Zenghelis notes

           
Last Friday night, Elia Zenghelis gave a lecture at EPFL's Laboratoire Bâle (laba), a studio focuses on urban and complex architectural design led by Harry Gugger. Titled "Athens: Labor, City, Architecture. Towards a common architectural language," the lecture was primarily about a studio Zenghelis taught at the Berlage Institute in the last academic year. It was very proper old school and intellectual - no sexy renderings or bold manifestos. But it was actually quite refreshing to see a knowledgeable scholar's approach to urbanism.

Zenghelis started off by reviewing several keywords/themes of the studio:
Formal. A form has borders and an autonomous interior, and there’s also an exterior. John Hejduk's nine square grid implies a dialogue between two entities: the interior and the exterior.

John Hejduk, The Nine Square Problem

Generic. A plan made by typewriter, with undefined functions that can be reprogrammed whenever necessary. All of a sudden, architecture is liberated from constraints.

Archizoom, No-Stop City

Labor. According to Hannah Arendt's book The Human Condition, an active life (vita activa) is formed by three types of activities: labor (necessity to survive biologically, like seeking water, food, and shelter), work (objectified products of labor, something to leave behind for prosperity, like architecture), and action (political involvement, the public realm and the social, like the ancient Greek Agora). In modern society, labor takes over the other two spheres. It's important to revoke political actions and understand the politics of labor.

The round city of Gur, Iran

Urbanization. The breaking of boundaries to unlimited expansion.

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square

Zenghelis said, when you look at the urban form of Athens, you may think about words like informal, spontaneous, unplanned. In fact, the city of Athens is the result of very specific but unspoken political projects. He then started to describe Greek history and politics in extensive details, through the various dynasties and regimes - from the ancient "happy village" of mixed population, the Ottoman rule, to the population explosion in 1921 triggered by the Greco-Turkish War; from the massive suburbanization in the 1980s and gentrification of the center in the 90s, to the 2004 Olympics, the 2008 riots after a police shooting incident, and finally the current economic collapse (he actually used the word "demise").

Platon Issaias, Athens grid samples

Now I realized all the emphasis on history and politics was trying to understand the issues. The urban form and its transformations have always been so related to politics. We see how the Kleanthis-Schaubert plan for the new state capital defined the grid orientations in modern Athens, how prime minister Karamanlis' policies on infrastructure reshaped the city, and how property laws led to the ubiquitous archetype Polykatoikia (apartment block).

First master plan for Athens by German-trained Stamatios Kleanthis and Eduard Schaubert, 1832

J. A. Kaupert's map of Athens, 1875

Athens cityscape with Polykatoikia everywhere

Finally it came to the studio projects. I was quite amazed by the setup and methodology of the studio. Derived from the lengthy research on history and politics, the students' ideas were tested in the Kerameikos and Metaxourgeio districts in the center of Athens. Their work operated beyond master plan, creating a sort of pilot projects, or paradigms, for the city. The eight projects eventually came together in a way similar to Rossi's città analoga or Piranesi's map of Rome.

Aldo Rossi, La città analoga

Piranesi, Il Campo Marzio dell'Antica Roma

The studio took a very anti-iconic approach - common, "unbranded," and re-appliable in different locations. (Zenghelis actually said after the lecture that most of the architects he used to admire have corrupted to icon makers. And you know who he was talking about.) Thanks to the thorough understanding of the existing issues, the sensible interventions offer inspiring alternatives to the brutal tabula rasa operations. They are so clear conceptually that they only need single fundamental words or short phases for explanation: cloister, wall, roof, stoa, etc. "Vertical+Horizontal" means piers in between existing buildings and a ring of communal facilities on top. One project clears out the ground floor to create a continuous "platform" for the public realm. Another injects "theatre"-like elements into the urban fabric in regular intervals, creating a system of catalytic points like the Constructivist clubs. Their choice of references were also amazing - quite an insightful collection of relevant historic projects.

