Archive: Author: wade tillett

“It is our architecture today: great screens on which are reflected atoms, particles, molecules in motion. Not a public scene or true public space but gigantic spaces of circulation, ventilation and ephemeral connections”1

It is at intersections which development first springs up, where we are already stopped and most likely to be distracted from our end destination. The first gas station is at 231 and 10. Fast food, gas stations, and other businesses crop up at Demotte, another intersection of 231 and 10, as well as the intersection of many residential streets. It is here that objects begin their competition to survive within the void. It is where circulation is the strongest that the object begins its competition against the flow, attempting to subvert, to distract, to slide a destination in between a destination. (But these aren?t really destinations, more like pitstops.) You can drive around the object so that you won?t feel like you actually stopped on your way to the goal. The object needs the final destination, as it needs the journey, but it also needs to stop (or maybe pause) the pursuit of the destination, to pull circulation out and into it, to get someone out of the current so they can shop and buy. And here at the beginning, the object attempts to make itself bigger through communication, shock, and contrast. Large signs, painted buildings, completely different styles of ornamental architectural bait attempt to catch the eye of said consumer and reel them out of the current. Catch and release. Because it is quantity, quantity, quantity at this level.

Merrillville is much the same as Demotte. Development is centered around the intersection of US30 and I65. The objects attempt to attract the consumer. The parking lot is one of the greater attractions here: a visible promise of being able to get off of the path and back on quickly. Thus each object has its own and flaunts it proudly by putting it in front of the building.

The space builds up rhythmically, with lines of corn stubble and trees, fence posts, barns, silos, telephone poles, houses, gas stations, mobile home parks, rail road tracks, bridges, highway ramps, warehouses, power towers, factories, cellular towers, mini-malls, fast-food chains, apartment complexes, subdivisions, office towers, elevated rail road tracks, high rises, elevated trains, fire stairs, and skyscrapers. We do not encounter these objects and ask what they mean. We experience these as a flow of space and rhythm, as a series of objects within a space. We experience the space between, the difference between the objects. The most imposing, the most compelling spaces are those not built by the modern culture, those undefined, those which were left between, rests separating the beats, silence dividing the tones, the seeping void inhabited while inside the outside. It was the disregard for the void, the perceived impenetrability, the necessity of simplicity, which created the complex relations that exists between objects. By excluding the complexity of this exterior space while designing the object, the complexity was produced. Layer upon layer was built, with each layer requiring its own tearing down, building up, customization. There is no outside referral.  There is only gratification, only objectification.2

In Gary we begin to feel the magnetism of the powerful object-void dichotomy which is Chicago. Here are forced those elements which are necessary to the Loop, but which are not allowed to exit in the Loop. It is an industrial strip mine for the needs of the larger urban. These are land mongers. The various towers and services, such as power, the L, telephone coming out of the city here align themselves along the major circulation route.3

“We are no longer a part of the drama of alienation; we live in the ecstasy of communication. And this ecstasy is obscene?.today there is a whole pornography of information and communication, that is to say, of circuits and networks, a pornography of all functions and objects in their readability, their fluidity, their availability, their regulation, in their forced signification, in their performativity, in their branching, in their polyvalence, in their free expression?”4

At the Indiana Toll Road, the Skyway, you must stop at the toll booth to pay for the circulation route over and above, uninhibited by those objects below. At the top of the skyway, at the apex, you can see, far in the distance the magnetic center. This is a circulation space which flows so quickly and freely that no object can attract the consumer out of the current. This circulation has too much purpose for distractions. We are projected miles into the future, our immediate surroundings do not matter any longer because we are already past them. We through industry and residential which also relate only to that which is far off, the center. These places are served by the road in that they may get on it and go to the center, but any thoughts of distracting from the magnetism of the center at this point is unimaginable. These places benefit from servicing the center, rather than servicing circulation. It is no longer a matter of distractions, it is a matter of destinations.

The Dan Ryan is a trench dug through. It does not even exist in the same realm as the buildings on either side. The new Comiskey Park and Taylor Homes stand in silence along the loud rush. We have been pulled along by the magnetic dichotomy that came into site on the skyway. The tallest and most evolved around which the rest radiates. As we pull off the Dan Ryan and onto the Eisenhower, we enter the immediate realm of the Loop. Here the Chicago stock exchange stretches across to greet the slowing onslaught of circulation.

Within minutes we are at a stand still on Michigan Ave. The river dumps into Lake Michigan. The current dumps into the Deep. Here, in the center of destination, the object and void fill the spaces allotted to each. The line of building and circulation is drawn and extended infinitely upward. Here the war is filled to its very edges.

