My dear Per....

First...I want to offer you my respect for your passion and commitment
to your idea(r).... although I do not agree with your approach. The
world has too many people who do not think and imagine and try to
reach beyond the ordinary...and you are one of the wonderful people
who are trying to do something new and creative.

For that I thank you and respect you.

Now I would like to offer you two thoughts that explain why I am not
yet a believer in your "3D-H" approach to architecture. My words are
meant to be friendly and helpful... they are not meant as an attack.

1. My first concern may seem technical...but I would like to point
out that... exactly because it is technical.... it is a very serious
concern. There is a question that many have asked you...and I have not
heard a good answer from you. That question is ... "What material do
you intend to use? ...and how will this particular material be formed
into the shapes you recommend?" Now maybe you think this is just a
minor detail...but I do not. In every human art....painting,
sculpture, music, ceramics, photography, computer graphics,
architecture... the relationship between form and technique is at the
very heart of the art. In other words, the form we choose cannot be
divorced from the materials and technology we use to make those forms.
Michelangelo's sculpture of David is not wonderful because of his idea
for it....but because he found within a highly veined piece of local
stone a form that he could use to express his idea of David. In art,
the idea and the making are not separate issues. This is profoundly
true of architecture. For example.... In ancient Babylon, the
beautiful city walls and arched gateways were made of mud bricks faced
in glazed tiles (btw....these arches were built a few thousand years
before the Roman Empire... so it is not true that the Romans invented
the arch!). Without the beautifully painted glazed tiles, the walls
and entry gates would not survive the extreme Iraqi climate. So the
details of the materials were a critical component of the
architectural form ...from the very beginning!!! Similarly, the
structural forms of the Greek classical temples were direct
reflections of the structural characteristics of the stone used for
columns and beams....as can be seen when we look at the radically
different architecture of the Japanese palaces at Kyoto....which also
used columns and beams....but now with wood instead of stone...so that
the spacing, proportions and openness are completely different. We can
move forward to any great moment in architectural history and see that
the physical forms are direct manifestations of the particular
qualities of the specific materials used. The wonder of the Gothic
cathedrals is the brilliant and sophisticated mastery of the stone
material available...which the architects (yes...these were designed
and built by professional architects, despite the nonsense folklore
that says they were built by the uninformed faith of the masses!) used
in ways that pushed the material to the absolute limit of its
capacities. We can jump ahead to the first masterpiece of the
Renaissance, the dome of the Cathedral of Florence...and we can see
that the form was ONLY possible because the architect, Brunelleschi,
understood that stone or masonry by itself WAS INCAPABLE of achieving
the form he wanted, so he introduced a chain of tensile material to
counter the forces created by the stone! If we jump ahead a few
hundred years, we see that the original stimulus for modern
architecture was the development....by industry and engineers....of
new materials that made possible forms that architects had never even
considered! It was in the search for how to use these new materials
that we get the wonders of Labrouste's libraries in Paris, the Crystal
Palace in London or the simply wonderful masterpieces of the Villa
Savoye and the Barcelona Pavilion. The fact is that the specifics of
how we make a thing are at the heart of what we make....whether we
are talking about the weave of a piece of cloth or the hand-marks on a
piece of thrown pottery or the rivets of a 19th century iron bridge or
the tension cables of a Calatrava structure. You have proposed
dramatic new forms.... but you have not told us what they are or how
they are made.... and this makes them either meaningless or ....at
best.... undeveloped as architectural proposals.

2. The second point is one I think I suggested to you a few years
ago....and it is equally important. Architecture is not really about
structures....it is about spaces for humans and their belongings and
their activities. Therefore, the shape of architectural space must be
driven by the human actions instead of by the construction. Any means
of construction is simply an interesting curiosity unless it forms the
spaces needed by humans. In other words... if the spaces are driven by
the structural system, it is simply an engineering novelty ...not a
work of architecture.

So...if I can summarize.... when you can demonstrate...through a
constructed example used by humans.... that your system is well-suited
to accommodate a wide variety of human uses, and is readily built by
humans ...then I will gladly pay attention!

Until then I will applaud you as a welcome visionary ...but not as an
architect.

