It turns out herr scum bag gently lifts a fine layer of sediment left by the graphite paper during tracings, and fraulein Pelican Graphos von A1 Nib can now do the delineations.

architect = shake a pan [albeit, as far as this blog is concerned, still in the future]

17 April, Good Friday, 1981, was the first time I ever cooked Coquille St. Jacques. I bought the scallops at the fish market on 5th Street in Olney across from Incarnation Church (and that was the only time I have yet visited Incarnation Church), and followed the recipe in a big Betty Crocker Cookbook. The dinner party was for four of my fellow class mates and the future wife of one of them, ie, Colleen, the future wife of Dave Schmitt.

Dave and I were close friends since the first week of first year, and we shared a studio cubicle during thesis. Dave's thesis is an Art Historian's Study Center just outside of Florence, Italy, and my thesis is an Institute of Contemproary Art (institutionally the same ICA where van Berkel and Bos will be this Friday) just off Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia.

Dave and something like five others from our class spent the previous Fall semester studying in Rome. They didn't have to do the Stewardson Competiton so they could instead quickly get their thesis proposals together. Dave also didn't yet have a place to live in Philadelphia, so he stayed at my place for a few weeks, until he found an apartment in another stately old Broad Street townhouse two doors down from Riesman Funeral Home (just two blocks north of Temple's main campus). He wrote his thesis proposal at studio while I did the competiton in the apartment, but Dave and Barrie (another fellow student back from Rome) surprised me with dinner a couple of hours before I almost spontaneously combusted. The next day, to everyone's surprise, Barrie submitted boards for the Stewardson Competition. She actually told me she got inspired the night before when she looked at my competiton boards.

Barrie's thesis is a Birthing Center, playfully nicknamed "a womb with a view." Last I heard about Barrie is that she is now a gynecologist.

Dave is sadly no longer with us. He was a hemophiliac and sometime in 1981 he (unknowingly to everyone) received HIV tainted blood. He went on, however, to study architectural history at the AA in London, but ultimately returned to Philadelphia because of his health. Dave died 1 April, Good Friday, 1994.

My course load is full with five classes. Besides Thesis Studio, I'm taking an advanced German class where we are going to read and translate Goethe's Urfaust--imagine that, architecture and making deals with the Devil. Perhaps fittingly then, my next class is on advertising, followed by a class in geography--two classes (it turns out) on how the world really works. And finally, to periodically break the tension, every Monday night I'm taking Ballroom Dancing--visions of Dancing with the Starchitect indeed.

[The foxtrot became my standard. At a family wedding a year or two later, I found that my mother's standard too was the foxtrot, thus, beside gracefully turning my mother across the dance floor, every head in the room was turning as well.

And, as far a intricacy of design and movement is concerned, I don't think you can beat the tango.]

The (quondam) Riesman Funeral Home (now Alfonso Cannon Funeral Home).
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=39.98852~-75.155296&style=o&lvl=2&scene=1906967
The funeral home with verdi antici marble clad facade is to the south (right) of the Dropsie University building with formal garden in front. My apartment windows are the southern pair on the third floor. To the south of Riesman's is Kingdom Hall (Jehovah Witness), where services get quite lively on Sunday nights.

The Architecture and Engineering Building of Temple University.
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=39.981951~-75.152766&style=o&lvl=2&scene=1912750
My studio windows are on the ninth (top) floor, the fourth pair in from the west (right). I have a nice view of North Philadelphia, and you can just make out the Sears tower on Roosevelt Blvd. on the horizon something like ten miles away. In the immediate foreground is an empty lot [which in 22 years time will be designated the site of the Tyler School of Art--Steven Holl gets the commission but leaves the job when the university asks for changes.] and to the immediate east is a housing project. Very much 'architecture' on the fringe of the campus.

[Come on, aml, what difference does it make where this "blog" is?! And what's with the delusion "It would have been nice to 'have a blog from the past'"? In case you haven't noticed, that's exactly what this is! aml, I like you a lot, so don't get offended, but at the same time don't offend me and this blog by somehow implying that it is not what it already really is. Do I see a reenactment of "eyes which do not see"?]

