Building Furniture & Eisenman Lecture
Yes, I know I owe you email. All of you.
Sawdust, glue, soap, acetone, water, soap, sawdust, varnish, soap, sawdust, varnish, soap.
"You're the only american here, aren't you?"
11:38am Update
Last night Peter Eisenman gave a lecture at
MIT that was his attempt to process the WTC event. He brought up a
critical point that echoed what I've been wondering about: the wtc is not
the actual center of Capital, or even business, globalization, westernism
(he kept saying "westernity" and I cringed every time). It was back office
space. Thus unlike the attack on the Pentagon-- both symbolic and literal
home of US military-- the WTC attacks were on a solely symbolic target
isolated by architectural means.
I argue that the WTC became a symbol of all that is West through imposition. They imposed themselves on NY, the surrounding landscape (at sunrise and set the tower's shadow stretched across the river) in a way very similar to the IMF and World Bank's insertions into The South. This is pretty obvious. After hearing his thoughts about the WTC, and then hearing Eisenman talk about how Munich wants a new stadium that's not only for sports but "a place to remember" (the 1972 tragedy but also, he implied, general tragedy) I walked away wondering if the decon buildings of the 90s-00s are going to become some sort of new monumentalism. Maybe they already are?
He showed two skyscrapers designed 6 months ago that has particular relevance in the wake of 9/11. They were desiged by taking the grid of Manhattan and the grid of queens and torquing them to produce a sort of bulge in the middle. The result looked something like a skyscraper in mid collapse. It was also, perhaps, the figure from Munch's The Scream with all the horror therein.
The curiously named Cadbitch recounts a funny anecdote about a tiff between Eisenman and Gehry about their work in Berlin.
TaxiSocks: awsome. Thanksgiving is coming up, do you know what that meens?
nayrbreyob: what?
nayrbreyob: pie on your face?
TaxiSocks: You owe me $50
nayrbreyob: hahahah. ok.
TaxiSocks: or anything else I approve of
TaxiSocks: like a duck, or your dreamcast, or something else cool
nayrbreyob: a live duck?
TaxiSocks: no, wood one
TaxiSocks: or a live chamelion
TaxiSocks: or snow monkey
And one more thing: MIT's hallways look more like an elementary school than a college. It's amazing. Posted up everywhere are craft paper posters with photographs of clubs or associations engaging in Various Activities with poorly cut laser printed text pasted on to explain things. I don't mean to be prejorative but it's rather quaint
--Posted 10/17/01 11:50AM