“It is the very figure of producing, of leading-beyond, of continuous and undefinable overcoming” of object over another object which defines the architecture of nihilism, which defines the metropolis, which defines the void.5 The evolution of the object to its stronger, more pure state is a result of the harsh environment of conflict and competition within the city. It is the dichotomy of object and void that produces the rhythms, the contradictions, the competition, the evolution of urban.

“These monsters? engender others to infinity, ?battle it out within a space rendered dramatic by their very competition?. It is in such a space that the pure architectural object is born, an object beyond the control of architects, which roundly repudiates the city and its uses, repudiates the interests of the collectivity and individuals and persists in its own madness. That object has no equivalent?”6 “No, architecture should not be humanized. Anti-architecture, the true sort? the wild, inhuman type that is beyond the measure of man was made here – made itself here? without considerations of setting, well-being, or ideal ecology. It opted for hard technologies, exaggerated all dimensions, gambled on heaven and hell? Eco-architecture, eco-society? this is the gentle hell of the Roman Empire in its decline.”7

“Modern architecture did not go far enough.”8

All inputs and outputs are hidden behind the panels so that the user experiences only the pure effect.

All adjustments are subtly made to fade into another, so that the user need not be bothered by the awareness of the system working and changing.

Zero|one adjusts the sound, lighting, display, communications, thermal radiation, and air-flow based on where you are, who you are, and what you are doing.  This input is collected from the sensors and your zero|one profile; it is then processed through the zero|one ai program.

The user within the room experiences pure effect, not the systems which create it.  The user becomes the object within the design.

The design carves out an empty void, allowing the user and their desired effect to become the difference, the reality, within the design.

special thanks to:

anne tillett

pam harwood

kenton hall

joe dowdle

jeff culp

brian schubert

nathan palmer

matt martin

pam lamaster

1Jean Baudrillard, “The Ecstasy of Communication,” The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, Washington: Bay Press, 1983) 130.

2Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” Image-Music-Text 144. “By entrusting the hand with the task of writing as quickly as possible what the head itself is unaware of (automatic writing), the image of the author is diminished.”

3Denis Hollier, Against Architecture: The Writings of George Bataille (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989) xiii, 47. Gary is a sacrifice. There is no religion without sacrifice. There is no architecture without death. There is no beauty without blood. (Hollier xiii). What is most amazing about Gary is that is a gaping wound, a visible casualty. No attempt has been made to cover up the crime. “Society covers up the site of the crime with discreet monuments to make it be forgotten. Architecture does not express the soul of societies, but rather smothers it.” (Hollier 47).

4Baudrillard, “The Ecstasy of Communication” 130-131.

5Massimo Cacciari, Architecture and Philosophy: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture (New Haven: Yale, 1993) 199.

6Jean Baudrillard, America (New York: 1988) 17.

7Baudrillard, America 17.

8Collin Rowe and Fred Koetter, “Collage City,” Theorizing a New Agenda For Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995, ed. Kate Nesbitt.(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996) 268.

9Paul Virilio, Pure War, qtd in Stan Allen and Marc Hacker, “Scoring the City: The Hollargraph,” The London Project (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988) 7.1. “The city was the means of mapping out a political space that existed in a given political duration. Now speed- ubiquity, instantaneousness – dissolves the city, or rather displaces it, in time. We have entered another kind of capital which corresponds to another kind of population. We no longer populate stationariness (cities as great parking lots for populations), we populate the time spent changing place, travel time.”

10Rowe and Koetter, “Collage City” 284. The city is the result of these objects’ conflicting interests.

11Nan Ellin, Postmodern Urbanism (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996) 189. “As long as architects and planners seek technical and creative solutions to social problems in pursuit of progress, they continue to pursue the modern project.”

12David Bohm qtd. in Jachna, “Appendix,” An Evolutionary Architecture. Frazer, John ed. (London: Architectural Association, 1995) 117.

13Hollier 71-73. Simple beings have no right to being because they have no identity, they do not realize they are being. Complex beings have no right to being because they have an identity, which necessarily separates them from the world, from being. This is what Bataille terms the Labyrinth. It is our attempt to become beings, to straddle the line and both be and become at the same time which is what we continually strive for. But it is impossible.

14Hollier xii.