"Cloister" reference: Bramante, Santa Maria della Pace

"Cloister" reference: Karl Marx-Hof Vienna

"Wall" reference: Le Corbusier, Plan Obus for Algiers

"Wall" reference: John Hejduk, Wall House

"Wall" reference: Louis Kahn, Dominican Motherhouse

"Vertical+Horizontal" reference: El Lissitzky, Wolkenbügel (Cloud Iron)

"Platform" reference: Mies van der Rohe, Lake Shore Drive Apartments

"Theatre" reference: Cedric Price, Fun Palace

Some people said, there was a lack of humor in the lecture. I agree it was intense and packed with dense information, which sometimes could mean boring. But hey, the guy is in his 70s and he did all those provocative illustrations in Delirious New York. He lost his notes the day before and had to rewrite everything up till 5 minutes before the lecture. What else do you ask for?
       

Speed of languages

     

When I translate an English text into Chinese, it usually becomes only about 2/3 of the original length. When I hear people speaking Spanish or Japanese, I always feel like hit by a storm of syllables and I would never be able to catch up.

An interesting study was recently published in the journal Language on the speed of human speech. Linguists Pellegrino, Coupé, and Marsico from Université de Lyon recruited 59 volunteers who were native speakers of one of seven languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. The subjects were instructed to read 20 different passages in their native languages into a recorder. The researcher then counted all of the syllables in each of the recordings and further analyzed how much meaning was packed into each syllable. They arrived at two critical indexes for each language: the average information density for each of its syllables and the average number of syllables spoken per second in ordinary speech.

The intriguing discovery was a negative correlation between information density and speed. The more data-dense the average syllable was, the fewer of those syllables had to be spoken per second, and thus the slower the speech. Out of the seven languages, Japanese was the fastest, spoken at 7.84 syllables per second. And in the density chart, it was at the bottom. Spanish came in second in terms of speed (7.82), and its density was also quite low. Mandarin, the slowest of the seven (5.18), was also the densest language. It seems that the speed of a language depends on the average amount of information its syllable can convey.

The researchers explained, "A dense language will make use of fewer speech chunks than a sparser language for a given amount of semantic information." I guess our brain can only process so much. If the flow of information remains steady according to the capacity of the brain, speed and density have to compensate each other for the speech to be understandable and not boring.

Another explanation could be the languages' sound systems. In languages with fewer consonants and vowels, or no tones, words tend to require more syllables to remain distinct. Hawaiian for example, has only eight consonants and five vowels. That's why you will see long words like humuhumunukunukuāpua'a (state fish of Hawaii) and lauwiliwilinukunuku'oi'oi (another type of fish).
     

The cultures of cars

     
Since Karl Benz produced his first patented Motorwagen in 1886, the automobile has become an essential tool in our modern life. Moreover, it has been an important cultural touchstone that reflects the socio-economic changes. Irrational add-on values take the automobile beyond a practical machine to an object of cult and fetish. The current exhibition at Museum Tinguely "Car Fetish: I drive therefore I am" examines the many facets of cars as carriers of cultural meanings. It is one of the best curated exhibitions I've seen for a while.

The show is organized as a wheel in plan (yes, a bit kitchy), with each spoke / circular sector a theme related to the cultural significance of the car. At the center is Damián Ortega's exploded car. The Mexican artist takes apart a 1983 Volkswagen Beetle and hangs every single element afloat with airplane wires. The installation invites obsessive observation and admiration.

Damián Ortega, Cosmic Thing, 2002

The car obsession starts with speed. The new feeling of time and space through high-speed movement is fantasized by the Futurist paintings where whirls and lines represent motion, energy, and dynamic space and time. Horst Baumann's photo of Jim Clark captures the Formula 1 race car moving like a zooming streamline. Erwin Wurm's cute little slanted Renault seems like deformed from the centrifugal force during a fast right turn.

