Architecture

Repost-A Quick Post On Brasilia

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Oscar Niemeyer, the man behind Brasilia, passed away some years back.

In the video above, Robert Hughes, sometimes fierce critic of modernism, stirs up controversy and I imagine took some pleasure in criticizing the utopian ideal of a city designed from high above, according to Niemeyer’s rational plan, and peopled by bureaucrats. Sometimes he’s a little over the top.

From a previous commenter on this site:

‘Brasilia is a great city, if you like decentralization and lack of culture! The planner based his entire strategy around the use of the car, disconnecting residential areas from commercial and making no allowance for walkability. He also provided no affordable housing, which forced many workers to set up favelas, or slums, outside the city.

The design of the buildings and landscapes is bare and void of the Brazilian history and culture. It lacks color, vibrancy, and community.

And the best part of all is that they clearcut thousands of acres of tropical forest to implement this chunk of sprawling, white-washed concrete!’

As for me, I find myself favorable to criticism of the political philosophy behind such planning and am worried at how many find it amenable nowadays. Yet, clearly there’s beauty in Brasilia’s design and it’s a feat of engineering to have built it in three years immediately after the fall of a military dictatorship. Some people might not mind living there.

Perhaps there are similarities with Buzludzha, at least with respect to political organizing principles, and what’s emerged from some quarters of Europe since the Enlightenment. Buzludzha’s the abandoned communist monument in Bulgaria’s Balkan mountains, which still draws up to 50,000 Bulgarian Socialists for a yearly pilgrimage. Human Planet’s Timothy Allen visited the structure in the snow and took some haunting photos. You will think you’ve stepped into a Bond film and one of Blofeld’s modernist lairs, but with somewhat Eastern Orthodox tile frescos of Lenin and Marx gazing out at you, abandoned to time, the elements and to nature.

One theme of this blog is how many people throughout the liberal Western world, knowingly and unknowingly, can be quite illiberal and quite comfortable with some very illiberal consequences of those ideas in action.

The Atlantic Monthly has more on Brasilia, see: “A Vision In Concrete“

Related On This Site: No thanks to living in planned communities upon someone else’s overall vision.: Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?…Repost-Via Reason: ‘Salvador Allende’s Cybersocialist Command Center’…Cities should be magnets for creativity and culture? –From The Atlantic: Richard Florida On The Decline Of The Blue-Collar Man…From Grist.Org Via The New Republic Via The A & L Daily: ‘Getting Past “Ruin Porn” In Detroit’… some people don’t want you to have the economic freedom to live in the suburbs: From Foreign Policy: ‘Urban Legends, Why Suburbs, Not Cities, Are The Answer’

A structure in the desert…not even a city Update On LACMA, Michael Heizer And The ‘Levitated Mass’-Modern Art And The Public;..where is modernism headed? Via Youtube: Justin, The Horse That Could Paint…

Denis Dutton suggested art could head towards Darwin (and may offer new direction from the troubles of the modern art aimlessness and shallow depth…the money and the fame) Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’

The Founding Of Peace Pavilion West-The Early Years

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The following is absolutely, 100% true:  Dale Lonagan is back in the news, and the usual  ‘Cult Leader or Visionary of The Modern Age?’ rumors have resurfaced.  I thought I’d add some color to this barely sketched tale of peace and progress (how did The Human Pagoda come to be)?

Not Dale Lonagan!:

218px-jim_jones_receives_the_martin_luther_king2c_jr-_humanitarian_award_-_january_1977_28229By Nancy Wong – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44427361

The backstory (indoor gamin): Dale Lonagan is the illegitimate child of an international bureaucrat and the climate change journalist sent to cover him.  Like so many orphans, Dale’s early life is one of hardship.  He was abandoned and neglected, but fortunately for humanity, he was cast adrift within the bosom of collective progress.

The lad learned to survive within the corridors of diffuse economic and unelected bureaucratic power, selling stolen hand-soap at the bathrooms and cafeterias of 405 E. 42nd St:

512px-vincent_van_gogh_-_gamin_au_kc3a9pi_28camille_roulin292c_1888Vincent van Gogh [Public domain]

For years, the boy knew only the touch of linoleum and cold marble, drifting off to sleep to the soft sursurrations of motions passing the floor.

***How the outside world may have looked to a young wharf child, peering out from within The International Style:

512px-united_nations_-_new_york2c_ny2c_usa_-_august_182c_2015_08Giorgio Galeotti [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons

‘I’d just grab the gallon bags off a the truck at the loading docks.  The 10 gallons were bigger than my head. I’d stash ’em alongside my bed (a bed made of shredded U.N. resolutions). I slept myself the world.’

Enter Marine Stroop-Gruyere, Ambassador Minister Undersecretary for the Culture Of Peace.  This committed global citizen noticed a young boy darting and wrapping himself awkwardly within a row of global flags.

After months of debates within her own heart and mind, she took action. She coaxed the young savage from a translator’s booth with morsels of locally sourced honey graham crackers sold for $13.99 a package.  Stroop-Gruyere enrolled Dale in the United Nations Tour Guide Program.

