MOV experiment

let's see if we can get this to work...

good stuff...

mazal...

This guy's gotten me a few times...

Here's the scenario.  It's between midnight and six in the morning.  I'm either coming to or going from the studio.  I prefer to use the southwest access which takes me past the back side of the UMFA.  Every now and then I sense a presence in the window.  He's good for a sudden jolt of adrenaline every single time.  Generally speaking, I'm not a jumpy person but museum man seems to have my number.  In my defense... why is this dark silhouette staring holes through me at a time of day when the chickens are still snoozing?  It doesn't help that the scale is way off either.  He's got to be ten feet tall or better.

 

SEEING ACTIVITY

this "seeing activity" is a two photo reminder of the general anxiety I think we're all feeling while trying to learn auto-cad.

what is the name of the command that can help with this............... viewport(s) with an s?............

MY URBAN ARTIFACT

...a quick entry to document my artifact and record some of the ideas/concepts behind it.

-inaccessible access (once again)

-in order to understand the artifact you must "explore" it and find your way in

-step one must be completed before step two, and step two before step 3

-leftover elements may be shifted slightly in order to form useful configurations

Here are a couple of reminders that maybe concrete isn't the way to go.....

another trip to the "Chinese" site

...upon further investigation we discovered that our chosen sight is not a "Chinese" sight but in fact part of  "Old Greek Town".  The Gateway district was home to many different ethnic communities as well as a red light district that thrived for nearly a century and was illegal but "generally accepted as a necessary evil" until the early 1970's.

For more info. on the warehouse district you can download some great audio files here:

 

 Tour the Warehouse District by headphones

Here are a few more photos that interested me and affected my artifact:

...some things that jumped out at me about the sight:

-inaccessible access points

-strange access heights

-garage doors right on the sidewalk?

an urban exploration of downtown SLC

My digital sketchbook...

excerpts from Edward White's book Site Analysis:

"We are about to place our building within (an) active network.  It seems reasonable to assume that if we are to integrate our design gracefully into this network without destroying its positive aspects, then we must first make ourselves aware of the nature of the network through contextual analysis."

"In contextual analysis there is always the nagging feeling that there are some important design implications that lie one more step beyond where we have ended our study.  We can never know too much about our site."

***"We could continue to analyze the contexts of the contexts well beyond issues that are architecturally relevant."***

Quotes and Notes from Norberg-Schulz' Genius Loci:

"...architecture represents a means to give man an 'existential foothold'."

existentialism?

The term "existentialism" seems to have been coined by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel around 1943[11][12][13] and adopted by Jean-Paul Sartre who, on October 29, 1945, discussed his own existentialist position in a lecture to the Club Maintenant in Paris. The lecture was published as L'existentialisme est un humanisme, a short book which did much to popularize existentialist thought.[14]

The label has been applied retrospectively to other philosophers for whom existence and, in particular, human existence were key philosophical topics. Martin Heidegger had made human existence (Dasein) the focus of his work since the 1920s, and Karl Jaspers had called his philosophy "Existenzphilosophie" in the 1930s.[15][16] Both Heidegger and Jaspers had been influenced by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. For Kierkegaard the crisis of human existence had been a major theme.[17][18][19] He came to be regarded as the first existentialist,[20] and has been called the "father of existentialism".[21] In fact he was the first to explicitly make existential questions a primary focus in his philosophy.[22] In retrospect, other writers have also implicitly discussed existentialist themes throughout the history of philosophy. (wikipedia)

genius loci = "spirit of place"

"'Existential foothold' and 'dwelling' are synonyms, and 'dwelling', in an existential sense, is the purpose of architecture."

concrete phenomena and intangible phenomena

INSIDE

GATHERING

"...the structure of place ought to be described in terms of 'landscape' and 'settlement', and analyzed by means of the categories 'space' and 'character'.  Whereas 'space' denotes the three-dimensional organization of the elements which make up a place, 'character' denotes the general 'atmosphere' which is the most comprehensive property of any place."

OUTSIDE

INSIDE

"Any real presence is intimately linked with a character."

The wall between the inside and the outside?

MORE PRECISE

COMPLEMENT

SYMBOLIZE

"Architecture belongs to poetry, and its purpose is to help man to dwell."

"...dwelling above all presupposes identification with the environment."

"In modern society... attention has almost exclusively been concentrated on the 'practical'... whereas identification has been left to chance."

"The world is experienced as a 'Thou' rather than an 'it'.

amen and amen Schulz.............