The thesis semester advisors are John Christopher Knowles and Harold S. Guida (front row, third in from the left).

Thesis projects in the studio [at least the ones I remember]:

Birthing Center
Barrie G.

Art Historian's Study Center
Dave Schmitt

Institute of Contemporary Art
Steve Lauf

Ukrainian Orthodox Church
Natalie L. (also 17 April dinner guest)

Ski Lodge
Victor V. (also a 17 April dinner guest)

Yacht Club
Shira G. (also a 17 April dinner guest--I think every thesis class should have one of it's members occasionally coming to studio wearing a mink coat.)

Something or other on the Tiber Island, Rome
Steve M.

plus something like a dozen more.

Here's the site for my thesis project:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=39.948291~-75.170428&style=o&lvl=2&scene=1925070
It's the two parking lots plus the land once the four townhouses inbetween are removed, directly behind the Art Alliance building on 18th Street.

[In 1993-94 I owned and operated Venue, an art gallery, right around the corner at 1732 Spruce Street.]

[I was thinking of you too, lb, as I posted the pics.

Here's Venue November 1993; the exhibition is entitled Primarily Not Duchamp.]

Thesis crits haven't started yet, so this weekend I'm gonna think about last semster's projects and what I'd like to accomplish design-wise from the thesis project. I'm still bummed that my initial thesis proposal--Re-Urbanization of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway--wasn't accepted, but I quess I'm psyched about doing an Institute of Contemporary Art. Hey, do I know anything about contemporary art? I better go buy some magazines, or maybe Ron will let me borrow his back issues of Art in America.

I suppose my infatuation with Stirling's Dresdner Bank project is now over. I mean, how many times can I try to reenact that?

So what do I do now? I begin a thesis project where I want to reenact Stirling's reenactionary Wissenschaftszentrum,



which is itself a reenactment of Kahn's Convent for the Domican Sisters.



[Looks like I already wrote about some of this 12 July 1998.]

Anyway, it's funny how Dave wished he could have done the projects we did here last semester, while I wished I could have done the projects they did in Rome last semester. It's also kind of ironic that while they were in Rome we were over here designing a Museum of Architecture for a site in Venice [where my plan is a disguised reenactment of the plan of Schinkel's Court Gardner's House].



I think I already know what place I'm going to ultimately research/write about for the geography class, Reunion island.

[I liked Philadelphia 25 years ago, but I have no idea about now.]

[I just found out that Michel Houellebecq was born on the island of Reunion 26 February 1958.]

Ballroom Dancing was fun. There are about 18 girls and a dozen guys, and a handful of the guys are athletes, two, at least, from the football team. The instructors are a middle-aged married couple--she looks to be a bit of a vamp, and he looks like a Protestant minister. It's neat to see how they clad the class in seriousness.

The first thesis studio crit was, well, a success. It was with Guida, and within a half hour he took everything I showed him, quickly assimilated it all, and then in one sentence--"You can put the galleries below grade, and do that with the rest of the program on top."--he conclusively inspired my project's whole parti.
"Wow. That's the building."

Ever since I saw Guida's design of the Kasperson Residence (Mitchell/Giurgola Architects, 1979), I knew he had an affinity for Kahn's Fisher House--there's no denying a good reenactment when you see one--so I felt sure he would be favorably responsive when I told him I would like to emulate Kahn's Motherhouse of the Domincan Sisters paradigm. That's the "that" when he said, "...and do that with the rest of the program on top."

It honestly feels good to be at this point in the thesis design process. Thanks Hal!

[It's also good because I can now spend more time telling you about Dave's thesis, which is a whole lot more interesting.]

I was very surprised to briefly see Verrocchio's The Baptism of Christ

as the first sequence of Charlie's dream in last night's episode of Lost.


Surprised because I spent some time yesterday thinking about della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ,

which is the painting Dave used as formal/symbolic inspiration for his Art Historian's Study Center thesis design.

[I really wish I could remember all the things Dave said about the painting. All I do remember is that Dave, in his thesis, strove to represent the spatial duality of the painting in his building design.]

Dave is afraid that Knowles and Guida are not going to get what he want's to get out of his thesis.

