11.21.2007

Programming (the UN etc)

Ok, so the last few days have been considering program. To cut to the chase:

I had a brainstorming session (with AB) about program. I came up with 5 or 6 interesting ones. The big caveats were:
- "You are using the UN etc. to make arguments about architecture and agency, not about world peace and the like."
- "I should be able to distill program (that is interesting/important to me) from these, the arguments themselves are not the only things that matter (ie program is more important than argument/scenario)

Images of the blackboard (being as transparent and candid as possible here):


Based on this, I thought about 6 programs for a while. So far, the UN is the only one that has really gone anywhere fast. So in the spirit of ruthlessness and expediency, here is a slideshow ruminating on the UN as program, and Hong Kong and New York as sites. Its sort of all over the map and and loosely structured, but its doing something.

PLUS, ITS EXCITING! I am actually very into all this, and it dovetails really well with all my previous research. So, ruminations on other programs will proceed and summaries will be forthcoming, but for now,

HERE ARE SOME THOUGHTS ON THE UN AS OFFERING A THESIS (Including Proposal-ly things)

2 comments:

ab said...

ps -- love my cameo in the white board photo. . .

bryan said...

BRING.BACK.THE.LIGHTS. Those light discs on the backdrop in the meeting room are off the hook! Gideon would have loved it. As an aside, I went to Jordan's Furniture tonight to see the IMAX and the exterior of the theatre was decorated with large color-changing panels more or less exactly as those dudes in the 40s suggested a new monumentality may be.

This slide show is great and it brings me to a question: what are you adding to UN/NYC that doesn't exist? It's already a mini-city, it's already delirious. Seems like the task would be window dressing, minor re-arrangement of existing elements. Somehow lacking oomph, or perhaps I'm lacking imagination.

That's why UN/HK still resonates much more with me. Adaptive-reuse, far from being a cop-out, is a very timely issue and brings with it the whole host of logistical problems (construction order, 'flexibility,' etc) we started discussing the other night. At the risk of being too didactic, the HK site seems much more fertile.

RE: media, ego, social or casual power, and extremely large floor area... welcome to my nightmare. You have much cooler starting material though. LIGHT DISCS and satellites!

p.s. send me all of the UN dwgs. thanks. awesome.