Giacomo Balla, Velocità d'automobile, 1913

Horst H. Baumann, Jim Clark, Grosser Preis von England, 1963

Erwin Wurm, Renault 25 / 1991, 2009

The automobile has drastically changed our landscape with all the facilities for traffic. Upon entering the "Traffic" gallery, you immediately smell the oder of burning rubber as if you just hit the brakes. It's from Michael Sailstorfer's installation where a rubber tire is constantly scraping against the wall and turning into powder. Also in this room are Andreas Feininger's documentation of the American "carscape" and a snapshot by photojournalist Christoph Ruckstuhl in which the tire tracks in a thin snow covered plaza compose a beautiful abstract expressionist painting.

Michael Sailstorfer, Zeit ist keine Autobahn - Basel, 2011

Christoph Ruckstuhl, Untitled, 2005

The irresistible fascination makes the car center of our consumer culture. In the "Commodities Fetish" gallery, you can see the enchanting close-up photos by Peter Keetman and Patrick Weidmann in juxtaposition with Edward Burtynsky's eerie images of dead tires graveyard and Ant Farm's half buried Cadillacs. Allan Kaprow's 1961 installation is restaged in the next gallery to join the critiques of our consumerist, throw-away society.

"Commodities Fetish" gallery with photos by Patrick Weidmann, Hans Hansen,
Edward Burtynsky, and Arman's Accumulation Renault No. 105 (1967) in the middle

Ant Farm, Cadillac Ranch, 1974

Allan Kaprow, Yard, 1961/2011

If something is the center of consumerism, it would inevitably become the subject of Pop Art. Andy Warhol repeats a press photo in slightly displaced prints to visualize the collision of two cars. John Chamberlain forms his monumental sculpture with compressed car body parts. In the basement of the museum, the curators put together sculptures, photos, and documents by Jean Tinguely to demonstrate his passion for speed and the machine.

"Pop Europe" gallery with works by Franz Gertsch, Gerhard Richter, Jean Dubuffet, and Jean Tinguely

Andy Warhol, Optical Car Crash, 1962

John Chamberlain, Straits of Night, 1992

Jean Tinguely, Le Safari de la mort moscovite, 1989

Jean Tinguely, Pit-Stop, 1984

The fetish could become religious. The exhibition features Chris Burden's early performance Trans-fixed during which the artist nailed himself on a VW Beetle with arms outspread like Jesus. The car was pushed out of the garage onto Speedway Avenue in Venice, CA, and the engine ran for two minutes before it disappeared back into the garage. Spanish artist Jordi Colomer placed a cute mini Popemobile on a public square in Barcelona, and documented with photography people's reactions to this odd little icon.

Chris Burden, Trans-fixed, 1974

Jordi Colomer, Papamóvil, 2005

The fetish could also get erotic. The "Sex Fetish" gallery features Kenneth Anger's short film Kustom Kar Kommandos, in which a man in tight pants buffs his car in gentle and smooth movements. In the series acts of Household, Allan Kaprow instructed women to lick off the strawberry jam smeared on a car and then destroy the towers the men built; while the men destroyed the nests the women built and ultimately set the car on fire. Chinese artist Ji Wenyu's Mad Group somehow reminds me of Pulp Fiction and Grindhouse - maybe it's the Tarantino sense of coexisting lust and tension.

Allan Kaprow, Household (Women licking jam off a car), 1964

Ji Wenyu, Mad Group, 2005

The best part of the show though is outside of the museum. The organizers operate a drive-in cinema in the museum park where people can just come in and "rent a car," sit inside and watch a movie! It looks really funny because the cars are on wooden pallets and they are clearly not "driven in."

"Drive-in" Cinema in the Tinguely Museum park

     

So different, so appealing

       
Richard Hamilton passed away last Tuesday. His all-time classic Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956) in a way started the whole Pop Art movement and defined the collage aesthetics of many architects and artists in the 60s, including Archigram and Superstudio.

If we are to look at our homes today, what has changed? Probably not too much! We are still pretty much at the high point of consumer culture. Just instead of a normal TV, we now have 3D TVs. We are also after designer furniture and new gadgets like exercise bike, Wii, and the iPad. Vacuum cleaner? Now we have iRobot Roomba.

The intangible changes seems to be more significant. An appealing home can also be a gay couple happily living together with a cat. We have moved from the space fantasy of the 60s to the 21st century cyber age. All the electronic devices have an odd company: a greater demand on green features: literally natural, technologically sustainable, and flora-inspired decorative.

