The four architects had decided to achieve an effect of harmony and therefore not to use any historical style in its pure form. Peter Keating designed the white marble semi-Doric portico that rose over the main entrance, and the Venetian balconies for which new doors were cut. John Erik Snyte designed the small semi-Gothic spite surmounted by a cross, and the bandcourses of stylized acanthus leaves which were cut into the limestone of the walls. Gordon L. Prescott designed the semi-renaissance cornice, and the glass-enclosed terrace projecting from the third floor. Gus Webb designed a cubistic ornament to frame the original windows, and the modern neon sign up on the roof, which read: “The Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children.”



“Comes the revolution,” said Gus Webb, looking at the completed structure, “and every kid in the country will have a home like that!”

The original shape of the building remained discernable. It was not like a corpse whose fragments had been mercifully scattered; it was like a corpse hacked to pieces and reassembled.
--Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943), pp. 385-6.

And Helene Gregoroffsky Fisher died 9 April 1828 in Cincinnati, of all places. What are the odds of that?


Is anyone reading Frascari's Monsters of Architecture these days?

Are monsters merely crazy, mixed-up reenactments?

anyway

“Thus the book is a puzzled book, just as it deals with a puzzling character in a changing and puzzling world.”

I’m growing more and more fond of Hamlin’s architectural writing. I even hope to tackle his two volumes of Forms and Functions of Twentieth-Century Architecture some day.

The book is Characteristic Anecdotes . . . to illustrate the Character of Frederick the Great, the translation into English by the young, pre-architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

Latrobe and the King of Prussia, go figure.
Latrobe and his uncle the Pasha in Constantinople visited by Cassanova, go figure.
Latrobe’s English Moravian father and Pennsylvania Deutsch Moravian mother, go figure.
Latrobe and the Baron Karl von Schachmann, go figure.

Every time my own father ran off his Silesian ‘language' witticisms the whole room of company burst out laughing.

“...Latrobe explains in a footnote, “The King of Prussia pronounced what the old man said in the broad provincial dialect of that country [Silesia]. I attempted to imitate it...”

And here’s my attempt:

“I was have gone to the train. Was there the station gone.”

“Little Miss Mary had yoked herself with the yellow of the egg.”

“Hey, pass my the flag.”
“What kind of flag?”
“You know, the frying flag.”

“Strasse rechts. Strasse links. Kaserne wo bist du?” --that’s exactly what it’s like when you’re lost at the King of Prussia Mall.

Yet today’s task was to find the exact locations of the stops (and sketches) of Charles Willson Peale’s “Blackberry Ramble”. I know, “Blackberry Ramble” conjures up all kinds of imaginings these days, but 180 years ago it meant the mid-August three day walking tour of a very accomplished 83-year-old man along the blackberry grown lanes of Oxford Township into Lower Dublin Township. Peale started at Frankford, and went as far as Ury, and then went back to Frankford. It turns out that when I leave my house and go the Historical Society of Frankford and then come back home, I (almost exactly) virtually reenact “The Blackberry Ramble”, albeit in reverse.

“I think this room holds a portal to the fourth dimension.”
I had very good reason for saying so, and the strangers I said it to agreed.


Today I’d call this show Random Tangents.

Never in the crypt. Only once upstairs, one afternoon in April 1997. The Ionic columns of the portico stuck me, as did the ceiling inside. Strong stuff.

Nice image. Thanks for sharing. Say more if you like. I'm all ears.

I'm quickly becoming fascinated by the man, his work, and his career. This interest started because every time I now walk to the mail box up the corner, I just may be walking past the location of one of Latrobe's more obscure works, (although that crypt looks just as obscure).

"In the summer of 1800, when the architect was away on his wedding trip, [John] Barber absconded, taking with him a considerable sum of money and all the most valuable office and personal papers."
--Hamlin

Miers Fisher had Ury House renovated sometime between 1790 and 1800. There's no doubt Miers Fisher and Latrobe knew [of] each other--they lived in the same exact neighborhood downtown.

