nations, people, networks and hererarchy

Arata Isozaki was in town last week, complements of both Harvard's GSD and MIT's SA+P. I thought it was interesting how his work touches the idea of heterarchies. From his proposal for a floating Olympic network host hosted by all Asian nations together, to his non-directional performance space in the Akiyoshidai International Arts Village conceived of with Italian composer Luigi Nono in which there is no one central composer, to his Kashi Plan for an offshore capital island that grants no group favor, each work is influenced by confederation, willful union of equals, by heterarchies.

When he compares his non-hierarchical theater to traditional 19th century models, he highlights the centralized authority of the conductor, and the position of the royal box. The Akiyosidai performance space (1) has no central node, no axis implying a power structure. It is to be filled collaboratively, with musicians dispersed in the audience so that everyone is close to the music.

The traditional, 19th century social unit was prescribed by the distance feet (ours or horses') could take us. Now our networks are flung across continents and the globe. The 20th century has proven that the social structure of foot traffic is not entirely appropriate for modern scale. Maybe our new scale of activity requires a new format for interaction.

is there two or only three?

I've been thinking about symmetry and duality in space, especially since finishing reading Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown's book Complexity and Contradiction and seeing all that post-modernism and strange medievalism and especially Lutyen's buildings, a lot of which dealt with dualities and disunities.

In most disciplines, two is just fine, clear and uncomplicated. Math, science, zoology, romance. But with spaces, the identification of two necessitates a third - the space between. Even when we take two to it's simplest state- two masses or two voids - it can't ever be a simple duality. Even if there is no void between two voids, there must be, at a bare minimum, a mass. Otherwise there would only be one. The same is true of two masses - without the void they are one. It takes two( mass 2 and void) to define one (mass 1).

There is an easy and clear one, and an easy and clear three.

what riddles me is if there really is any 'two', or if there is only 'one' and 'three'.

math without the constraint of solution

George Legendre refers to parallel walls as 'cylinders of infinite radius', just one of the slightly off-beat and highly entertaining flights of his mind. He is the man behind ijp, an awesome firm with a book of the same name that is currently out of my reach. He claims to study 'math without the constraint of solution'. more to come.

Mineral accretion

Metal wire with a low voltage current placed in sea water will eventually collect enough mineral deposits to form a bit of rock like stuff supposedly stronger than concrete. first adapted for structures by architect Wolf Hilbertz mineral accretion seems to hold fanstastic potential for cleaner construction and possibly for buildings that grow in responsively... possibly for Neri Oxman-style tropisms?