I made this collage to pay my tribute to the master. Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? consists of images mainly taken from American magazines (Ladies Home Journal, Tomorrow's Man, Life), cut and glued together manually. Now we do it digitally. The elements in my new collage are all from the internet, assembled with Photoshop. Source websites include eBay, BestBuy, GQ.com, marthastewart.com, Dezeen, etc.
       

Picking cherries

       

When harvesting cherries, the pickers would select only the ripest and healthiest ones. This is a normal and reasonable process. But for outsiders who can only see the selected fruit, it is hard to get the whole picture. They may wrongly conclude that most, or even all, of the fruit is in such good shape.

The term "cherry picking" is thus used to describe the tendency of people favoring information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses, while ignoring cases or data that may contradict that position. This "confirmation bias" may occur as selective attention while gathering information. If you believe something/someone is bad, you tend to notice negative evidences more easily or recall mainly bad memories to prove the argument. You see what you are looking for. It can also be partial and biased interpretation. People see things through lenses. Even if two individuals are presented with the same information, they can still draw different conclusions based on their preconceived opinions.

When someone is assigned or paid to advocate a particular position, like a debater or a lawyer, he or she may pick cherries intentionally. In normal circumstances, cherry picking is a common unintentional act that anybody may perform automatically without even noticing. Some scholars explain this with the limitation of our ability to handle complex information. When things get complicated, people tend to look for shortcuts, which in this case mean "availability heuristics" - the ideas that readily come to our mind or easily follow our train of thought.

Other researchers suggest that confirmation bias involves emotional motivations. In a study during the 2004 US presidential election, a group of people were shown contradictory statements by all candidates. A MRI scanner was used to monitor their brain activity when they were asked to evaluate the information. When it came to their favored candidate, the subjects' emotional centers of the brain were aroused, which didn't happen with the other statements. Our desire to believe and to defend our beliefs blinds us. We don't like to be wrong. We intuitively seek to confirm rather than falsify hypotheses because confirmation makes us feel confident and proud. To overrule a preconception, we need very powerful evidences and at the same time very strong will.

Imagine several people going to the same design meeting. Their debriefings after the meeting could be very different. The attendants may have caught only those comments that are in line with their own ideas, or put more importance to the aspects that interest them more. They may recall selectively comments from many previous meetings and insist on their own understandings. They may also interpret the bosses' verbal descriptions as utterly different material forms. With all these different hand-picked "cherries," those who didn't go the meeting would get completely lost.

Preconceptions affect judgment. We should all try to come in neutral and open-minded, and give fair evaluations to different opinions. Making the right call should be more important than proving oneself. I guess it’s easier said than done.
     

Watching from afar

 
This is one of those moments when I wish I were still in New York. The Met put up an Alexander McQueen retrospective, featuring 100 ensembles and 70 accessories from his two decades of work in fashion. Now I am on the other side of the pond, all I can do is to buy the catalogue and read from the press, watching from afar...

(All images are from the Metropolitan Museum website. Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø)

Titled "Savage Beauty," the exhibition showcased McQueen's wild imagination and dark romanticism. Maybe it's because he started his career from tailoring, I always find his design very architectural, paying close attention to the tectonic aspects of the garments.

Form

Many of McQueen's forms were based on the construction/deconstruction principles of tailoring. "My designing is done mainly during fittings. I change the cut," he once explained. "I spent a long time learning how to construct clothes, which is important to do before you can deconstruct them." A simple jacket became brilliant after a light touch of alteration. A dress in Plato's Atlantis, his last collection in 2010 before he died, showed the hybrid and juxtaposition of different fabrics morphing together with an organic curved cut.

Jacket, Joan, autumn/winter 1998–99

Dress, Plato’s Atlantis, spring/summer 2010

McQueen designed from the side, the angle that he believed to be the worse where you have all the lumps and bumps. "That way I get a cut and proportion and silhouette that works all the way round the body," he said. He worked with the body, and at the same time he wanted to push the silhouette. "To change the silhouette is to change the thinking of how we look." Does it really fit? could be the question many people ask when they saw the "Jellyfish" ensemble.

