Desde La Habana {Dibujas y Recuerdos}

…. “Music is a total constant. That’s why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just [...]

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Desde La Habana {Imágenes y Son}

  ‘Habana is very much like a rose,’ said Fico Fellove in the movie The Lost City, ‘it has petals and it has thorns…so it depends on how you grab it. But in the end it always grabs you.’ “One of the most beautiful cities in the world. You see it with your heart.” Enrique [...]

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Winter Venice

In the winter, Venice is like an abandoned theatre. The play is finished, but the echoes remain. Arbit Blatas To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius. Alexander Herzen [...]

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Thinking Deconstructivism in a Canyon

” In recent years , the modern understanding of social responsibility as functional program has been superseded by a concern for context. But contextualism has been used as an excuse for mediocrity, for a dumb servility within the familiar. Since deconstructivist architecture seeks the unfamiliar within the familiar, it displaces the context rather than acquiesce [...]

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Quotes from Jeremy Till’s ‘Architecture Depends’

  On April 08, 2011 I attended Till’s  provocative  lecture on his new book ‘Architecture Depends’. Here is a review from The Architects’ Journal (UK). Here are some quotes from that day, from my notes, which i hope to be as faithful as possible: The book was initially titled ‘Architecture and Contingencies’. The publisher made [...]

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Drawn Resolutions (and calling for mandatory poetry)

  As designers, architects, artists, we use the ability to first visualize then communicate  a desired outcome. Implementation means having the courage, discipline and perseverance  to  bring that vision into the physical realm. I love to write, and to write lists, but this year I am doing something different with my 2011 resolutions. I am drawing them. It [...]

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The Flâneur: A Radical-Chic Icon

” There was the pedestrian who wedged himself into the crowd, but there was also the flâneur who demanded elbow room and was unwilling to forego the life of the gentleman of leisure. His leisurely appearance as a personality is his protest against the division of labour which makes people into specialists. It was also [...]

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Dispatches from Milano: Sketching and Card Making

 In the monastery adjacent this church, just a few minutes’ stroll from my house, one can find Leonardo Da Vinci’s ’Last Supper’. The apse (widely attributed to Donato Bramante, and dated around 1490) is significant as it signals a crucial transition from the Late Gothic style of the nave to a splendid Northern Italian Renaissance in the [...]

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The Beginnings of Architecture

From my Friday’s History Class. The Beginnings of Architecture covers Stonehenge, the caves at Lascaux and Altamira, and what we consider the beginning of the urban revolution in our hemisphere, the proto-cities of Catal Huyuk and Jericho. I will share weekly  my History powerpoints, well, okay, the ones I consider complete…next I want to sharpen [...]

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