# Last Year in Marienbad by Alain Resnais & Alain Robbe-Grillet

L’Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad) is a 1961 film written by the Nouveau Roman author Alain Robbe-Grillet and directed by Alain Resnais. This movie is elaborated as a narrative labyrinth activated by a very dramatic and repetitive way of filming the disturbing baroque setting that close itself on the spectator.

# Miracle Boxes /// Exhibition on Le Corbusier at Pratt

Professor Ivan Shumkov and his crew of courageous Pratt students are opening this Monday at 6:00PM an exhibition on Le Corbusier's work entitled Miracle Boxes. Pratt being one school that claims itself as fully part of the avant garde, it is quite refreshing to see that this claim still allows an exhibition on one of the most important modernist architect.

Here is the text related to the exhibition and the associated lectures:

Pratt Institute School of Architecture and the Pratt Library will present "Le Corbusier - Miracle Boxes", a multidisciplinary, three-part exhibition on the work of renowned Swiss-French architect, urbanist, designer, writer, and painter Le Corbusier (born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris), who is considered by many to be the most important architect of the 20th century, starting August 30, 2010. "Miracle Boxes," the first New York exhibition dedicated entirely to the work of Le Corbusier, is curated by Ivan R. Shumkov, Ph.D., adjunct associate professor of architecture at Pratt Institute. Shumkov will deliver an opening lecture that will be followed by a reception on September 13, 2010 at 6 p.m in Higgins Hall Auditorium located at 61 St. James Place in Brooklyn. The exhibition, opening lecture, reception, and an upcoming related symposium will be free and open to the public.

On view through October 15, 2010 in the atrium and in The Hazel and Robert Siegel Gallery of Higgins Hall, the exhibition's architectural portion will provide an in-depth look at more than 50 of Le Corbusier's public buildings, including all his exhibition pavilions, museums, theaters, cultural centers, monuments, and temples. Original editions of such seminal works as Vers un Architecture, Precisions, Le Modulor, and Le Corbusier Oeuvre Complete will be on display in the Pratt Library through November 20, 2010. In addition, a timeline of the projects displayed in Higgins Hall will accompany the book display, providing exhibition attendees with a comprehensive view of Le Corbusier's work over time.

To give Pratt students, faculty, and visitors an opportunity to experience one of Le Corbusier's visions first-hand, the exhibition will also include the Miracle Box: a full-scale construction based on Le Corbusier's smallest architectural project, or a "working cell" that was originally located inside his Atelier in Paris. The exterior façades will feature a selection of the symbols published in Le Corbusier's books, which, while not part of the original design, further represent Le Corbusier's work. The project is currently on view outside the Pratt Library, and will be installed in the lobby of the Library as part of its permanent collection following the exhibition.

Pratt Institute School of Architecture will also host the symposium "Voyage through Le Corbusier" on Monday, October 11 from 6 to 9 p.m. in conjunction with the "Le Corbusier - Miracle Boxes" exhibition. It will include presentations by scholars Kenneth Frampton, Mary McLeod, Jose Oubrerie, Stanislaus von Moos, Deborah Gans, and Ivan Shumkov who will speak about their research on the work of Le Corbusier and his legacy - which goes far beyond the fields of architecture and art in suggesting a plan for radical social change. After the individual presentations, the symposium participants will gather for a round table discussion and public question-and-answer session.

For more information on the exhibition, lecture, and symposium surrounding "Le Corbusier- Miracle Boxes," please visit http://www.miracleboxes.com.

The exhibition and symposium are made possible in part with generous support from Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown.

# The Five Obstructions by Lars Van Trier and Jorgen Leth

The Five Obstructions is an additional proof of Lars Van Trier's greatness. It is a documentary about the masochist pact signed between him and his mentor Jorgen Leth. In fact, Leth accepts to re-film five times his masterpiece The Perfect Human according to a set of constraints dictated by Lars Van Trier himself.
The severeness and intransigence that LVT imposes on Leth is disturbing and so is the latter's acceptance of it. However, Leth answers with five variations of his Perfect Human that are as interesting for their creativity than for their reaction towards Lars Van Trier's instructions.
In a nutshell, this movie is a beautiful moment of the creative process of art as much as an ambiguous theater illustrating the power of a human being on another one.