Dale blossomed, soon becoming the youngest ‘Ambassador to The Public‘ in the history of the institution.

Year after year, watching gavels lift and drop, seeing commmittees come and go, a long view developed within this growing visionary leader’s heart and mind.  Dale began to see that his thoughts, words and actions could make a difference.

He was becoming fully human.

-To Be Continued:

Here’s the latest tweet I can share from Peace Pavilion West. Not all humans agree with the latest edicts from The Human Pagoda, nor that all of (H)istory has conspired to produced Dale.

The New Yorker is fast becoming a favorite of his:

A reader sends a link to a SF Gate review of poet Jorie Graham’s ‘Sea Change:

Dale has declared this collection worthy of human concern, empathy and care.  It is your ethical duty as a global citizen:

‘In “Sea Change,” Graham becomes Prospero, casting spells by spelling out her thoughts to merge with ours, and with the voices of the elements. The result is a mingling of perceptions rather than a broadcasting of opinions. Instead of analysis, the poems encourage emotional involvement with the drastic changes overwhelming us, overwhelm- ing the planet.’

and:

‘Strengths and weaknesses, flows and ebbs, yet every poem in “Sea Change” bears memorable lines, with almost haunting (if we truly have but 10 years to “fix” global warming) images of flora and fauna under siege. Jorie Graham has composed a swan song for Earth.’

Just One More Brutalist Link Or Two

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Via Mick Hartley via the BBC-‘The Brutalist Divide: Concrete Monsters Or Concrete Icons‘

Earthlings were visited, many times this past century, by beings from the planet Utopia.  Little is known about these curious creatures, but they were advanced, and went about vigorously erecting structures across our planetary surface.

What were they trying to tell us?

Concrete, as a material, was used, presumably because it was so common and functioned as our ‘lingua franca’ (so hard to use well).  Shapes were decided upon that might please and delight us (flowers, blocks, dodecahedrons), but also shapes that could disconsole, consigning some souls to work and live in an eternal present, possible futures winking upon the horizon.

Dear Reader, rumor has it these beings whispered in Esperanto, but only into the ears of those most ready to receive such comprehensive knowledge and advanced understanding; humans beings closer to knowledge of Universal Shapes and Human Destinies.

Personally, I like to think some of these humans being reside at the BBC.

—
‘The Architect As Totalitarian:‘

‘At the exhibition, I fell to talking with two elegantly coiffed ladies of the kind who spend their afternoons in exhibitions. “Marvelous, don’t you think?” one said to me, to which I replied: “Monstrous.” Both opened their eyes wide, as if I had denied Allah’s existence in Mecca. If most architects revered Le Corbusier, who were we laymen, the mere human backdrop to his buildings, who know nothing of the problems of building construction, to criticize him? Warming to my theme, I spoke of the horrors of Le Corbusier’s favorite material, reinforced concrete, which does not age gracefully but instead crumbles, stains, and decays. A single one of his buildings, or one inspired by him, could ruin the harmony of an entire townscape, I insisted. A Corbusian building is incompatible with anything except itself.’

I noticed a mini-brutalist revival there for a minute.

[Readers of this blog will know that the idea there exists comprehensive knowledge of ‘reason’, or the idea that political science will arrive at solutions to all previous political problems, or the idea that modern doctrines can provide ‘systemic’ blueprints for either buildings or political systems are all ideas viewed very skeptically here.]

You’ve got to be careful where you go looking for what’s good, true and beautiful.

As for Boston City Hall, it was built in ’69 and aims to be open, accessible, and [to] connect with Boston’s past:

Confusing inside!

As posted, a podcast on raw concrete in NYC here.

Brutalist architecture flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, having descended from the modernist architectural movement of the early 20th century. The term originates from the French word for “raw”, as Le Corbusier described his choice of material béton brut, meaning raw concrete in French.’

Some buildings mentioned: 375 Pearl Street is being worked on. The ‘Krull‘ Long Lines building is not for use.

Well, at least it isn’t Buzludzha, The Communist Spaceship plopped down as though from a world of Pure Ideology, Nature properly subdued:

Repost-A 9/11 Link

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For those who didn’t make it through, and those who did, and those who have worked every day to make it better…

Here’s a video of the memorial at night, from a few years ago. You can look into those holes, the water flowing down and away. You can also be with everyone else for a moment, looking at the beauty around you; the bustling city.

Addition: At the NY Observer, a firsthand account from the 77th floor of the 2nd tower.

Theodore Dalrymple At The City Journal On Le Corbusier-A Few Links On Brutalism

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‘The Architect As Totalitarian:‘

‘At the exhibition, I fell to talking with two elegantly coiffed ladies of the kind who spend their afternoons in exhibitions. “Marvelous, don’t you think?” one said to me, to which I replied: “Monstrous.” Both opened their eyes wide, as if I had denied Allah’s existence in Mecca. If most architects revered Le Corbusier, who were we laymen, the mere human backdrop to his buildings, who know nothing of the problems of building construction, to criticize him? Warming to my theme, I spoke of the horrors of Le Corbusier’s favorite material, reinforced concrete, which does not age gracefully but instead crumbles, stains, and decays. A single one of his buildings, or one inspired by him, could ruin the harmony of an entire townscape, I insisted. A Corbusian building is incompatible with anything except itself.’

