John's points_
-I don't know if your architectonic-coral processes are best utilized here, in these such places, to stabilize and control, to meet rising water with rising boundary conditions? Or maybe this is just a slightly updated version of the old Holland/dikes scenario? And, really, these are not problem-solving solutions to the bigger global issues-
-A coral-based construct would be an incisively new approach with somewhat more longterm results.
-the water/notion hasn't yet gelled into a compelling strategy or a specific challenge. I do wonder if you are working just too hard to conceptualize a truly amazing, provocative set of drop-dead intentions...without a firm idea behind it.
in response to john's comment_
this is also the problem that i'm having as i try to apply strategies to these sites i realize that it is only a somewhat more longterm fix, in the end i'm proposing no solution to the root of the problems and i've strayed away from my original ideas about tectonics and making. systems thinking can be applied to the way cities react to a new environment but this involves urban planning, transportation and infrastructure much more so than architecture...
the oilplatform is a way of addressing these changes in a strictly architectural manner as an example or realisation of what architecture can be in a world where water is exerting its presence. At the same time the oilplatform IS the problem, a monument to the greedy selfish escalade driving oil tycoons that caused global warming and made water so unavoidable in the UK, Bangladesh and New Orleans... An architectural system attached to this monument of self-destruction transforms it into, dare i say, a "monument to sustainability." suggesting a direction for architecture which is adaptable and integrated with natural systems rather than opposed to them, and that in conjunction with systematic planning IS a long term fix and not simply a LEED Platinum one.
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Thesis Statement: Systems Integration
Architecture in its current state is isolated because it does not recognize itself as an adaptive system within a larger constantly evolving network. Subtractive, analytical processes serve to isolate the subject from the very factors which define them, while systemic processes derive order from cooperative interaction with dynamic systems.
Systemic integration is a way of understanding and evolving the connections between systems which have previously been understood as singular elements. This thesis specifically explores the ocean as an environmental network and a mechanism to be experienced.
The existing structures of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico provide a framework to which an architectural system can be applied to initiate this investigation. The oil platform as it exists currently is exclusively industrial and does not relate to the oceanic context but draws only from the oil reserves beneath the sea floor. To the oil company; when the reserves are dry, so ends the life of the platform. Thinking about this structural system as a part of a network allows performative and experiential systems to be designed for and integrated into the existing network.
This thesis explores how architecture can be designed through a process of compositing informational systems, which then informs the design network, which becomes the architecture. The architecture as a realized project and a process becomes an integrative tool.
Systemic integration is a way of understanding and evolving the connections between systems which have previously been understood as singular elements. This thesis specifically explores the ocean as an environmental network and a mechanism to be experienced.
The existing structures of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico provide a framework to which an architectural system can be applied to initiate this investigation. The oil platform as it exists currently is exclusively industrial and does not relate to the oceanic context but draws only from the oil reserves beneath the sea floor. To the oil company; when the reserves are dry, so ends the life of the platform. Thinking about this structural system as a part of a network allows performative and experiential systems to be designed for and integrated into the existing network.
This thesis explores how architecture can be designed through a process of compositing informational systems, which then informs the design network, which becomes the architecture. The architecture as a realized project and a process becomes an integrative tool.
Quotes
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
_Sir Isaac Newton, from Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855)
A band pointing towards the ocean epitomizing what human endeavor can accomplish at one scale with geometric clarity but modest deliberation, to give the scaleless sweep of the ocean.
_Louis I. Kahn
All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or to watch it -- we are going back from whence we came.
_John F. Kennedy, Speech given at Newport at the dinner before the America's Cup Races, September 1962
Knowledge is not a series of self consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is a part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness.
_Paul Feyerabend
_Sir Isaac Newton, from Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855)
A band pointing towards the ocean epitomizing what human endeavor can accomplish at one scale with geometric clarity but modest deliberation, to give the scaleless sweep of the ocean.
_Louis I. Kahn
All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or to watch it -- we are going back from whence we came.
_John F. Kennedy, Speech given at Newport at the dinner before the America's Cup Races, September 1962
Knowledge is not a series of self consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is a part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness.
_Paul Feyerabend
eyedeas
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2 comments:
nate,
i think you need to re-read john's comments, i think his use of the word "coral" is him talking about our collective nickname for you systematic architecture.
what i would read out of that is a concern about nailing down and following this process and not following the desire for the sexy super problem that we are going to fix to have a kicka** thesis.
we'll tlak more tomorrow night - but i think what you need to focus on is following the process. The rest of what we're throwing your way are resources to lend legitimacy to that process - not to distract you from it.
in some aspects i do think your gut instincts have been right but there needs to be a system of reasoning backing it all up. the site scenarios are what will help answer quesitons about which direction to head next, and where this architectural system is to be applied, we'll tlak more on this tomorrow.
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