[ Philip Johnson is dead :(

quondam
01/26/05 13:44
Received an email today at 12:54 pm (eastern time) from Doug, an architect friend in Canada, asking that I call him as soon as possible. Sad news... Leslie, a mutual architect friend, died this morning in Dallas. Then called Tony, another architect friend and former business partner of Leslie and Doug, and told him the sad news. Then called Ron and told him the sad news as well. Then, around 3 o'clock this afternoon, Ron called me to tell me Philip Johnson died last night.

Leslie was a wonderful person, and she was even very instrumental in getting my former CAD business off the ground. I love her, and I miss her more than I ever imagined.

[The Horace Trumbauer Architecture Fan Club is proud to announce two new members: Leslie Deis and Philip Johnson.

http://www.quondam.com/18/1718.htm ]

Then today one year ago...

From: Steve
To: Doug
Subject: Re: Leslie's Service
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005

It is thanks to Leslie that my fledgling CAD business, Arcadia - Architectural CAD Services, got off the ground. As a result, Arcadia came to share office space with Dekoda Architects, and it was there that I got to know and indeed love Leslie. I'll never forget the sound of her quick laugh, her red lipstick smile, and her abundant enthusiasm for all kinds of things, especially people. After I moved Arcadia back home, what I missed most were those mornings when it was just me and Leslie before Doug and Tony showed up. I realized it was really nice having Leslie's company all to myself, even if it was for less than half an hour a few times a week. Luckily, this loss of "Leslie time" was made up for when the two of us drove all the way straight through to Savannah, Georgia, in the heat of the night, and we talked, and talked, and talked the whole way.

The last time I saw Leslie it was again just me and her. She had come to my house to collect the forgotten materials relative to art projects she had commissioned, but which never came to full fruition. We were both surprised at how much of "her" was stored within the flatfiles of my basement. Finally, all this stuff, especially the pictures of her with Rose and with Gus were going to be where they were supposed to be.

Before Leslie left, I asked if she would like to visit a sacred tree in nearby Tacony Creek Park. She said, "Sure." Since the 1990s Tacony Creek Park has become the site of what one might call your more ancient religious rituals, and it had been reported that charms and amulets were occasionally found around a rare quintuplet tree in the park. When at the tree, both Leslie and I admitted to not feeling anything special, but we admired the tree nonetheless.

A couple weeks later, I was reading about St. Barbara, the patron saint of architects, whose feast day is December 4th. Unfortunately, St. Barbara is one of those saints that most likely never really existed. There may not have been a St. Barbara, but I know there are others out there that are very much like what one might call a patron saint of architects. I was actually with such a person on December 4th 2000, and we spent some time that day looking at a sacred tree.

=====

Doug, I wish you and Christiane a safe trip to Dallas. Please convey my deepest sympathy to Leslie's family. My thoughts will be with all of you on Monday, and thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my fondest memories of Leslie then as well.

Steve

ps 28 January 2006
Leslie and I were really at the sacred tree on 3 December 2000, but I went back to the tree myself 4 December 2000 to collect pieces of the tree to then send them to Leslie. ]

Ron lent me a bunch of recent back issues of Art in America, and I'm gonna keep them at studio. [Right now, in 2006, the only artwork that I remember specifically from these magazines is The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago. I used this work as a reference of scale, as in I made sure it could be exhibited somewhere within the galleries of my Institute of Contemporary of Art design.] I can't wait to show Barrie The Dinner Party. Maybe it will provide some inspiration for her Birthing Center.

[Dave's ashes are buried in the front church yard of Trinity Lutheran Church, Germantown, Philadelphia.
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=40.031975~-75.169065&style=o&lvl=2&scene=1818553

Just a couple blocks north on Germantown Avenue is the Deshler-Morris House (with large side and back garden), where President Washington and First Lady Martha lived for a short while when Yellow Fever was at epidemic levels in Philadelphia, then Capital of the United States.
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=40.033696~-75.172132&style=o&lvl=2&scene=1818032
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson stayed a block further north at the (now gone) King of Prussia Tavern--
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=40.03447~-75.173352&style=o&lvl=2&scene=1818032
north (right) of the empty lot, today DollarLand and Risque Beauty Parlor.

