“Transparente”

Metro de Madrid: “Transparente” from Shinichiro Matsuda on Vimeo.

There are so many film recording the city in a bird's eye view to demonstrate the scene of the urban. This is a totally opposite one which only exist in imagination. Once the floor is made by glass, the actions of people at both upstair and downstair floor would be changed. And the interaction of above and under may make the two floors combine into one, or become ½ each. Maybe all floors would no longer exist. everyone is flying.

7 ½

[Film: 'Being John Malkovich']

7 ½ floor- a floor hidden between 7 and 8, where people need to keep bowing and be unable to walk upright as usual. There is no button for the 7 ½ in the lift. The lift has to be forced to stop by fire alarm and opened by an iron stick. For these using the unique space, the explanation that the strange floor is especially built for dwarves is just a silly lie. The space is kept secret to the public for some dark reasons.

It just like the society for many people’s living nowadays. Staying at an indefinite level, they could not go straight but give away to others.

In the plight of our existence, there is always this kind of space clipping or suspending in between. They are not in the right size in horizon or vertical for man’s use, working as a transitional part or for special using. For example, thieves always crawl in the ventilation channel showed in many movies. What’s that feeling? The viewing position is different and men would be possible to staring at these things ever ignored or even never found before. Once be focused on, these uncommon spaces maybe could perform in its own way and bring about some new.

Garden City

[Left Images: "Lorategi-hiriaren eskema, 1902.,"by Ebenezer Howard]

The Garden City Movement was founded by Ebenezer Howard in 1898 as an urban planning system, which made the central city, the garden cities and the country in between to be a self-sufficient unit generating under a specific rule. Howard believes that this rule, which carefully balances area of residences, industry and agriculture, would solve the problem of city’s growth.

Containing advantages of both town and country, these organized garden cities would withdraw the magnetism of the central city. Once the magnetism is reduced, there would be no longer endless expansion of the central city with population inflation.

Two garden cities were designed according to garden city principals which also influence the United States. The idea of ‘garden city’ is transferred into ‘garden suburb’ which is more practical. Without the commercial and industrial components of the garden city, the garden suburb is just a residential area. The quality of living is improved without the magnetism decreased.

According to the United Nations, more and half of world’s population live in urban areas since last year, which shows cities still keep attractive for most of people. In some developing city such as Shanghai Parks and gardens become more and more precious while the land price is rising. The enlargement of city could not be avoided. High-rises are always used to broaden the central of the city in vertical.

In the same way, a city could get to be a high-rise. When the country is laid above the town or the city, a new kind of garden city comes up. Elevators or tunnels will be substituted for highways, which quickly connect city and country.

PARK(ing)

[Image: "Forest on Foot", by Interstice Architects]

How to combine the city with countryside? In the project PARK(ing) Day, the metered parking spaces inside the city are temporarily transformed into temporary public parks as ‘PARK’ spaces. It aims to find out the range of possible activities for this short-term lease.

This project seems to be same as the Rockplug I mentioned before. However, they actually use the opposite ways to combine the city with countryside. One is bringing countryside to the city; the other is bringing the city to countryside. In PARK(ing) Day, although these are only short-term lease, the experience of nature is real. In Rockplug, there are trees surrounding you, but you still have to answer a phone call or type a file on a notebook.

People cannot totally get rid of city in countryside or on their vocation, they could be pulled back at any time instantly by the 3G network through a single iphone. Once they get back from the countryside, it is also impossible to throw the countryside away, because all the soil and seeds stick to your boots or coat are the extension of nature. Therefore, man become the media between the city and countryside.

City - Nature

[Images: "St Pauls- A late afternoon plunge,"by Jonathan Glancey]

[Images: "Aqualta: Times Square at Night, NYC,"by Studio Lindfors]

[Images: "Terminal 2 - Fryderyk Chopin International Airport,"by Kobas Laksa]

The common point of these pictures, which illustrate a future flooded London, New York City after a catastrophic flood and Terminal 2 at Warsaw airport when there are few flights, is all the artificial city space goes back to nature.