# Akha Love Huts in Laos

Whoever travels in Laos can visit at some point Akha villages hosting surprising elevated little houses as you can see on the pictures. Those houses called "love huts", are built by the village's male teenagers in order for them to invite girls for a celebration of their young libidos.
I ignore why those huts need to be elevated but their particularity is pretty compelling.

# Form follows Tax on Deconcrete

Daniel Fernandez Pascual recently published on Deconcrete an article as short as interesting about New Orleans' "shotguns houses". In fact, those houses have been shaped by the fact that tax applied on the frontage; by adopting the narrowest form as possible, those houses' owners were paying less taxes.
The second reason for such a name "shotgun" is explained by Candy Chang as a house typology that would allow to shoot a shotgun straight through from the porch to the backyard !
Both D.F. Pascual and C. Chang then evoked a similarity with the land ownership along the Mississippi (see the beautiful map below) reduced to its minimum as frontage, just wide enough to be able to load ships.

# Ballardian Architecture: Inner and Outer Space at the Royal Academy of Arts

On May 2010 was held an important symposium about James Graham Ballard's literary architecture at the London Royal Academy of Arts. This conference, entitled Ballardian Architecture: Inner and Outer Space, is composed by ten lectures by architects, authors, philosophers, sociologists etc. and two discussions that you can visualize here.
The emphasis is made on the ambiguous architectures depicted by Ballard in his novels, both fascinating and terrifying, monumental concrete behemoths that were born with a technocratic modernism.

Nic Clear (him again !), quotes Jean Baudrillard in his own lecture. In fact, Baudrillard wrote a small text about JGB's Crash that can be read by following this link on DePauw University's website.

Ballardian Architecture 1 - John Gray from static tv on Vimeo.

Gray's lecture discussses the latent and manifest content of spaces and buildings, comparing Guy Debord's notion of the spectacle and Ballard's investigation of celebrity culture.

John Gray is a philosopher and author. He has held a variety of academic posts and was most recently Professor of European Thought at the LSE. Gray contributes to The Guardian, New Statesman, and The Times Literary Supplement. Recent books include Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009), Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007), and Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions (2004).

Ballardian Architecture 2 - Nic Clear from static tv on Vimeo.

Nic Clear presents a paper entitled, 'J.G. Ballard is an Enemy of the Architectural Profession'.

Nic Clear is an architect and teacher at the Bartlett School of Architecture. His teaching focuses on the use of video, animation and motion graphics in the development and representation of spatial and architectural ideas and practices. He is editor of Architectures of the Near Future a special edition of Architectural Design questioning received notions of the future, drawing on such fields as synthetic space, psychoanalysis, postmodern geography, post-economics, cybernetics, and neurology.

Ballardian Architecture 3 - David Cunningham from static tv on Vimeo.

Cunningham discusses the literary aspects of Ballard's writing in relation to architecture and provides comparisons between Ballard's work and that of W.G. Sebald and Iain Sinclair.

Cunningham is deputy director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster and founder member of the editorial collective of Radical Philosophy. He is co-editor of the books Adorno and Literature (2006) and Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century (2005), and has published widely on modernism, aesthetics, urban theory and the avant-garde.

Ballardian Architecture 4 - Session 1 Discussion from static tv on Vimeo.

The discussion elaborates on Ballardian registers of time, the idea of the future, the uncanny, sentimentality and the impact of technology and social networking.

Ballardian Architecture 5 - Nigel Coates from static tv on Vimeo.

In this lecture, Coates explores points of contact between Ballard's work and his own architectural practice.