I noticed a mini-brutalist revival there for a minute.

[Readers of this blog will know that the idea there exists comprehensive knowledge of ‘reason’, or the idea that political science will arrive at solutions to all previous political problems, or the idea that modern doctrines can provide ‘systemic’ blueprints for either buildings or political systems are all ideas viewed very skeptically here.]

You’ve got to be careful where you go looking for what’s good, true and beautiful.

As for Boston City Hall, it was built in ’69 and aims to be open, accessible, and [to] connect with Boston’s past:

Confusing inside!

As posted, a podcast on raw concrete in NYC here.

Brutalist architecture flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, having descended from the modernist architectural movement of the early 20th century. The term originates from the French word for “raw”, as Le Corbusier described his choice of material béton brut, meaning raw concrete in French.’

Some buildings mentioned: 375 Pearl Street is being worked on.  The ‘Krull‘ Long Lines building is not for use.

Well, at least it isn’t Buzludzha, The Communist Spaceship plopped down as though from a world of Pure Ideology, Nature properly subdued:

As previously posted:

–Visit Lileks.com. A fine humorist with a sharp pen and a keen eye.

Here’s Australian art critic Robert Hughes discussing the Albany plaza, and almost hyperbolically criticizing the aims of modernist architecture.

***Fun fact, he pronounces the “Boogie Woogie” the “Boo-gie Woo-gie.”

Modernism goes to the movies.

Some pictures at the link.

There’s mention of the Mt. Rushmore house at the end of North By Northwest. I suspect some among us have wanted to live in a modernist lair.

From an article in Der Spiegel on the Bauhaus, where modernism got its start:

‘The real feat achieved by Gropius and his cohorts was to have recognized and exposed the sociopolitical and moral power of architecture and design. They wanted to exert “effective influence” on “general conditions,” fashion a more just world and turn all of this into a “vital concern of the entire people.”‘

See Also: They designed a city in the heart of Brazil that really doesn’t work for people: Brasilia: A Planned City

No thanks to living in planned communities upon someone else’s overall vision.: Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?…Repost-Via Reason: ‘Salvador Allende’s Cybersocialist Command Center’…Cities should be magnets for creativity and culture? –From The Atlantic: Richard Florida On The Decline Of The Blue-Collar Man…From Grist.Org Via The New Republic Via The A & L Daily: ‘Getting Past “Ruin Porn” In Detroit’… some people don’t want you to have the economic freedom to live in the suburbs: From Foreign Policy: ‘Urban Legends, Why Suburbs, Not Cities, Are The Answer’

A structure in the desert…not even a city Update On LACMA, Michael Heizer And The ‘Levitated Mass’-Modern Art And The Public;..where is modernism headed? Via Youtube: Justin, The Horse That Could Paint…

Denis Dutton suggested art could head towards Darwin (and may offer new direction from the troubles of the modern art aimlessness and shallow depth…the money and the fame) Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’

Who Is ‘Rasta Dale’ & What Is ‘Peace Pavilion West,’ You Ask? Curate Your Body In Time & Space-Some Links

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Christian Alejandro Gonzalez reviews this book at Quilette:

‘Intersectionality is not just a branch of feminism, a means by which to advance women’s interests, or an analysis of matters of social concern. It is an all-encompassing philosophy that advances a unique politics, metaphysics, aesthetics, and epistemology, as well as its own (rather bizarre) interpretation of history. It is effectively a secular religion.1′

Many liberation-based ideologues and radical discontents have ridden the postmodern waves into academies and various other institutions of influence.

This blog operates under the assumption that, generally, people who’ve only conceived of the world as a series of power relationships, or fumblings of Self against the objectively meaningless void, or through lenses of collectivist oppression and victimhood, are generally people to be nowhere near positions of authority and stewardship.

Hey, it’s just the Arts & Sciences, as well as your freedoms.

—

Who is ‘Rasta Dale’?

Despite his humble beginnings as the bastard son of an itinerant diplomat and the global-warming journalist sent to cover him, Dale has worked hard to become the supreme leader of Peace Pavilion West. He oversees daily work assignments, Temple activities and breeding celebrations.

Protecting the environment, promoting women’s freedom and protesting warmongers here on Spaceship Earth are all in a day’s work in the community, and for Dale.

Here are some recent articles Dale wholeheartedly supports:

As I’m doing PR for PPW, I like to include my commentary when relevant.

Community Gardens IN THE SKY!

Of course Dr. Seuss should get political! Make everything political!

Dale had a dark period after the last EPA raid.  He was found in the Temple by himself mumbling ‘Now we are all zero-waste:’

 

Friday Poem-Wallace Stevens

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Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

–Wallace Stevens

Throw something at it and see if it sticks.  I like Helen Vendler’s interpretation….

What do you do with an uncivilized, wild land?  Import European learning and literature “atop” it?

The nature/culture divide?  Nature is wonderful but it is to culture where we must return.  If you are an artist, you turn towards direct experience in this land, but…you also turn to that which inspires you…European learning and thought….the products of other cultures.