If I were to visit Dave via Native American trails, I'd go south on Rising Sun Avenue to its source at Germantown Avenue, likewise the source point of Old York Road, another trail--this point is also site of the major Lenni Lenape camp of the region--and then I'd go the same distance north on Germantown Avenue.
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=40.02234~-75.149514&style=h&lvl=14&scene=1818251
I live at another Lenni Lenape camp site where Roosevelt Boulevard crosses over Tacony Creek.]

[Windows Local Live was working just fine when I started composing this post, but isn't showing the images now. Hopefully this is just a temporary glitch.]

[Hal Guida sent me a response email two days ago--our first exchange in 25 years. Among other things he writes:

"Back in early June of 1989 saw the office into Asia for the first time, which has become an ever increasing part of the practice - we currently have projects in Singapore; Kuala Lumpur; Hong Kong; Suzhou, PRC; and New Delhi; and I spend many weeks each year in those places

Aldo Giurgola retired years ago, but we still undertake projects at the Parliament together, and indeed he was in the office this morning gathering slides of Philadelphia and Canberra projects for an upcoming lecture."

Gosh, yesterday was the first time in a long time that I wished I was a real architect again.]

Today, 2 February is the (new) feast of St. Catherine de Ricci. Catherine died 2 February 1590. My thesis project is seminally a reenactment of Louis Kahn's design of the Motherhouse of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine de Ricci. I knew nothing of St. Catherine de Ricci in 1981, but I know much more now, and much of that knowledge is within The Odds of Ottopia, ("my Rita Novel idea").

I actually have been busy working on my thesis design in as much as I've been working on museumpeace.com over the last week--big upload later today or tomorrow.

It turns out that I sent my email to Hal Guida on Erdman Mitchell's birthday, and Mitchell died last year on King of Prussia day--a member of the Horace Trumbauer Architecture Fan Club for sure.

My virtual thesis project for 2006 is entitled "Reenacting Roma Interrotta Sector VI". The design team of RI Sector VI was Romaldo Giurgola, Harold Guida, Sigrid Miller and Giancarlo Alhdeff. This project has everything to do with blending an 18th century sector of Rome with a 20th century sector of North Philadelphia.

It turns out that Dave's earthly remains and my ongoing earthly presence are extremely close to 40 degree north latitude, thus Dave and I are still very much aligned as each day spines by. I'm something like mere seconds north of 40, and I now wonder if Dave is even closer.

Geography, advertising, dancing, German(town), and even fresh exchanges on architecture with Hal Guida--reenactment really is a good learning tool.

I learned this morning that Romaldo Giurgola was born 2 September 1920, a date very much in the thick of Reenactment Season. I also noticed today that Benjamin Franklin died 17 April 1790.

There's now a picture of Dave and Jean K. at (the far right) of http://www.museumpeace.com/15/1498.htm . I took the picture while we were in MoMA's Sculpture Garden, Spring Break 1977. After that some of us went to Wittenborn Art Books, and I bought several back issues of A+U. Hal Guida told me about Wittenborn after I told him a bunch of us were going to New York City for Spring Break.

On the contents page of Art in America February 2006 is listed:
Back for One Night Only!
Marina Abramovic recently reenacted classic pieces of performance art.
[page] 90

It's nice to see Charles Loomis Chariss McAfee Architects among the finalists of Urban Voids: Grounds for Change. I haven't had dinner at their place in over three years, but it's still interesting that they focused on the quondam streams of Philadelphia while I advocated the quondam "Indian" trails, among other things.

Because of Roma Interrotta and related genius loci issues, I've been doing a lot of reading/research, and thus I now know that when I look out my mother's living room windows I'm looking at the site where the oldest house in Pennsylvania once stood.

URY HOUSE -- Originally a fort, and once the oldest house in Pennsylvania was located at 8403 Pine Road. Ury House was reputed to have been built by Swedish refugees who sailed up the Delaware River and Pennypack Creek, circa 1645. [William Penn did not arrive and found Philadelphia until 1682.]

John Adams was a guest at the house during the First Continental Congress. Thomas Jefferson too was a guest and planted a pecan tree on the lawn. And George Washington once ate (mistakenly) salted strawberries there.