"Miers Fisher built the parlors on the West side of the house and made extensive alterations and additions to Ury House and did much besides to improve the exterior of the house and unify the three distinct sections. To give uniformity of appearance to the facade, with its two original three story buildings on the East and center and its two story drawing room addition windows at the West of the entrance hall. These windows were the occasion of much merriment and many witticisms based on the absence of window glass, and the wags expressed constant surprise that a man so famous for his hospitality as Miers Fisher, should greet his guests with Champagne and no glasses."
--Crawford

And now I'm off to see The Last King of Scotland, yet I really want to see Teaching Mrs. Tingle, again.


"Please tell me that's Oscar on the phone."

And the John Barber Award for Architectural Deviance goes too...

Oh, now I get it. A date with Kate Moss, no figure.
Might I suggest some Idi Amin Cuisine.

So there I was, sometime in the January summer of 1987, walking through the deserted Capitol Building. The new Capitol was almost ready, but they still have to straighten the giant slanting flagpole erected the day before. Went through both Houses, and even sat in the Monarch's chair. And then, while looking at all the Prime Minister portraits hanging in the Central Hall, I leaned again this vitrine back in the corner. So what's this big, old document? "Hey guys, get a load of this. It's the Magna Carta!"
Australia's a trip.

Is the Athenaeum an unacknowledged(?) precursor of Deconstructionist architecture? Walked through every inch of that place sometime the middle of July summer of 1978. It was a Friday, construction almost done, and the place was deserted. Very attractive building. Gorgeous blue sky day.

I had no idea then who Helene Gregoroffshy Fisher and Hannah Fisher Price were. Let alone I might one day live exactly where Hannah was born. They didn't find utopia, although Ottopia found them.

Guess who wrote "Bizarre experiments are now a commonplace of scientific research."

[And speaking of commonplace bizarre experiments:]
"Only if virtual evolution can be used to explore a space rich enough so that all the possibilities cannot be considered in advance by the designer, only if what results shocks or at least surprises, can genetic algorithms be considered useful visualization tools."
--de Landa

You know, if a client came to me an asked for a rich space that would shock or at least surprise them, I certainly wouldn't need a genetic algorithm to accomplish the task.

Do you think I should donate my genetic code to science? I mean, what if they find it's totally random and completely tangential?!?

Getting something other than light to travel faster than light, there's the real challenge.

It sounds to me like they stretched a light pulse, rather than make it go faster. But, by all means, forget what I say before I even finish saying it.

Maybe now they'll start tearing down buildings before they're even finished construction. Hey, it's only a theory.

“In a sense Asimov, Heinlein, and the masters of American Science Fiction are not really writing of science at all . . . They’re writing a kind of fantasy fiction about the future, closer to the Western and the Thriller, but it has nothing really to do with science . . . Freud pointed out that you have to distinguish between analytic activity. which by and large is what the sciences are, and synthetic activities which are what the arts are. The trouble with the Heinlein-Asimov type of Science Fiction is that it’s completely synthetic. Freud also said that synthetic activities are a sign of immaturity, and I think that’s where classical Science Fiction falls down.”
--Ballard, Speculation, 1969.

Upon first reading this passage, thoughts of how Piranesi’s Il Campo Marzio dell’Antica Roma and particularly the Ichnographia Campi Martii have been largely misinterpreted by 20th century architectural ‘scholarship’ came to mind. The synthetic quality of Piranesi’s archaeology (before archaeology was formalized into a science) is all the critics/theoreticians saw, and they completely discounted the analytical aspect of Piranesi’s archaeology. Basically, a non-analytical analysis resulted in a synthetic interpretation.

The wonderful thing about Il Campo Marzio dell’Antica Roma (including the Ichnographia Campi Martii) is that the distinction between the analytical and the synthetic is never manifest--the work seamlessly embodies both natures.