People always have a dream of living in a garden city or countryside in order to get in touch with nature. This kind of dreams do come true in these pictures and many science fiction films such as ‘Twelve Monkeys’, ‘I’m a legend’, in which plants grow out of the concrete while lions wander in a library. However, it is cruel to tell the differences between these scenes and people’s dream, that is people have to live in another way.

Factories would be abandoned once a city is no longer an industrial city, while airport would be out of use due to an unaffordable price of oil. Then wild cats appear together with weeds in these man-made buildings. In the same way, after some catastrophe, the city would be reshaped by the nature while human could do nothing. That time the city space will be occupied by nature really.

The conversion from city to nature is in conjunction with the break down of the contemporary system. Once the usual city working style doesn’t exist anymore, people will be forced to change the mode of living. In my opinion, if men really want to be close to nature while they are still inside the city, they need to change the living way, which could result from a new viewing way of the environment.

Rockplug - David Greene

Modern city life is strongly influenced by the impact of Industrial Revolution. Once people become unsatisfied with the present situation and expect to make it better, one would choose between looking forward or looking back. David Greene trys to pull the city scene back to nature by his project Rockplug and Logplug.

In Rockplug, 'the fake lump of rock that hide a high tech network node and power supply', David intends to make people still enjoy the modern life with electricity and other technology in a man-made wild environment. This project aims to get people out of those architectures designed mostly from the aspects of engineering and structure.

As a result, people would live in a city which looks like pasture or forrest, in another word, the city would pretend to be nature. However, it is not changed into nature but still a city, because it's merely a visual but not virtual nature, where people freed out of these iron prisons yet live in the usual way. The imformation they get passitively is in conflict with what they're doing. In my opinion, only when one believes a space as nature in his mind subjectively, would the space become wild to him. So what I attempt to do is just on the contrary, finding the place pretending to be dull, where man could act free and simple like a horse galloping on a pasture.when he believes as nature in his own will.

Wheatfield-A Confrontation

These two acres of wheat, known as Wheatfield-A Confrontation, 1982, were planted and harvested in Battery Park landfill in New York by Agnes Denes, an environmental artist. Denes believes her "decision to plant a wheatfield in Manhattan, instead of designing just another public sculpture, grew out of a long-standing concern and need to call attention to our misplaced priorities and deteriorating human values." (Oakes, 1995, p.168)

There are stark contradiction and strong contrast between the wheat and the surrounding environment in color, material, height etc. While the golden wheat was softly swinging in the wind, showing the beauty of life, the cold iron skyscrapers stood statically without emotion. The coexistence made the differences between countryside and city obvious.

Long before financial exchange in New York Stock Exchange or World Trade Center, Being self-sufficient is the original life style for human, which could be partially found in countryside now. Dislike in city as the battle for modern life, living in country doesn’t need to face the pressure and has a gentler pace and a more peaceful attitude. That’s why city people always have an illusion that country life is somehow superior to town life and look forward to it.

Agnes with two assistants and some volunteers represented the circles of growth and regeneration, “After harvesting, the hay was fed to the horses stabled by the New York City Police department and some of the grain traveled around the world in the exhibition” (Matilsky, 1992). But if she invited real farmer to join the project, behind the French window, what would appear in an office lady’s mind with the scene of cultivation? What’s more, if a farmer peddled the hay and grain in the Wall Street, what kind of the communication would be between he and a suited manager? It would be more interesting to see people’s act and thoughts in a real ‘City Pasture’. The contradiction and contrast in this act would be illustrated as the key points of my project through imagining these unusual feelings of city people.

PS: As Stuart said, actually the two acres were so small that were no competitive with Manhattan. It’s the photo that makes it exaggerated.

Notebook on Cities and Clothes - Wim Wenders

After reviewing Notebook on Cities and Clothes, I believe that it is a documentary not only on Yamamoto, but also on Wim Wenders himself, who indicates his own thoughts of life and the society as a director. Wim Wenders presents both of their ideas by using picture-in-picture and frames of different qualities especially.