“Jellyfish” Ensemble, Plato’s Atlantis, spring/summer 2010

When McQueen wanted to fit the body, he went all the way. Inspired by the coiled necklaces of the Ndebele people of southern Africa, the "Coiled" corset carefully traced the female form with aluminum coils. Jeweler Shaun Leane made the coils one by one according to a concrete cast of the model's torso. Architects, do we have the same attitude towards our building sites?

“Coiled” Corset, The Overlook, autumn/winter 1999–2000

Material/Texture

McQueen always had bold ideas about what could go on a dress. He loved feathers. He was inspired by their colors, graphics, weightlessness, and "engineering." He tried to transpose the beauty of birds to women, both the elegance and the dark side.

Dress, The Horn of Plenty, autumn/winter 2009–10

Dress, Widows of Culloden, autumn/winter 2006–7

McQueen's use of natural raw materials became shocking when he made an entire dress out of razor-clam shells in the 2001 VOSS collection. There were also oyster shells in the same series. Later in the 2003 collection, he tried to achieve the soft oyster texture through hundreds and hundreds of circles of silk organza. Again, we could see the skills of a tailor through the use of draping and lightness.

Dress, VOSS, spring/summer 2001

Ensemble, VOSS, spring/summer 2001

“Oyster” Dress, Irere, spring/summer 2003

One of the reasons McQueen used shells was to emphasize the ephemeral nature of fashion. He also used fresh flowers mixed with silk ones in the Sarabande collection. "Things rot... I used flowers because they die." This reflected perfectly his unique sense of dark romanticism.

Dress, Sarabande, spring/summer 2007

Hair was another "crazy" raw material on McQueen's dresses. There was synthetic hair and horsehair in the Eshu collection. In his graduation collection, he encapsulate human hair, and some of his own hair, in the coat.

Coat, Eshu, autumn/winter 2000–2001

Dress, Eshu, autumn/winter 2000–2001

Detail of Coat,
 Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, MA Graduation Collection 1992

Reference

McQueen's graduation collection Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims was based on a London serial killer in 1888. His fascination with Victorian culture and death was also shown in a corset in the Dante collection featuring jet beading and lilac color which were symbols of mourning in the Victorian era. He once told Vogue in an interview, "I believe in history." It was no surprise to see many historic references in his work, including an English-Queen-style crimson coat and a crinoline of metal wire half exposed underneath a beige leather dress.

Corset, Dante, autumn/winter 1996–97

Ensemble, The Girl Who Lived in the Tree, autumn/winter 2008–9

Ensemble, Eshu, autumn/winter 2000–2001

As a Scotsman, McQueen was quite patriotic about Scotland. He used McQueen wool tartan in the Widows of Culloden collection, which referenced a battle in the struggles between England and Scotland.

Ensemble, Widows of Culloden, autumn/winter 2006–7

Pattern

Like the use of tartan, pattern for McQueen was never random decoration. It was another layer to the special type of beauty, the story, or the process of construction. In another Scotland-related collection Highland Rape, McQueen did his signature torn lace for the first time to convey a broken look. The way he did it was to cut around each flower to give a very delicate, torn appearance that reflected the modular assembly of the pattern.

Dress, Highland Rape, autumn/winter 1995–96

For the finale of the 1999 runway show, McQueen had two robot arms spray-painting a dress on stage. The model Shalom Harlow revolved on a turntable. Her movement and that of the robots co-authored the pattern. But was it all accidental? McQueen told us, “It was really carefully choreographed. It took a week to program the robots.”

Dress, No. 13, spring/summer 1999

The making of the No. 13 dress during the runway show

The McQueen exhibition is over now and it ended up among the Met's top 10 popular shows. (A friend told me it was 6-hour wait to get in on the last day.) I wish the exhibition would travel to Europe so that I could see the pieces with my own eyes. Maybe Lee should go home to London, perhaps V&A?