[note to self: think about an updated republication of “Theatrics Times Two” and “Theatrics Times Two, too”.]

“Science now, in fact, is the largest producer of fiction. A hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago even, science took its raw material from nature. A scientist worked out the boiling point of a gas or the distance a star is away from the Earth, whereas nowadays, particularly in the social, psychological sciences, the raw material of science is a fiction invented by the scientists. You know, they work out why people chew gum or something of this kind . . . so the psychological and social sciences are spewing out an enormous amount of fiction. They’re the major producers of fiction. It’s not the writers anymore.”
Ballard, Speculation, 1969.

Is Herzog and deMeuron’s plan for the Parrish Art Museum a great great great grandchild of the Ichnographia Campi Martii. Catherine de Ricci wo bist du? ten years ago.

Now to complete the digital terrain model of Ury.

From what I recall, the "stairs" are like half ramp/half stair--low riser to long sloping tread; somewhat like the ramp/stair up to the Campidoglio, Rome. Looks like a code variance was applied for and received.

Just in passing, that whole ramp was to be part of a second separate building which never got built.

As to "It raced so fast the pulse exited a specially prepared chamber before it even finished entering it," that book may already be written---perhaps either Einstein's General Relativity or Special Relativity. (But don't quote me on that.)

As it stands, to me, the sentence relates the pulse being quickly stretched between the entry and exit points of the chamber.

But the sentence may not even be correctly describing what really happened:
Perhaps it meant to say the pulse completely exited the chamber at a time in the past relative to its entry time.
or
Perhaps it meant to say the pulse bilocated, being at two locations but not at the same time; again, the second space/time occurred before the first space/time.

(I wouldn't trust how journalists describe the result of the experiment at this point.)

This is what the whole time warp theory is about. Or at least it's what it used to be all about. Or maybe theories quickly exit before they finish entering.

It is said that St. Catherine de Ricci (at least) once in her life bilocated. A very rare attribute, even among 'saints'.

female peacock sighting; 2007.03.13 12:45; Ury

driving around the block on the way to market...
“Look, there’s a big bird walking across the road. Is that a turkey?”
“No, that’s not a turkey. That’s a peacock.”
The bird is walking very slow. Is it wounded? We slowly drive by a few feet away.
“Wow, it is a peacock. I think it’s just very old.”
“It’s probably just going back into the woods.”

Within the various biographies of John James Audubon you’ll find ongoing discrepancies regarding his whereabouts during his first several months in the United States. The discrepancies stem mostly from the biographers not knowing where Ury actually was.

For the record, Audubon arrived from France at New York City sometime August 1803. The first thing he did was go to a bank in Greenwich [Village] where Audubon’s father had money waiting for his son. Within a day or two Audubon became very ill. The ship’s captain had Audubon taken care of by two Quaker women at Morristown, New Jersey (25 miles west of New York City). Miers Fisher, the agent of Audubon’s father, went to collect the young Audubon once he was well again and brought him back to Ury. Audubon stayed at Ury perhaps as much as a few months, but then insisted he be taken to Mill Grove, his father’s farm not far from Norristown, Pennsylvania.

And from there on Audubon’s life is like one seemingly random tangent after another.

Back to France, back to Mill Grove, Pittsburgh, PA, raft down the Ohio River, Lexington, KY, Henderson, KY, then somewhere along the Mississippi where the Ohio River enters, then down to New Orleans, then north on the Mississippi again, then back to New Orleans, then back to Philadelphia, then back to New York, then Liverpool, England, then Manchester, then London...(this is where I stopped reading one of the autobiographies, and I may have have messed up a little on the sequence of places). And this was just the first 15 years or so since Audubon first came to the US.

I hope that peacock made it safely back into the woods. Are peacocks among the Birds of America?

