Norbert PalzSUPER ROMANCE
To write about a future vision of Architecture asks for a systematic concept on how we can blend competing interests and possibilities, be they of technological, economical or social nature, into a building practice. I don´t have this systematic idea that is applicable for all cases at hand. I mostly work on "Wicked Problems" as Donald Schoen would call them. These are problems that mutate while you work on them. Maybe I am the wrong one to ask to write a manifest.
I am not Marinetti. But I know what I strive for.
I will try to explain why I am doing what I am doing through an example.
A couple of years ago I was visiting the site of the Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona with a group of students. I separated myself from the rest to experience the building alone. The site was under full production with stonemasons working and groups of tourists running through the aisles. I was going down to the basement, passing screens that showed some CATIA models and explained some geometric methods on how a specific part of the Passion-facade was developed. I descended into the model workshop and looked at the collection of analog and digital models that were at display, with the hanging model of the Colònia Güell church as the center piece.
I was looking at an architectural practice that worked with tradition and experiment, it seemed like a continuous romantic attempt to gather the best what a civilization could provide at that specific point in time, augmenting knowledge through practice. The idea of a building site that is still there when I will be gone someday was appealing since it negotiated the author through time, the Individual faded while the Whole became sharper in its contours. This experience had something uplifting humane that blended technology, spirituality, knowledge, geometry and death into a building.
At what stage this blend was taken place I was unable to tell; it seemed as if the disciplines were melting at a certain point of execution into another state that then "made" the building.
All this was not the factual reality, but my experience was.
I want to be part of a culture that does these things.
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Franz Kafka imagined it, Texas administration achieved it. Incarcerating and justice world is ruled by administrative processes and collection. Last example comes from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice which lists every information about death penalty condemned: crime description, name of the victim, age, race etc. and the "offender" last statement. What kind of human respecting administration collect such deeply private information and post it on the internet ?