Ury House was demolished in 1973.

My parents moved to what was part of the Ury House estate in 1981, and thus I only have earlier vague memories of an old house on Pine Road, and until yesterday I had completely forgotten that there even once was a house at 8405 Pine Road.

I'm still in kind of in shock over the fact that my mother owns a piece of one of the oldest white man settlements of Pennsylvania, and that the men who ultimately became the first three presidents of the United States had actually been there. Did they visit the place because of its historical significance? I mean, how often does one get the chance to visit a 17th century Swedish fort in North America? "Even Edward VII may have stopped overnight on his visits to Philadelphia while he was Prince of Wales, for the Fishers were Loyalists to the Crown. Benjamin Franklin was also a special guest." But it's thinking about the original Swedes that manifests the most 'chills and thrills'. Since I'm now very familiar with the site, I'm pretty sure I know why it was chosen, and trying to imagine living at the fort is not all that difficult--at least I personally know what it's like to see a herd of deer there, or the footprints some of them left in my mother's front garden after they eat her flowers.

Most of the information (so far) about Ury House comes from Fox Chase: 300 Years of Memories by Johanna Frueh Gaupp, 1976, and there is also good informaton about the early Swedish colony and Ury House in Architecture in Philadelphia: A Guide by Edward Teitelman and Richard W. Longstreth, 1974.

"But the settlement of the Delaware Valley had begun over forty years previously [i.e., before William Penn] with the founding of a Swedish trading post at Fort Christina (now Wilmington, Delaware) in 1638. Five years later Governor Johan Printz established a post further up the Delaware at Tinicum, just below the southwest border of present-day Philadelphia [--the Swedish fort at Pennypack Creek, Ury House, is right on a northwestern border of present-day Philadelphia]. Other concentrations of settlers began to form at Upland (now Chester) and Kingsessing, and, although Swedish rule ended in 1655, the people remained and continued to thrive, extending over a fair portion of the region."

Nowadays, on a typical Saturday evening, I leave my home in a 17th century Lenni-Lenape camp and head toward a 17th century Swedish fort for dinner. For most of the way I follow the path of Tacony Creek and then one of its tributaries until I reach the ancient trail that is now Oxford Avenue, and then go a little further on Pine Road until I reach the fort. After dinner, I take my brother for a ride, part of which takes us through Bryn Athyn whose 'center', the Academy of the New Church, is what I call "a little Land of Reenactment"--Mitchill/Giurgola Architects designed the Campus Plan, and the Administration Building and Men's Dormitory in 1962-63.

This part weekend it was my thinking about the position of the Academy of the New Church Administration Building along Huntington Pike, which is the northern extension of Oxford Avenue, that got me to read Fox Chase: 300 Years of History on Sunday night. Saturday morning I was reading some of Chistian Norberg-Schulz's "The Genius Loci of Rome" in Architectural Design Profiles 20: Roma Interrotta.

My parents moved to Fox Chase mid-May 1981, a couple of weeks after my thesis jury. I never particularly liked where my parents moved because of the undeniable bland design of the 1970s housing development. Now, suddenly, there is even a reason for me to consider becoming a real architect again.

"Ury House: Perhaps one of the oldest surviving structures in the city. It is now wrapped in a Regency "Grecian Villa" somewhat reminiscent of the residential commissions of John Haviland."

Images of the tracing paper remains of my submission for the Stewardson Competition 1981 are now available at http://www.quondam.com/42/4117.htm through http://www.quondam.com/42/4129.htm. I now know the exact location of the competition site--center top north of Spring Ave. with Rock and Dell Lanes running through it. It looks like the estate stables are still in existence. Turn on the 'bird's eye' at local.live and you'll see that Ronaele Manor was immediately north of Lynnewood Hall (which is immediately north of Chelten House and Elstowe, which are immediately north of Georgian Terrace--the motherlode of Horace Trumbauer architecture, or what I wrote on Ehrman Mitchell's birthday two years ago).

Late Sunday afternoon I used my parallel rule and even a compass. The Admnistration Building at the Academy of the New Church is a reenactment of Kahn's Goldenberg House (which was designed for a site in Rydel, Pennsylvania, further south down Huntington Pike). The plan analysis of the Administration Building is still inconclusive, so now it's back to CAD.



