This past week, I worked with a good friend of mine Alice — who graduated from University of Southern California (USC), MArch, Architecture and Building Science. She has an expertise with Rhinoscript and CATIA, but more importantly, a very knowledgeable take on generative and parametric design. We worked on a few sketches of spine structures and the possibilities of how they can make not only a dynamic skin structure, but how they can be seen as a new kind of architectural ornament.
In my last line of references, I have been reading Henrik Reeh’s analysis of Sigfreid Kracauer’s research and fictional work on architectural ornaments during early part of modernism in the 20th century. Reeh’s take on Kracauer’s work illuminates the idea of how ornament and the everyday life is a relationship that encompasses image, memory and narrative. This book goes into detail of how architectural ornaments have a two-dimensional spatiality that allow them to have different forms of abstraction. This was heavily reflected in Kracauer’s novel Ginster, where the main character begins to imagine ornaments around him drastically transform before him.
One aspect that I realized is that soft structures/ornaments designed for urban space are or can be called media because they posses a two-dimensional feature from those who view and approach them. They are not program heavy and can be almost too nostalgic and really speak about aesthetic beauty. They are for interpretation, re-constituting and re-negotiating.
