13th Venice Architecture Biennale….FAT’s “Museum of Copying”…. Why not call it the “Conscious Inspiration museum”?

From  Eliinbar’s Sketch book 2012 – “FAT” – getting inspired Consciously

FAT Architects presents this year The “Museum of Copying”, at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale

 

Here is a short description from FAT’s  site:

“Invited by David Chipperfield, director of the 13th International Architecture Biennale, FAT has contributed an exhibition to the Arsenale titled the “Museum of Copying.  The “Museum of Copying” explores the idea of the copy in architecture as an important, positive and often surreal phenomenon”

And this is an interesting Sam Jacob ‘s quote, a director of “FAT” architects, published  as a background for FAT’s  exhibition in the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale

We hope to extend this history and explore how copying something is, strangely, a way of  inventing new forms of architecture.

Sam Jacob’s phrase, gave me an interest to learn more about FAT’s  inspiration sources….You already know my approach ….I prefer not to make use of the term “copy”….I strive to a planning process. I call “Conscious Inspiration”….

Lets check how it works for FAT ….Here is an example for you to judge….

Robert Venturi Architect

Vanna Venturi House

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.  1961-1964

FAT Architects

 BBC Studios Roath Basin Cardiff

Notice the formal statement in Venturi’s  and FAT’s projects….The dominant form of a gable, as a way to express a unique aesthetic .

Notice also the strategy of “having a wall in front of the windows” inspired probably by Charles Moore’s & Turnbull’s U.C. Santa Barbara Faculty Club shown in the next image….

Charles Moore & Turnbull

U.C. Santa Barbara Faculty Club of 1966-68

Notice the “another wall in front of our opening, with other holes in it”

From  Eliinbar’s Sketch book 2012 – “FAT” – getting inspired Consciously

Check the   NEW  CONSCIOUS  INSPARATION  PAGE

in my Facebook

I want to thank “I Like Architecture and Architecture Likes Me

Dow Kimbrell’s post about  Kahn + Stella = Moore was my inspiration source.

Here are some relevant quotes from an interview with John Wesley Cooke and Heinrich Klotz reprinted in the recent anthology You Have to Pay for the Public Life , Moore described U.C. Santa Barbara Faculty Club ,design-process, this way:

 “The front wall of the club, which faces the lagoon, is partially the result of a controversy with the campus architect, Charles Luckman. When he saw our building, he said is was unacceptable, that it looked terrible, didn’t look like his stuff, and had to have a bris-soleil. He thought that would cause us to put a screen over it which would hide this awful building which we had done, and he wouldn’t have to worry about it any more. It swept over me in the middle of the night, that all we have to do is have another wall in front of our opening, with other holes in it. Thanks to Charles Luckman, then came our first free standing walls.”

Louis Kahn is right there from the beginning in the Santa Barbara Faculty Club walls, which are a dead steal from Kahn’s Luanda consulate in Angola, which was very carefully worked out by him. There, he developed the idea of having white wall in front of the windows, screen shield walls, as you call them, The were bright but not so bright as the sky, so you could look out a window and see an intermediately bright surface which broke the glare. Ever since Kahn described that to me and others, in the late 1950′s, we had been waiting to use it. It is of great importance to play with the light in such a way that it is possible to look out of a window without it being simply a glaring hole. In the Santa Barbara situation, it got to be interesting in terms of shapes. I thought it would be fun, too.” (p. 189)

“EPILOG”

How can we summarize this post? 

 Did we saw  “copying Architecture”?….

Definitely not…..We saw a perfect process that includes all the characteristics components of the “conscious Inspiration Method”

“Conscious Inspiration” – to be inspired consciously….

I invite you all to contribute in developing the attitude and tools towards the viability of the “Conscious Inspiration Method”.

The abundance of information in the Web affects us all, as I illustrate in my posts.

I Believe that designing is a process formed from three main phases:  knowledge, tools and invention.

Knowledge”:  as many said, and wrote before – Knowledge is the foundation for all designing processWe architects and designers are obliged to be informed about everything that was designed in the past and on a daily basis….

“Tools” develop tools to analyze buildings and “Understand” them,  tools that will cope with the abundance of architectural information…

(I intend to demonstrate some of my ideas in future posts)

“Invention”:  with the methodology of “conscious Inspiration” we don’t need to be intimidated to get inspired from relevant buildings.  Once we develop our tools, it will lead us to high quality and creative architecture.

Eli Inbar

Check the   NEW  CONSCIOUS  INSPARATION  PAGE

in my Facebook

 

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