Summer Holidays

Sunset at Segovia's Roman Acueduct

The Blog is going to be inactive for few weeks: summer holiday has arrived. I prefer to think that I am not going to post anything on vacation. Anyway, that just means that I will have some new experiences to feed this sort of intellectual diary that has become part of my life already.

Have a good summer

Miguel

Algorithms and Form Creation

Delanda’s lecture at Columbia clarifies the philosophical roots of algorithms in form creation. To begin with, you have to accept that there are two forms of considering the world: Rationalism (what Delanda calls European Idealism) and Empirism (what Delanda calls Materialism).

The thing is that that duality was the one Kant had to overcome and what allowed the birth of modern art more than a century later. Actually, the whole postmodern philosophy flourishes from the nostalgia of those days when pure reason ruled the world and Idea and Matter were one. In modern times (our time) that harmonious synthesis only occurs in art: no truth or desire can do so with complete legitimacy.

Manuel Delanda’s arguments are exposed in a rather attractive way, and are quite useful in order to relate form creation (generation?) to current philosophical debate.

Poetry and Politics in the Architecture of John Hejduk

Social Center Trisca

Towers in Gaigás

John Hejduk believed in the poetics of architecture. However, when his buildings are more architectonic is when they are simply buildings and not built statements. An example of this difference are the two buildings in Spain by him (thanks again, Clara): one is a built poem; the other a beautiful and useful building. Both are authentic jewels and both are in Santiago de Compostela. It is good, anyway, to read, watch and listen to his poetry first hand, and to contemplate his paintings-designs too.

Above all, Hejduk was a passionate professor of architecture:

" I believe in the social contract therefore I teach. I believe that the University is one of the last places that protects and preserves freedom, therefore teaching is also a socio/political act, among other things. I believe in books and the written word, therefore I fabricate works with the hope that they will be recorded in books. I am pragmatic and believe in keeping records. I believe to record is to bear witness. The book I wrote, Victims is to bear witness and to remember. I believe in the density of the sparse. I believe in place and the spirit of place."

John Hejduk