Coates is an architect, designer and teacher. His buildings in Japan include the Wall, Noah’s Ark and the Art Silo, and in Britain, the National Centre for Popular Music, Powerhouse::uk and the Geffrye Museum. He is also a prolific designer of lighting and furniture, with links to Alessi, AVMazzega, Ceramica Bardelli, Frag, Fratelli Boffi, Poltronova, Slamp and Varaschin. He is currently Professor and Head of Department of the School of Architecture & Design at the Royal College of Art.

Ballardian Architecture 6 - Matthew Taunton from static tv on Vimeo.

Using the example of the short story Chronopolis Taunton investigates Ballard's engagement with modernist urbanism, Taylorism and Fordism.

Matthew Taunton completed his PhD at the London Consortium in 2008. His first book Fictions of the City: Class, Culture and Mass Housing in London and Paris was published by Palgrave in 2009. His research interests are in English and French Literature from 1850 to the present, urban studies, theory and politics, and he has published widely on these themes. He teaches at Goldsmiths, Central St. Martins and the Open University, and also writes for the New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement.

Ballardian Architecture 7 - Chris Hall from static tv on Vimeo.

Hall takes a passage from Ballard's book Terminal Beach and uses it to delve into ideas concerning the realities of internal and external worlds. His lecture also includes a consideration of Herzog and de Meuron's recent project Lincoln Rd. Car Park.

Chris Hall is a freelance journalist and writer who interviewed JG Ballard for Time Out and icon magazine, among others. His essay "Extreme Metaphor: A Crash Course in the Fiction of JG Ballard" (1997) was one of the first online articles about the author. He also runs Will Self's official website, will-self.com.

Ballardian Architecture 8 - Joanne Murray from static tv on Vimeo.

In this lecture Murray explores the links between Ballard and New Brutalism.

Joanne Murray is currently in the final stages of her PhD at Birkbeck College. Her thesis explores notions of ‘equivalence’ and the articulation of aftermath in New Brutalism and the fiction of JG Ballard. Joanne teaches Media and Cultural Studies at Kingston University.

Ballardian Architecture 9 - Dan Holdsworth from static tv on Vimeo.

Dan Holdsworth talks about his photographs in relation to JG Ballard’s writings

Dan Holdsworth creates landscape photographs in which the subtle merging of nature, architecture and technology combine with dramatic effects of light and space to produce powerful visions of our contemporary world. Holdsworth's photographs have a global range, from the apparently mundane car parks and motorway intersections – to the sublime glacial topography of Iceland.

Ballardian Architecture 10 - Tim Abrahams from static tv on Vimeo.

Tim Abrahams talks about Shanghai at the time of the setting of Ballard’s Empire of the Sun and compares it to the city in the present day.

Tim Abrahams is a journalist and Associate Editor of Blueprint and a regular contributor to Building magazine. As well as writing for a host of other publications including Wired, New Statesman and GQ Style, he is also editing a book on collaboration between architects and other professionals, published by Birkhauser.

Ballardian Architecture 11 - Session 2 Discussion from static tv on Vimeo.

Ballardian Architecture 12 - Claire Walsh from static tv on Vimeo.

Claire Walsh, JG Ballard’s partner, shared his passionate interest in architecture and the built environment. In their 40 years together they explored Europe, from Corbusier’s cabin and the Alhambra to the Heathrow Hilton and Westway. Claire is an editor and researcher.

# Within Big Bambu at the Metropolitan Museum

Lots of things have been already posted online about the Metropolitan Museum's current terrace exhibition, Big Bambú by Starn Studio; nevertheless I decided to publish some of the photographs I took yesterday while visiting the exhibition. But, rather than attempting to explain the form of this installation (that you can probably find somewhere else), I preferred to insist on the complexity of the lines in order to lost the viewer.

