things are organized, and what comes first, etc. Architects are "schemers" (yes, we do make schemes), conceiving visions of the future and plotting steps towards their dreams.

But architecture is not only about plans and dreams. Etymologically, the word "architect" derives from the Latin architectus, itself derived from the Greek arkhitekton (arkhi-, chief + tekton, builder). So the profession (chief builder) has a component of execution. Unfortunately, there is too much blah blah blah in our current training and discourse, and the art of building seems to be neglected as something "uncool." But we should not forget, there is no such thing as a good plan when the planner doesn't care about how it's done.

In China, the term "architect" didn't really exist until Liang Sicheng redefined the profession in the early 20th century. Traditionally, scholars or governors came up with ideas, and builders finished construction according to standards (like Yingzao Fashi, the State Building Standards of the Song Dynasty). What we need now is a good combination of thinkers/planners and executors. And that's what the word "architect" really means.

      

Rabbit abundance

        
Happy Lunar New Year of the Rabbit! (Make sure to click on the image and zoom in to see details in the high-res card.)

In 1202, Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci, calculated the growth of an idealized (biologically unrealistic) rabbit population:

Suppose a newly-born pair of rabbits, one male, one female, are put in a field. Rabbits are able to mate at the age of one month so that at the end of its second month a female can produce another pair of rabbits. Assuming that rabbits never die and a mating pair always produces one new pair (one male, one female) every month from the second month on, the puzzle that Fibonacci posed was: how many pairs will there be in one year?

The answer, as we know today, is the 13th number of the Fibonacci sequence: 233.