There is much symbolic reference to the Apocalypse of the New Testament within Bryn Athyn Cathedral, the New Church or General Church of the New Jerusalem.

Today, 13 February, is the quondam feast of St. Catherine de Ricci, and tonight two years ago a 100' to 150' column jet of flames appeared in northern Philadelphia at Olney and Ogontz Avenues . That afternoon I had a nice conversation with one of the highest Domincan Sisters of St. Catherine de Ricci.


[The whole story is at:
www.quondam.com/03/0269.htm
www.quondam.com/03/0270.htm
www.quondam.com/03/0271.htm
www.quondam.com/03/0273.htm ]

The last time I passed through Olney and Ogontz Avenues was about two months after the column of fire--all the (plastic) signs around the site were deformed. I was on my way to visit Colleen, and I was actually returning a bunch of Dave's drawings that were still at my place. A couple of weeks before Dave died I asked him if I could have access to his drawings once he was gone--I know it sounds unfeeling, but it wasn't because Dave really appreciated my asking. I did organize all the drawings by project, but Colleen and I never did take it any further. Now it looks like I'll be making a visit to Colleen in the Spring.

Immediately west of Olney and Ogontz is LaSalle University, and the art museum there contains remains of Ronaele Manor. LaSalle is a Christian Brothers institution, and the Christian Brothers were the last owners of Ronaele Manor. I haven't been to the LaSalle University art museum in something like 30 years. I wonder if they have any contemporary art there these days.

"There is a good chance that a significant interruption of the international oil supply will occur in the next few years. It has happened twice in the last seven years. A year-long loss of Persian Gulf oil could devastate the world economy, create havoc in financial markets, and possibly lead to armed conflict. Yet, few of our long-term policies such as price decontrol, conservation subsidies and standards, fuel conversions, and synthetic-fuel programs will significantly reduce our short-term vulnerability. The danger is imminent, and we are not adequately prepared. Contingency plans have limited value, because the sequence of events leading to a sudden curtailment of the oil supply cannot be confidently predicted. Any crisis will be clouded by uncertain and incomplete information. It is not profitable, therefore, to develop precise plans for managing a crisis. But there are two good ways for potential crisis managers to prepare for an emergency. First, imagining specific crises can encourage speculation on the questions that will be asked, the information that will be sought, and the early decisions that must be made. This ''gaming'' leads to the following crisis check-list."
--Joseph S. Nye, "Oil-Crisis Readiness" in The New York Times, 13 February 1981.

I'll be at this point by the mid-term.

[very scant remains]

It's now a couple of weeks since Dave moved into an apartment above the black funeral home on the other side of Kingdom Hall.

In dance class, they announced an optional field trip to the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. I signed up.

[It's interesting to now see a similarity between Philadelphia's Tacony Creek Park and the valley of Roma Interrotta Sector VI.]

[Three years ago today I sent an email to someone I "knew" online via www.artforum.com/talkback. I was then under the impression that this person was studying in Paris. Since then I've done a websearch of their name and home location and found reference to someone that a few years earlier was a teenager high on Ecstasy driving a car which led to an accident where another person was killed. Now I wonder whether the following email was actually sent to someone 'hiding' in Paris or sent to a 21 year old in jail.]

Re: categories...
2003.02.27 15:30

hi Xxxxxx,
Chronosomatics as an idea first occurred to my while I was living in Washington DC during the summer 1981. The Masolino Annunciation in the National Gallery got me thinking about why the column is right in the middle of the picture, and indeed divides the picture in half. (I went to the National Gallery often at night that summer because I had nothing else to do.) Coming to the conclusion that the painting was symbolically depicting the union of God and humanity somehow clicked with the notion that this moment in time coincided with where the human body's legs become the torso. This became a kind of culmination of lots of prior thinking/doing.

I was first introduced to the notion that the design of the body represents something meaningful when I read chapter 8 of The Architecture of Humanism during the summer of 1975.

I became very popular as a freshman architecture student when I demonstrated that I had a very good understanding of human body proportions.

