Provocation 4

Identify the three most inspirational architects for you and write (for each) a single sentence of exactly 20 tightly articulated words, in prose, characterizing your interpretation of the essence of their work. The names of the architects must NOT appear in the sentence, and no project names can be included. Make every word count.

Stuck in the middle

A comment on Provocation 3

What we conceive as architecture, seems to be somewhere in between words.

Provocation 3

In writing on architecture how does the relative immateriality of text, set against the undeniable material and phenomenal body of architectural work, impede its efficacy? Or how does it, contrarily, improve our experience and understanding of architecture?

Provocation 2

The predominant organizing principle of most contemporary architecture is the 'program'; the human activities that a proposed work of architecture purports to accommodate translated into the simultaneity of an organizational diagram. Function, purpose, use and their diagrammatic rationalization continue to offer the generative order for new work. Acknowledging the statement by Pallasmaa that architectural design is above all an opportunity to explore the human existential condition; and accepting Kearney's recognition (following Ricoeur) that our existence in inherently 'storied'; what contribution can programmatic thinking continue to offer such a situation? How could narrative (story-telling) become a more viable process for the discovery of the relevant orderliness of our built environment?

Open Literary Submissions

Hey all, just got this in an email from the FPA student group office. Open submissions for a PSU literary mag:

Pathos Literary Magazine, PSU's student-run art and writing publication, is now accepting submissions for its Winter issue, to be released in early March! Short fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction, poetry, and all visual arts will be considered. The deadline for Fall submissions is February 5th. If you have any questions, or wish to submit something, send an email to pathos@pdx.edu. Please include text submissions as a .rtf or .doc attachment, or in the body of the email, and visual art submissions as a .jpg or.bmp attachment.

Provocation 1

Why is it that contemporary novels, poems, movies, plays, dance, even popular music, can often address, insightfully, the profound questions of being human and yet contemporary architecture, for the most part, is utterly incapable of doing so?