15Art is the realization of this now. Art is being. Art is perception. Art is not the object. Art does not facilitate thought; it only facilitates apprehension. Art allows us to be by depriving us of meaning and submerging us with experience. Music is a great example of art. Life can be art to the extent that we force ourselves to give up thought and meaning and embrace direct perception.

16Bergson qtd. in Mary Cleugh, Time and Its Importance in Modern Thought (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1979) 112.

17Alan Watts, Zen: the Eternal Now, recording, New York, 1973.

18Bergson qtd. in Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983) 26.

19Barthes, “The Death of the Author” 145.

20Adolf Loos, “Architecture,” The Architecture of Adolf Loos, ed. Yehuda Safran (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1985) 104. “Thus I ask: why is it that every architect, whether good or bad, desecrates the lake? The farmer does not desecrate it, neither does the engineer, or he who draws deep grooves in the clear surface of the lake with his ship. They create in a different way. The farmer has marked out the spot from which the new house is to rise, and has excavated the earth for the foundations. The mason appears?. And while the mason lays brick upon brick, stone upon stone, the carpenter has taken up his position next to him. The strokes of the axe make a cheerful sound. He builds the roof. What kind of a roof? A beautiful one or an ugly one? He does not know. It is a roof!”

21Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994) 12.

22Plastic surgery is a choice for design.

23Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL 969.

24Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation 8.

25K. S. Malevich, Essays On Art: 1915-1933, vol. 1, ed. Troels Andersen (London: Rapp & Whiting, 1968) 39.

26Cacciari 204.

27Jean Baudrillard, The Evil Demon of Images (Sydney, Australia: Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney, 1988) 41.

28Michael Graves, “A Case For Figurative Architecture,” Theorizing a New Agenda For Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995, ed. Kate Nesbitt (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996). 87.

29Ada Louise Huxtable, The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion (New York: The New Press, 1997) 115. Eco suggests that the reproduction corrupts the original work. However, Eco stops short of suggesting that the reproduction of ourselves corrupts ourselves. For example, Eco explains how a Van Gogh painting has been reproduced by a wax museum in three dimensions complete with chairs, bed, small paintings, and the tormented and disease infested Van Gogh. But Eco does not discuss how the original painting was also a reproduction: a distorted reproduction of reality. Does not the reproduction of reality corrupt reality? (Umberto Eco, “Travels in Hyperreality,” Travels in Hyperreality: Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986) 20).

30Hollier 32.

31Frampton qtd. in Kate Nesbitt, “Introduction,” Theorizing a New Agenda For Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995, ed. Kate Nesbitt (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996) 440.

32“The birth of the reader must be at the death of the author.” Barthes, “The Death of the Author” 148.

33Barthes “The Death of the Author,” 147.

34Hollier 55.

35Tafuri qtd. in Loos “Architecture,” 84.

36Schulze, Franz Mies van der Rohe: Critical Essays. (Cambidge: The MIT Press, 1989) 13.

37Gevork Hartoonian, Ontology of Construction: On Nihilism of Technology in Theories of Modern Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 72.

38Baudrillard “The Ecstasy of Communication,” 127.

39Hollier 72.

40Pawley qtd. in Nan Ellin, Postmodern Urbanism (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996) 111. “In a sense choices made by the peoples of the West – for the private car and against public transport, for suburban life and against urban or rural community, for owner occupation and against tenancy, for the nuclear and against the extended family, for television and against the cinema and the theater, for social mobility and against class solidarity, for private affluence and against community life, for machine politicians and against charismatic leaders, for orgasm, and against conception, for eroticism and against reproducation, for pollution and against regulation – all these are choices in favour of privacy, in favour of individual freedom, in favour of anonymity, but against the very idea of community.”

41Wayne Attoe and Donn Logan, American Urban Architecture: Catalysts in the Design of Cities (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989) 12.

42Allen and Hacker 7.2.

43Attoe and Logan American Urban Architecture: Catalysts in the Design of Cities, 10.

44Lebbeus Woods, Anarchitecture: Architecture is a Political Act (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992) 16.

45Superstudio qtd in Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge: The MIT Press) 44.

46Yves Klein, Institute for the Arts, Rice University, Yves Klein: 1928-1962, A Retrospective (New York: The Arts Publisher, Inc., 1982) 233.

47Klein 218.

48Dickran Tashjian, Skyscraper Primitives: Dada and the American Avante-Garde, 1910-1925 (Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1975) 10.

49Woods 16.

50Dadaists’ belief, Europe After the Rain.

51Tashjian x.

52Duchamp, Europe After the Rain.

53Tashjian 12.

54Klein 231.

55Malevich qtd in Klein.