Spectrality: Dei ex machina.[1]
Contemporary devices for heuristic reflexions on pedagogy.
1871, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 by James Whistler is an exercise on lexicon.
#syntax
OPERA 1
The evident absence of vivid colours induces a profound melancholy in face of the subject of the work, represented by a despairing range of blacks and a rigid compositional geometry. Colloquially known as Whistler’s Mother, (Whistler, 1871) the painting is an ironic simplification of the classical subject of motherhood, as a masterful device of dominion and disobedience by the artist. Refusing to use an emotional glossary of the field and practice of classical painting, the author detaches intentionally the observation of the obvious and instigates the art community to the limits of perception by manipulating the title and an expected process of representation. (Sontag, 1964)
A sublime neutrality from the artist (Sontag, 1966) (perhaps a heuristic experience on the spectrum of painting) acts as a pivoting point in the history of the discipline.
1964, Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi is an exercise on lexicon.
OPERA 2
The strategic manipulation of the architectural elements (a classical postmodern tactic) defines an unexpected monumentality on the main façade and sets a disruptive spatial perception of the built volume. Domestic scale and modernist postulations are complexified and contradicted (Venturi, 1982) in a set of provocative and referential reflexions. Pedagogically polemic, the reactionary position of the author instrumentalises the project he designed specifically for his mother, as a pivoting device for a assuming a spleen as an architectural statement.
The malatestian approach to the opportunity in case (Logan, 2013) does not introduce new words on the concurrent lexicon, but instead a process of re ordinance.
2022, Colegio Reggio by Andrés Jaque is an exercise on syntax.[2]
OPERA 3
Acting as a modern ghost in the machine, the “building” is a representation of a multimodal approach to the limits of a more than human (Jaque et al., 2020) lexicon. It is the clearest proposition in centuries of a product that is not based in an expected result but instead in a procedural process of adaptation and organic evolution of a dynamic spatial entity through time.
OPERATORE
From the grey painting of a mother (as perhaps the out of camp ironic representation of the field of architecture until our recent times), we can attest how even theological exercises of postmodern interpretation kept the ghosts of the discipline (Jaque, 2020) in line with the results of the teaching activities. (Colomina et al., 2022) How the opportunity to revise the syntax and of accusing us as agents with intentional and critical positions towards innovation was lost. (Fuller & Jaque, 2023)
Architecture’s spectrality must come from a political practice (Walker, 2017) that can not only start at school, but by learning and experimenting on the known lexicon as an opportunity of loss, of a re syntax.
Bibliography
Colomina, B., Galán, I. G., Kotsioris, E., & Meister, A.-M. (Eds.). (2022). Radical pedagogies: Why human intelligence still beats algorithms. The MIT Press.
Fuller, J., & Jaque, A. (2023, March 15). Scratching the Surface—227. Andrés Jaque (No. 227).
Jaque, A. (2020). Superpowers of scale. Columbia Books on Architecture and the City.
Jaque, A., Otero Verzier, M., Pietroiusti, L., & Mazza, L. (Eds.). (2020). More-than-human. Het Nieuwe Instituut ; Serpentine Galleries : Office for Political Innovation ; Manifesta Foundation.
Logan, N. W. (2013). Alberti at Rimini: The process of patronage in fifteenth-century Italy [Rutgers University – Graduate School – New Brunswick]. https://doi.org/10.7282/T3KK99F6
Ryle, G. (1984). The concept of mind (University of Chicago Press ed). University of Chicago Pres.
Sontag, S. (1964). Notes on ‘Camp’. Penguin Books.
Sontag, S. (1966). Against interpretation and other essays. Picador.
Venturi, R. (1982). Complejidad y contradicción en la arquitectura. Gustavo Gili.
Walker, E. (2017). Architecture as a political instrument: Andrés Jaque and Enrique Walker in conversation. Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation.
Whistler, J. A. M. W. |. (1871). Arrangement en gris et noir n°1 [Oil on canvas]. Musée d’Orsay.
Illustrations: author.