Christopher

"P.C." wrote in message . dk...
Hi

"Christopher K. Egan" skrev i en meddelelse
om...
"Syd Mead" wrote in message
news:fhZcb.6374$Rd4.3448@fed1read07...


(big snips)


Don, (a draftsman/designer in alt.architecture) began calling Per "a true
visionary" etc.
It all went downhill from there.


.......................

For the record...I like Don.

As for his judgement regarding our dear friend Pers....

I will only say.....


I like Don.

Don likes the rebel in Pers....Don likes and encourages the guy who
has a passion and follows it.

I think Don cares less about the quality of Per's idea in this case
than the passion of Per the idealist.

I accept Don's attitude....more than Per's ideas.

But I also like Per. ...more than I like his ideas.

Christopher

Thank's for the nice words.
I just wonder how many of groups members who realise if it is easy or difficult
, to build from scratch clearing a new road.
Esp. when the last thing you want to do, is to build from scratch as if you pick
a brick your lead is done , and why pick a new road when you anyway will build
from bricks.
Ok , you then can decide that this new road must be projected with computers, so
after you spend your time not just being a user, but a super user and
application develober , then you are sure you don't just use the old method in
new clotches , ------ what the hell is then all these bricks laying around, when
the last thing you wanted to do, was to continue out of the Lego-Mind road .
Right then you get glad, as people with hands-on experience and knowing the
weight of the materials and the actural trouble with these must be the right
direction, ------ but then why is it the boxwork seem so damn'ed square , when
technology let you form and create just as you form, ------- why must one wall
have the weight of 500 ton, to hold millimeter thin sheets in the air ; is all
this hount for high-tech and fancy , just an attitude ?
Now I don't know if you fully understand when I say, that from mid 90' and even
before, the claim to visionary artists, been to be master of high-tech ; know
and master the software aswell as software , as "we want somthing new"
---------- Problem is, that even millions spended and just as much cluless
writing , all that came out of this hount for an image , is the sentense that
follow the claim "we want somthing new and fantastic high-tech " acturly the
next claim is ; " But the new thing we ask, must be somthing we already know".
Now this already fit with the idear that "the new" must be somthing
revolusionary , ------ except a few details. First it must not mean a revolution
and secondly it must not question the emporor. "The new" must not be so
difficult that the old architcts lose their posision and it must be so easy that
the same ones can lecture . You se "the new" and exiting options must not prove
better than a brick and it must work as how we laied bricks for thousands of
years , as if not it is not "new" , right ?
Beside when steel been cut and assembled with rivets ,bolts and welding for
decades, a "new" thing must ofcaurse be as rigid as alway's , as what is more
important than just getting a bright new Vision that bring new jobs is, that it
in not to be seen as somthing that question the settled way, --------- "we want
somthing new and fancy, but it must not look as being better than the old scrap,
and it must not challance our good friends".

The fight against the advanced high-tech tools I been bringing, have most often
not been a fight based on technical facts, ------- but one thing I learned in
these discussions is, that nomatter my self critic and systematic following the
few safe tracks I document with true knowleage about what I speak, and within I
work, ---------- You my friend can only understand the image you already want
to se. No one want "the new" , as this mean that a self thought guy, will
challance the gains and the social inviroment , -------- the emporors clotches
is not missing they just carry visual stealth and the thief alway's needed a bad
exchouse , a bad exchouse allow any academic to steal whatever , as long as the
rest of the crowd back up the bad exchouse, ------- just wait and se, social
harasment within the architectural world is not just about bullying , but I made
it a bit more difficult by publishing my works on the web.

Let me point to an old example ; I filed in to a contest and as you proberly
will know, I spended some halve of the short written presentation , to point out
that this was about new building methods and a direct link production method,
explained with good drawings and calculated in terms of cost pr.sq. meter build
, I recived the jury's papers that on first page wrote ; " not one single of
the 47 suggestions, did even scratch the surface or point to the obvious options
connecting the computer drawing with the actural production of the building
element" ---------- as so it continued.
Now please ansver me, if somthing is rotten in the state where the architects
display Liebskinds suggestion about a wtc rebuild ?

Please tell me if what you tell the students is not just one big lie.

You want another example , or can anyone already tell where all the nice
buildings that could have been , has gone.

P.C.