As part of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Taiwan Pavilion, curated by Jimenez Lai of Bureau Spectacular produced a series of short interviews of architects, designers, and others surrounding the field. Each participant was asked two questions, what is your origin story and what advice to you have for early career designers. These became the Venice Tapes, a 12 video series.
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884. Georges Seurat. French, 1859-1891 (The Art Institute of Chicago)
The Art Institute of Chicago is one of the most popular art museums in the entire world. With its vast collection of masterpieces spread out though seemingly endless galleries, it warrants more visits than the average tourist will make.
It has been some time since The Operable Window has covereda product. It seemed about time that we jump back into looking at some beautiful
design objects.
Founded by two architects Benny Sachs and Eric Hoffman, Moda
is working to bring tactile play to an over-worked world. With the help of a (now
successful) Kickstarter campaign, the company is on its way to achieving just
that. For its first offering, California start-up has introduced the Waves
puzzle series, maybe the most aesthetically pleasing puzzles you will find anywhere.
“Moda originally grew out of our interest in model-making,”
said Benny Sachs, co-founder. “We wanted to make something fun and engaging for a broad audience to play
with shapes, geometry, and materials.”
The 49-piece laser-cut transparent acrylic puzzles currently
come in four colors blue, grey, yellow, and iridescent. This is to say you don’t
have to live with an unfinished Thomas Kenkade puzzle out on our dinning room
table when guest come over. Instead the eight-inch-eight-inch Wave puzzle will
fit into any tastefully decorated room. The individual pieces themselves are a pleasure
to hold and play with. A bonus is that since they are not made of cardboard,
like a normal puzzle, they are hardy enough to travel with or take along to a
night in with friends.
“As the world becomes ever more virtual, we all spend so
much of our time in front of screens,” said Eric Hoffman, co-founder. “Our puzzles help you unplug, make
something with your hands, and stimulate your creative instincts.”
But don’t let the puzzle’s small size deceive you into thinking
that it will only take a few short minutes to solve. While there may only be 49
pieces, since none have images on them, and there is no front or back (since
they are clear), normal puzzle solving techniques don’t exactly work. Instead,
one finds themselves looking for patterns and paying much closer attention to
the specific shapes of the individual pieces. On top of that there are at least
two known solutions.
For that that are puzzle masters, more than one of puzzle
can be ordered and combined in to nearly-endless combinations and compositions.
If you are reading this before October 25, 2018 there is
still time to get a deal on the one or more of the Wave Puzzles on Kickstarter. If it is after
the 25th, the puzzles will be available on www.modapuzzles.com.
“10% of all photos ever taken were shot in 2011.” Fortune, September 24, 2012, page 166
The contemporary amateur photographer may represent one of the greatest shifts in our understanding of Architecture through photography since the work of Julius Shulman. Their innate ability to capture the built environment in a particular, personal,way has shaped the popular understanding of architecture. The accessibility of photographic equipment and easy of image distribution have turned amateur photography into social act, compared to the artistic and commercial considerations of the prevailing canon of Modern professional photography. With the infinitely vast majority of photographs being taken and shared by amateurs, it is through this social aspect, combined with the undisciplined nature of the images themselves, that the movement exerts its influence.
The power of Modern professional photography is derived from the mastery of light, form, and composition. Diverging from its origins of simply mimicking architectural drawing conventions, it produces evocative representations of the built world. This carefully edited view of architecture is often more dramatic than the actual experience of being in a project. Also note, that a great deal of architecture has, until recently, solely been experience through these photographs. It is through this lens that nearly all architecture has been understood, by the discipline and the public, for the last 80 years. The implications of such a powerful tool of representation play themselves out in the popular imagination of architecture, as well as its use as a tool for design.
From Mies's use of the photo collage to the current use of digital photographic 3D space, photographic thought is a pervasive force. Contrary to professional photography, amateur photography often focuses almost exclusively on the distribution and quantity of imagery over photographic quality. This is reflected in the equipment used and the exorbitant amount of images shared online. Artifacts of inexpensive equipment, including barreling (the apparent bending of straight lines), color inaccuracies, and perspectival distortion, can be seen in most amateur images. In what amateur equipment lacks in photographic fidelity it makes up in ease of distribution. Most new cameras and camera phones can automatically upload images to social media networks as soon as they are taken. This effectively bypasses any post editorial or curatorial process. Photos are seen, as they were taken, in real time.
The implications of this can be subversively profound. Buildings which were once represented by a
handful of professionally taken photographs are now seen in thousands of unique images. The Barcelona Pavilion, as iconically described in Colin Rowe's writing, does not exist anymore. Rather, it is a building next to another building, in front of which Jacques from Lille posses, equipped with a fanny pack, tourist map, and an iphone. In a single image, or more likely a random set of 100 images, an amateur photographer can introduce a counter polemic to over 60 years of architectural criticism which was based on images of the original project. As weak of a polemic as this may seem, multiply this by every amateur photographer taking photos of every iconic building, or unknown building for that matter. If only through sheer numbers, a new general consciousness regarding architecture is generated through Flickr photostreams, Facebook walls, tumblr blogs, and Instagram feeds.
As poorly composed, yellow tinted, images become the images of architecture, architecture starts to become something else. Context is understood anew as unintentional bits of a projects surroundings creep into the frame. Materials and textures gain new attributes as they lose definition due to poor focus and low image resolution. And so goes many architectural considerations, as a visual society accepts a new norm. With norms, come values, and subsequently judgment. Architecture and the relation to it is then changed.
History would indicate that it is only a matter of time before this has an affect on design, and eventually built work. Arguably the excessive use of the Photoshop lens-flares in corporate renderings is the beginning of this. But what might a true 'amateur photography architecture' look like? Surely something can be gleaned from the blurry edges, half cut off pedestrian, and completely flat light. If not at the simplest level of materiality and color, space could be explored in terms of depth, procession and adjacency. More reflexively, an understanding of a public could be derived from the images they produce. It would seem that artist like Anish Kapoor might already have a distinct understanding of this.
Contemporary amateur photography is not the first 'advancement' to have implications for the understanding of the built environment, and it is unclear exactly what will be the outcome of this current shift. With the ability of the public to personally frame and share the built environment, comes the possibility of a change in the relationship between that public and architecture. With the sheer volume of material to perpetuate that change, there is a distinct possibility that it will be great change. Whether due to the social, participatory, or ubiquitous nature of amateur photography, it is clear that its influence will be unavoidable.