I have no idea what a peacock was doing walking through my neighborhood today. I've gotten used to the small Canadian geese formations often flying overhead (several families of geese live year round just down valley at Pennypack Creek), but I've never seen a peacock walking in Philadelphia except at the Philadelphia Zoo (and they're not there anymore since the West Nile virus threat). The peacock did look sad, and probably hurt, but what could I do? I only hope I made it across Pine Road and into the woods.

Maybe John James Audubon is now a female peacock and came back to Ury for a random visit. Maybe they'll all start coming back.

The 25-years-ago blog stopped after Spring Break. Final jury was a bit of a letdown--a small group of insecure students lobbied for presentations with no public jury feedback and got their wish. I was just over worked and almost missed my German final. Graduation was OK, got the AIA Student Award for Excellence in Design, and that afternoon at home I came down with Scarlet Fever. Apparently I had streep throat most of the semester and didn't know it and thus did nothing about it, and then it was too late. My grandmother nursed me back to health. A week or so after being well again, the outer skin of the inside of hands and the soles of my feet began to separate from the inner skin and then began to peel off in large pieces. Apparently that's what happens after you survive Sacrlet Fever.

And then I went to document Gunston Hall, Virginia for the summer. They had Guinea Hens roaming about the garden there, until one weekend someone killed them.

1981: Site of College Graduation.
1974: Sat on the stage with other honor students at High School Graduation.
1974: Site of Senior Prom.

Miers Fisher's Ury journals (1804-1819) are voluminous. Quite overwhelming. I might go blind. But, if you want to know what direction the wind was blowing where I live on any given day two hundred years ago, I can now tell you. We're at a high point here, 200 to 220 feet up. I have a feeling the winds are blowing the same way again.

1804, some day in January: "Killed 12 stags." I told you there're lots of deer around here, still.

Miers' last year at Ury, 1818, was fairly equally split between living at Ury and living in the City--108 Arch Street--back and forth very often. I'm pretty sure I know the route he took; I take it pretty often myself now. I love 'Indian' trails.

23 Dec 1818 "Left for Ury." 30 Dec 1818 "headed back the City."
Miers' last Christmas was spent at Ury, and he never made it back. He died mid-March 1819 at Arch Street, and kept his journal until his antepenult day.

Did you ever wonder why the even house numbers are on one side of the street and the odd house numbers are on the other side of the street? Well, as far as Philadelphia is concerned, it's because Miers Fisher made the suggestion while he was on the Common [City] Council 1789-1791. So 108 Arch Street in on the south side of the street and was back then between 5th and 6th Streets. That's right on axis with Independence Hall, and if the house were still there today, it would be right across the street from the U.S. Constitution Center. Location, location, location.

Held a letter in my hands today that was written in New Harmony, 11 August 1826. Helen Gregoroffsky Fisher had remarkably nice penmanship, as remarkable as her command of the English language. She was quickly responding to Redwood Fisher's letter that she received the day before. Held several of Redwood's letters in my hands today too. Specifically his supercargo letters--from Batavia, from Isle of France, from Cape of Good Hope.

I wonder if Miers Fisher ever though his journals would return to their location of origin.

ps
Look what else I found in the Way Back Machine. How quondam can you get?

1812 December 30 Thursday
"SL went to Ury this evening having heard that Sally was now indisposed. I intended to have gone but received an invitation to see a self moving machine made by Lukens in imitation of Redheffer's--it was made by subscription among some opponents of Redheffer's machine expecting to prove that it would not go without the secret power which they suspect he has in some part hid."

From museum of hoaxes to a virtual museum of architecture, just always moving along...

...and will they ever raise and address the question?
"The present essay can only raise and set aside the question of Latrobe's relationship to mechanical aids in drawing, such as the camera obscura for which he thanked President Thomas Jefferson on 21 March 1807."

Ah yes, mechanically aided drawings. Does something like that actually exist?