It was in 1979 that I first drew a standing human figure within a series of circle/square conjunctions (independent of chronosomatics, rather related to architectural design theory). [The first three years of my architectural education dealt a lot with diagramming.]

During my thesis semester of architecture school (spring 1981), I shared studio space with a close friend that was designing a center for art history and using a painting by della Francesca, The Baptism of Christ as conceptual inspiration, and he spoke a lot about the duality of the painting. When I saw the Annunciation painting in Washington, I continued to ask the questions regarding duality that my friend was asking.

Between autumn 1981 and autumn 1994 I occasionally told a friend or two about this theory I have. It was worthwhile seeing how I could communicate the theory verbally and how easily the theory was grasped by those listening. Subsequent questions about the theory always led to further ideas. (I tried to record as much of this 'oral history' as I could in my notes.)

October 1994 I decided to write the theory down (via notes). I had no idea at the time how developed the theory would get, especially the notion of human imagination reenacting physiological processes.

You could say that chronosomatics is the best example of my thoughts exactly on faith and empirical knowledge. For me, one reinforces the other. [In previous emails Xxxxxx was interested in knowing my take on faith vs. empirical knowledge.]

My interests in saints and calendrical coincidences stem from my research of St. Helena and the history of the Constantine Christian Church building boom 312 to 329. The first day I ever heard/read of St. Helena was 1 April 1999, Holy Thursday, the 5th anniversary of the death of my close friend that questioned duality (Dave died 1 April 1994, Good Friday that year, and the first person I ever told about "this theory I have"), and that night during his first panic attack in four years, my brother Otto reenacted the Agony in the Garden [which occurred the first Holy Thursday evening] by asking me to sit and watch as he tried to fall asleep. Sleep never happened. Then my brother asked me to help bathe him. It was a very emotional day. Many more calendrical coincidences have been recorded by me since then.

I have not heard of Shamrock Tea before.
Steve

Whenever Catcher in the Rye comes up I immediately think of my older brother. He got me to read the book a long time ago, and I still have his copy,

and it has page after page with parallel lines drawn by Otto in it,

which is what he did to a whole bunch of books when he was teaching himself speed reading in the early 1970s.

Anyway, here's a movie still of Otto waving from the pediment of Stotesbury Mansion, Whitemarsh Hall, in 1972.


Over a week ago I was able to find out at least what year Victor V. died. I honestly couldn't remember if Victor died before or after Dave died. Dave T. called me, and since he too was close friends with both Dave S. and Victor V., I asked him. "It was the same year that my father and Joan Benjamin died." Architect Joan Benjamin, another mutual working acquaintence, died with her husband in the explosion of flight TWA 800 17 July 1996.

Well, 25 years ago, I got Victor to turn his ski lodge design around 180 degrees because the design of the parking lot side really should have been facing the slopes. We all know it's not altogether easy whenever someone else has a good idea about one's own designs that at the same time literally turns your design around, but it turned out Victor was genuinely happy with my "crit"--he suddenly started to love his building.

In a very nice way, Hal Guida is also responsible for Victor's building being turned around. I told Victor he has to go see Tredyffrin Public Library by Mitchell/Giurgola Architects, 1976, of which I think Hal Guida was the project architect. As a result, one afternoon in late winter/early spring Victor, Dave and myself took a ride in Victor's Jeep out through Bryn Mawr to Tredyffrin. The curved side of Tredyffrin Public Library faces the landscape while its flat side faces the parking lot. Dave had never been to Tredyffrin before either.

Hal, Tredyffrin Public Library still looks really good, and the spiral playground off to the side is still there, or at least it was still there in 2001.

Victor's fate as an architect is unforunately very sad. After doing survey work in a locker room he caught viral meningitis and became one of it's rare fatal victims. The last time I saw Victor I was also with Dave. I was visiting Dave at work and I saw Victor in one of the windows in the office building across Chestnut Street. "Look, there's Victor over there." "Yeah, I know, we wave at each other all the time."

So what are Dave and Victor doing these days? "Don't get me started. Don't even get me started!"

