Architecture as a metaphor…
As a lapsed architecture student I’m thinking about the usefulness of architecture as an analogy for social / participation media. With its multiple users, use-cases, semiotic hierarchies and iterative incarnations I think architecture can be a bit more helpful than the two dimensional advertising or conversation metaphor that is currently in vogue. After all, conversations don’t sit around providing context, direction and access the way that hyper-links and content (and for that matter doors and walls) do. But that’s just tonight’s thought…
Ark: Rintala Eggertsson, Norway
Ark is a tower of books inserted to connect book shop and library. Its as if the skin of the building has been flayed; it’s like looking at the cells of a library once the skin has been peeled away. What is word for opposite of spine?
Held together by cross braced wires it can be seen visibly moving as inhabitants move through it. Books are like leaves on a tree, a fragile covering made to seem all the more temporary by seeing other books pass by loose in the museum held in other peoples hands.
Ratasok by Helen & Hard Architects, Norway.
Elephantine tree house made of 5 ash trees hewn with chain saws. Wildly organic structure sits incongrously inside the ordered lines of the Madjeski Garden Courtyard.
Bramante’s Tempietto in Rome