First of all, lots of frames are shown by picture-in-picture, which is rarely seen on the screen. When the magnetic voice-off, which expresses the director’s mind, mentions one Yamamoto’s favourite book, the lens focuses on the book turned by Wim Wenders while in the monitor which is put top-left to the book, Yamamoto is turning the same book page by page in the same speed and telling his feelings about it. The things living in the screen do not exist, nor do the feelings told by others. What we need is touching, reading and feeling the things really by ourselves. What’s more, we should also display the things in a straight way.

Secondly, when representing the fashion show, Wim Wenders puts two monitors under the T-stage on the screen, and that makes it possible to see the moving models on Yamamoto’s clothes, the preparation of the show and the talk of Yamamoto about his design idea at the same time. The frame implies that the idea and the manufacture form the foundation of a work. So putting cause and effect on the same page may make the thing more persuasive.

Many frames were taken by an old 35mm and DV or were got directly by shooting at the monitor, so they are coarse and not true to the original color, and that make me doubt whether the film was made in late 1980s. Together with the revolving or inverted shooting, these unintentional fragments are intentionally combined with the rest regular parts. Here, Wim Wenders well organizes the proportion of regular and alternative, just like Yamamoto inspirationally cut out two pockets on a well-arranged dress. How to balance the plan and impulse is also a question for me.

Werckmeister Harmonies - Béla Tarr

Werckmeister Harmonies must be the movie with the fewest shots I’ve ever seen. The monochrome frames and excessive long paced shots, that the movie is famous for, are contrary to the regular Hollywood movies nowadays. Béla Tarr, as a consummate director, arranges the settings, the music and the pictures in a perfect way. What fascinate me most are the paced shots used in the entire film.

Generally, long paced shots appear no more than 5 times in a movie, which are assembled by montage for the main part. A director usually prefers using montage to paced shot because the former is regarded to be more dramatic and efficient, while the latter is boring. But this movie makes me ponder over the use of long paced shot all over again. As said in Martin Jay’s Scopic Regimes of Modernity, our vision is dynamic, jumping from one focal point to another. It follows the logic of the Gaze rather than the Glance. So the montage is more like the Glance while the paced shot like the Gaze. Why Béla Tarr choose the way of looking which is not coherent with our vision habit? In my opinion, it is because the camera takes the place of our eyes when we are in front of the screen, and that makes the Gaze possible. These long paced shots in Werckmeister Harmonies display the process of the story in an unrealistic way for the audience, who were indelibly impressed by the uncommon experience. From this point of view, the long paced shot is more fantastic.

What’s more, there are still three details in my mind. Firstly, as the leading role walking down the road for nearly 200 meters, the camera keeps on focusing on him with the same focal length and perspective without any omitting. It does show the distance sincerely. Secondly, the overall view of the crowed square is not revealed by Wide-Angle or bird-eye, but by the paced shot following the actor’s track, and that makes the understanding of the environment more limpid. Finally, when the actor steps into the track, the shot will continues focusing on the face of the container, and that strengthens the suspense.

However, these methods of presenting could work only with moving pictures, but how to translate them into a picture’s way?

Labyrinths - Jorge Lois Borges

Fact & Fiction
I still haven’t quite acclimatized to Jorge Luis Borges’s works. Once you read the fiction, you will know that the entire story, character and setting are fabled, but you can’t help yourself regarding these stories as real. The artificial world called Tlon, in Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, as a fictitious planet, is too pure to be questioned but at the same time has totally no convictions. I stay in the conflict of reality and fantasy, and fall into the trap which is elaborately organized by the author. The state of flux between fact and fiction gives me a brand-new feeling of reading and also a different way of thinking.

Rules
After reading several works from Labyrinths, I find the Borges sets specific rules in certain fiction, like one lock with one key. Only by reading in the particular way, could the audience understand the real meaning of the article. The game between the writer and the readers will make the readers attach themselves more to the story, and produce deeper influences on them. The key point is the participation.