I keep on forgetting to mention my project for advertising class. The professor doesn't seem to get it; he called it far-fetched, even. Anyway, for the rest of the semester (and probably beyond) I'll be implementing this subtle/not-so-subtle promotion/ad campaign for an architecture museum that doesn't really exist which is publishing a trilogy of books to mark it's forthcoming tenth anniversary.

It's chilly today. Maybe I'll have some chili for lunch.

"Did you really just say, "I wonder in which nation I should vacation?""

[jbirl, I don't know Roy Vollmer at all. I know he was a partner with JC and B Knowles in the early 1970s, but he wasn't around Temple when I was there, plus I worked at BCJ/Knowles Architects 1979-80, and never met Vollmer then either. I did virtually all of the 'brochure' drawings of BJC/Knowles past and (then) present projects, and you can see some of my drawings in A+U 83:09.

JC 'founded' Temple University's Architecture Program in 1973 (I think), and he was chairman of the department until late 1978 or early 1979, when the core group of faculty got him 'dethroned' via a 'surprise attack'. When I had JC as thesis crit, I think of that time as his 'lose cannon' years. As I mentioned before, I initially wanted to do a 're-urbanization of the Ben. Franklin Parkway' as thesis project, but that proposal was not accepted; JC then suggested I do an Institute of Contemporary Art at Logan Circle. (Brigette did an ICA at Logan Circle in Kahn's studio at Penn.) As you know, I did an ICA, but for Rittenhouse Square.

In starting this thesis semester blog I realized that remember virtually nothing of whatever JC said to me during crits, whereas I remember a whole bunch of what Hal Guida said to me during crits.]

Brigette asked me if I'd like to house sit for them during Spring Break while they go up to Maine, and I said yes. I think they are trying to get me interested in working for them again.

[A large photostat of Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii hung in the light shaft at the BJC/Knowles residence, up it was too high up to look at it at all closely. The last time I spoke with Brigette (over the phone) in 2000, she said she didn't remember where the photostat was from. I still wonder what ever happened to the photostat of the Campo Marzio that hung over Louis I. Kahn's office desk.]

I meant to write 'loose cannon', but in JC's case 'lose cannon' amounts to the same difference.

[jbirl, the "remnants of Kahn and Mitchell/Giurgola disciples" when you were there sound interesting, or at least I'm interested in how the remnants were manifest.

lb, it's way too many years since I've been involved with Easter candy for me to even attempt answering your question. Sorry.]

Dave is very happy with his updated analysis of Santa Costanza, which he's been asked to present to one of the history classes. We all get a kick out of the fact that Santa Costanza isn't even a real saint, rather a daughter of Constantine. [Little did we know then of everything else we still didn't know.]

Spring Break Taboo in Society Hill, and even just a block away from South Street.

Hal told Ron, on the subway on the way to a Giurgola(?) lecture at Penn, "It's [my mid-term design] a bit too facile." Hal told me it wasn't Philadelphian enough. Thus, for part of Spring Break I'm gonna go around and look at notable Philadelphia buildings. I think Hal was also saying my design was a little too much something other than Philadelphian. [I distinctly remember going to see the Richard's Medical Buildings, and for some reason the Merchant Exchange impressed me the most.

Did I also visit Franklin Court? Since I remember Hal and I talking about it--it is mostly an underground museum after all--I guess I did go there. I especially remember how much Hal admired the "Franklin - Man of Infinite Dimension" room and how the reverse lettered neon was then correctly read in the mirrors. I took pictures of just that phenomenon 21 November 1998, for sure thinking of Hal while I did so.]

After I told Shira about house-sitting for the Knowles' over Spring Break she said, "And doesn't that sink in the their bedroom immediately make you think of sex?" "Well, it certainly came in handy." [It's now kind of amazing to notice how much Shira and Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City actually resemble each other, as if Shira were Carrie's older brunette sister or something, like being attractive, bright, witty, sexy and always very well dressed ran in the family.]

What's next!?! Handi Dandi Sexi Easter Candi!?!

[Last night during dinner at the seventeenth-century Swedish fort I wasn't 100% sure of something, so I asked my mother. "On what date (in 1981) did you make settlement on this house?" "May 1st."]

The date of thesis jury is set for May 1st.

"May Day! May Day!"