One has to admit that Big Bambú is not as extreme than in its former version (see previous post) since the MET requested a horizontal platform for people to walk on (at least, those who survived from the pretty bad organization of the museum) which forced the installation to re-adopt a more traditional structure made of vertical and horizontal lines than the previous one.

Despite this fact, one can still imagine a giant bamboo forest populated by hundreds of Barons in the Trees moving from branch to branch without ever touching the ground again...

# PALESTINIAN CHRONICLES /// Abandonned structures near Ramallah

While walking on Ramallah's hills (near Beituniya), I once catch sight of peculiar buildings on further away hills. Those buildings are actually concrete structures which have been part of an interrupted construction between the two Palestinian villages of Ein Kinya and Mazra'a al-Qibliya and close from the Israeli settlement Talmon (that you can see on my second photograph).
According to my source (thanks Dror !), it was very likely Palestinian constructions that have been stopped by the Israeli when the second Intifada (2000) started. If it is the case those abandoned structures are an architectural instant, symbol of the Israeli control over Palestinian lives.
I even found another picture of them from another point of view (see the last photograph). If anybody has some more, I would be very interested to see and publish them.

# Eco Commune by Richard Hardy (Weareom)

Eco Commune is a beautiful short movie by Richard Hardy for Nic Clear's (see previous posts 1 and 2 and his manifesto for boiteaoutils) studio at the Bartlett. This film introduces a 2050 post-apocalyptic London gained by vegetation and wild animals. The city is eventually re-appropriated by humans but only in a way that consider those hybrids of ruins and nature as the new fabric of their environment.

See also his Transcendent City and its Miyazaki-like graphics.

THE ECO-COMMUNE from Richard Hardy on Vimeo.

# Lebbeus Woods' Labyrinthine Wall for Bosnia

This project has been posted by Lebbeus Woods on his blog a year and half ago and it certainly catch my interest for walls, borders and labyrinth. As a matter of fact, this project gathers those three typologies in one as a poetical response to the Bosnian war of 1992-93.
Lebbeus Woods imagines this monumental wall all around Bosnia which does not forbid its entry but rather make it more difficult by the experience of this labyrinth. He narrates how this giant edifice would ultimately becomes a whole city (probably started by people who never found the exit).
His text can be read on his blog but another explanatory paragraph deserve attention when Woods answers to a criticism of a comment posted on it:

"You are certainly correct in saying that the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was not as simple as my project seems to suggest. However, there were trench lines around Sarajevo, manned by the Bosnian army and Sarajevo citizens, and these prevented the Bosnian Serb military forces from overrunning the city. I was in Sarajevo several times at the height of the siege, and knew many architects who would fight in the trenches half the day, then return to their houses and offices and work on their ideas for rebuilding the city.

I also agree that walls are often used to divide people. This work and others are meditations on how walls can unite them. It remains to be seen whether or not they might be useful.

There is no doubt, however, in light of the known facts that Serbia and Croatia directed the destruction of BiH. The Muslim majority bear some responsibility for having declared independence based on their slim numerical majority, without considering the consequences. And the governments of the West bear some responsibility, too, for offering recognition of BiH independence too quickly and also heedless of the feelings of Serbs and Croats. But the ultimate responsibility for the destruction belongs to the destroyers.

Finally, it must be said that Sarajevo was much more diverse in its people before the war than after. Many Serbs and Croats left with the signing of the Dayton Accords. Many Muslim refugees sought refuge from the notorious ‘ethnic-cleansing’ campaigns carried out by Serbian military and paramilitary forces in the smaller towns and villages. Sarajevo is not the cosmopolitan city it once was, but today far more ethnically polarized."

# Pratt first year student's work by Roberto Godinez

Let's start this new Academic Year with a refreshing first year's student work. Roberto Godinez was in Enrique Limon's studio at Pratt Institute last semester and following the rule of the assignment (aggregation of a standard element composing a landscape, then appropriation of this landscape by a wooden architecture), he created this beautiful space of meditation under the rocks (or concrete blocks) he first set.