Elastic Time
In a regular way of thinking, time flows at a constant speed which is usually measured by second, minute, hour and so on in our daily life. Meanwhile, we say “days drag on for year” maybe result from anxiety or worries. After so many years of education in materialism, I have no respect for the true feeling of myself, and just act as a surveyor, who treats the things in a “scientific” way. Why could the time stop for one year for the protagonist in The Secret Miracle? It is made by the God or himself? I know little about religious issues, but I prefer the latter instinctively. Maybe everyone have their own time which flexes in individual way. So I just need to be true to my self.

Pluralism
This is not the first time I met the Parallel Universes, but this is the first time I realize this way of thinking could be brought to my work after reading The Gardens of Forking Paths. Ordinarily, we have a series of process which form a tread in order to achieve an aim. But what if we make the aim not to be a determinate one, then the result will come out to be a net. The architecture may perform in diverse ways with multifarious choices of people, not limited by the designer in a fixed way.

The Opposite
Have you ever tried to assume the character of the opposition of who you are? If you were a murder, describe in the victim’s way; if you were a mother, narrate in the child’s way; if you were a boss, express in the clerk’s way. We should not only put ourselves in someone’s place, but also illustrate the fact, the feeling, and the notion in the opposite. It’s easy to think but difficult to describe, and that means you really put yourself in.

There are still lots of works I can’t quite understand. Read it again some day.

Daniel Libeskind - Chamber Works

Inside & Outside

The first time I saw the set of 28 drawings done by Daniel Libeskind, I tried to get the information by reading not just seeing. However, I could only describe the drawings as something having a kind of uncertain relationship with Architecture, partly maybe because I’ve already known Daniel Libeskind who used to engage in education of architecture as an architect.I have the same question “Why, for example, are these works architectural and not sculptural or simply concrete poetry”, mentioned in Peter Eisenman’s representation of the limit, though the lines and points could be found as fragments of some traditional architectural drawings. Without giving out the answer, Peter Eisenman sees the issue in a unique way:

“This is similar to the question; at what point is a shelter a 'house', or when is a structure 'architecture' and not merely building. Or in what context is a line drawn on the ground or lines on a piece of paper architectural rather than graphic or sculptural. Do they relate to architecture by a function: defining outside from inside, sacred from profane, shelter from not shelter? To invoke 'architectural' by a function is again to seek limits from inside, a return to form in a causal relationship to function.”

Although I’ve been involved myself in Architecture no more than 5 years, I find what we mostly focus on is the culture, function and the appearance. Actually, under the education which still hasn’t totally understood the Modernity, only function and appearance is cared about in the judgment system. As a result, we cannot define architecture without the function, which drag us in design. Till now I realize that maybe we have been tied in the small circle all the time, defining outside from inside complacently.

So I jump out of the old definition of architecture and read the chamber works again with the new conception called “Not-Architecture” which also brought by Peter Eisenman. As he said, a 'not-architecture' would be intimate with architecture, would know it, would contain it, as architecture would know and contain a 'not-architecture'; it would constitute a relationship to being by not being. I regard the ‘not-architecture’ as a new interpretation of architecture.

The chamber works has been accomplished for 26 years, but it may have some affinity with the “Living Architecture”. I’ll end this topic by the description in Daniel Libeskind’s unoriginal signs.

“This work in search of architecture has discovered no permanent structure, no constant form, and no universal type. I have realized that the result of this journey in search of the 'essentials' undermines, in the end, the very premise of their existence. Architecture is neither on the inside nor the outside. It is not a given nor a physical fact. It has no history and it does not follow fate. What emerges in differentiated experience is architecture as an index of the relationship between what was and what will be. Architecture as nonexistent reality is a symbol, which in the process of consciousness leaves a trail of hieroglyphs in space and time that touch equivalent depth of unoriginality.”