Ships.
By God's grace, i met Eveleen tonight.
byGod's grace as i was pondering more and more about corbusier and richard meiers houses, i felt that there was something more that drew the two together more than anything..

i felt that since Meier is an avid corbusier fan, he probably would have digested some of corbu's ideas.
and i feel in the douglas house he wasn't really looking into the floor plans as much as he was trying to convey his agreement with corbusier's idea about Eyes which do not see.

"a frivolous art leers upon a world which has need rather of organisation"

perhaps meier is echoing this.

both houses are designed for rich people.
Corbu's Villa stein was seen as a

what if we all lived in gigantic bridges?
what if we lived in gigantic suspension bridges that housed apartments.
what if these bridges connected each other like the intricate systems of roads and what if we had a highway of buildings ??

the 5 points of architecture

i realised, upon reading abit of corbusier that the 5 points of architecture point to the pilotis.
what are the 5 points,
1) pilotis
2) free facade
3) free floor plan
4) ribbon windows
5) roof gardens

apart form the roof gardens, the other 3 points of architecture were possible because of the pilotis.
and this pilotis is birthed from his conception of the Dom-ino system back in 1914.

free facade, free floor plan, ribbon windows and roof gardens.

i guess in my precedence i would like to answer the question of why these 5 points?

i guess it could be summarised to 2 points.
the pilotis and roof gardens.
the other 3 points are the by products made possible because of the pilotis.

but looking on the reverse side, could there be a possibility that could load bearing walls still happen in a pilotis?
and the furthur question is whether there could be a new way of load bearing that could revolutionize how buildings are created and what are the new possibilities of that?
why i say this is because from the way i see it, architecture entered a new era ever since walls stopped become load bearing and pilotis or the dom-ino system came into being.
walls no longer determined the scale of the building.
with pilotis an infinite possibilities of buildlings in scales unachievable in the past become plausible.

my question now is there a more efficient way of load bearing that can be used to create buildings that defy gravity yet are perfectly sound engineering wise.

could buildings of massive scale be built in inverted l shapes?
imagine if buildings could be like trees which have planty of branches and not topple over.
the possiblity of opening up land space would be much greater. and the abundant space in the sky could be used.
just imagine an urban forest literally.

how about an inverted pyramid ? would such a structure be physically possible?

i believe that would lead architecture to the next level and heavily manipulate technology and pully systems of most intricate complexities.
steel cables would probably need to be thinner with the strength and flexibility of spider webs in relative strength.
new methods of reducing friction and materials of unbelievable hardness perhaps equivalent if not stronger than that of diamond would have to be utilised.

somehow, i feel this is not impossible.
i know i am not the first person to think of this idea.
i wonder if i'll live the day when this happens.

Things seem to making sense now.
And the context to which i should be exploring between richard meiers and le cobusiers villa savoye is their verticle movements in the houses.not forgetting the experiential qualities that a person will feel as he enters the house and moves about in it vertically. as well as the exploration of the extensive use o pilotes in the douglas house.

but, i need to make alot of references to his book on towards new architecture and draw out ideas which are similar to richard meiers.

and at the same time, i would like to discover the influence that richard meier has from corbusier not in terms of copying blindly becase both of them are intellual beings who do not simply copy forms and ideas without logical reasoning.

i am sure that richard meier's work has been influenced greatly by the 5 points of arhitecture and i feel that he has used them and interpreted them in his way, and made it part of him yet not a copy of corbu.

so there is individual style yet there is a logic behind that style.
which is why richard meiers is so respected.not just the superficial similarity but.
i hope that through thorough examination of his floor plans i would be able to realise richard meier's expression of his architectural ideas and how they point back to corbusier's influence on him..

and i hope to draw concrete links not merely superficial ones.

and i believe there is potential in this arena of argument.

hi,
this is my first post on this blog.
well, i would like to just write down my thoughts on architecture here.
so here goes.

18 of october.
Today was an interesting discussion about international style.
cramped 2 books and watched a video on yoyoma and learnt how something as abstract as music and architecture actually have a possible link.

Erwin added an element of competitiveness today when he dropped in prizes in the form of books.
boy.. so fun!
i was kinda disappointed that i didn't get the book today.
was hoping my essay got read out but..
hey.. theres always a next time.
and yeah! i want the rem koolhas booK!!!!
smlxl or delirious new york would be nice!
heard all the good reviews about it.
yeah.
kinda low on cash though.

but back to the post.

i'm thinkin about the problem of how to link richard meiers with corbusier.
i need to find a link where i can draw a parallel between his smith house and corbu's villa savoye.

Right now the only link i can think of to draw those two works together is their use of white, the pilotes, and well. meier is a big fan of corbu, so there has to be something at work that Meiers has seen and applied from corbu.
he has a house though that resembles the villa savoye alot! well part of it for that matter. its the house in westbury. but on second thoughts.. perhaps i was mistaken.

ok.
so i shall type out some nice quote from richard meier now.

as alberti said,' beauty consists in a rational integration of the proportions of all the parts of a building in such a way that every part has its absolutely fixed size and shape and nothing could be added or taken away without destroying the harmony of the whole".
" My rigor also is a seach for clarity.
This search, for me, begins with the plan. THhe plan whcich seems to have been nedlected of late, is in fact the key. The two-dimensional image contains within it the instructions for the three-dimensional object that is the building. Together with the section, it generates the building. WHile the elevation tends to pictorialize the plan and section speak to the architect abou spatial ideas. but of the two, the plan is the most convincing and fundamental expression of architectural ideas. I do believe that buildings should speak. in My work, the use of a specific and internally consisten vocabulray of elements and themes overthe years has allowed me a coherent, evolutionary means of expression. But if my vocabulary has to a large degree remained unchanged, the process wby which i manipulate and assemble this vocabulary in an architectural dialogue with the urban and historical context has become more complex and compreshensive, an intellectual developement which has coincided with the growing scope and complexity of our recent commisions.
i believe that in being sensitive to context and in evaluating it, one must know when to ignore it.
sometimes a decision to turn one's back on a negative context can become a positive gesture..
allowing a structureto create its own context, to mitigate the negative surrounds through the provision of a postitive one.