1812 January 3 Friday
"...my people with the aid of John Hamilton were employed in killing 2 Bison this day, one weighed 710 lbs, the other 585 lbs."

I used to love whenever my grandmother called my a buffalo in German.

"Come on baby, do the perpetual motion with me."

1812 March 25 Wednesday
"...dined at my brother's, left town at 5 & got home at Dusk. Heard the Spring Hymn of the frogs, first time."

2007
Cheesecake just went in the oven.

What did the shark say to the force-fed goose on page 197?
"I can't stand being in this book! And you, you represent what this book is all about.

What did the force-fed goose say back to the shark on page 197?
"Eat me, please!"

4-dimensional hernia architecture?!?

exchange doctor for architect and design for diagnosis

1812 January 16 Thursday
"[the Doctor] recommended topical bleeding by Leeches & abstinence for 2 or 3 days instead of Phlebotomy."

Give so moniker mutations will live.

"The history of architecture is replete with successful projects that are the result of novelity found within false history and, more recently, outmoded science.

Historian Rudolf Wittkower, in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, gives as an example Andrea Palladio's historical error attributing superimposed pediments to the Pantheon giving erroneous historical legitimacy to his unsurpassed Venetian churches."
--Reiser + Umemoto, Atlas of Novel Tectonics, p. 170.

Go read pages 89 to 97 of Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism to see what examples Wittkower really gave.

Do you think Reiser + Umemoto purposefully wrote historical error within their passage about historical error in order to more strongly make the point about the modus operandi of historical error in design itself?


26 March 1726 death of Sir John Vanbrugh.

Whenever I look out the quondam window now: "So I do have a home where the buffalo roamed."

Real project? Designing a garden of satire for myself.

satire : a usually topical literary composition holding up human or individual vices, folly, abuses, or shortcomings to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other method sometimes with an intent to bring about improvement

5. Above all, the nymphaeum of the Orti Liciniani, then and still known as the temple of Minerva Medica. Alberti's inclusion of the deagon among his shapes for churches is, no doubt, due to this prototype.
--Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, p. 5n.



Hey, have you seen the April 2007 cover of Art in America? Very Museumpeace 2001.
"Anna, my assistant this past summer, was quite surprised when I asked her to model my fashions so I could photograph them, but I must say she did it in style. For example, when I asked her to pose while figuratively reenacting The Rape of the Sabine Women by Poussin, she immediately knew what to do."

27 March 1920 birth of Colin Rowe.

10:43 EST Some sort of hawk or eagle gliding over Quondam Ury.
Remember to look for any references to John James Audubon in Miers Fisher's 1804 journal.

Coincidental reading this morning: "Female separatists want to destroy the social contract between men and women and replace it with nothing; they seem to believe that all penetrative sex is rape, if a wife loves her husband she's exhibiting a slave mentality. How do you cope with that sort of fanaticism? Satire seems one way."
--J.G. Ballard, KGB (1995).

So it turns out that Miers Fisher did know William Penn IV--a great-grandson of Philadelphia founder William Penn. All I know so far though is that Miers shared a coach with Penn and his wife between Doylestown and Abington mid 1812. Perhaps a great-grandson or two of founder William Penn were once at Ury after all.

Finished digitizing a 1839 map of what is now Northeast Philadelphia. There are more 'Indian' trails around here than I prevously thought, and I hadn't realized before that Indian trail-Oxford Ave is a fairly consistant exact north-south trajectory. And Cottman Ave. and Castor Ave. correspond directly to lines on the 1687 map of Pennsylvania--their orthagonal intersection even makes a kind of cardo and decumanus. There's an aerial view of Cottman and Castor in Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, p. 780 toward the upper left, Bustleton Avenue along the botton of the page is an old Indian trail.

Once you study them, you find that the "Indian" trails within Philadelphia are not random tangents at all. Certainly not as random as the lines on the 1687 map of Pennsylvania. (Cottman Ave. is the parallel line to the left of the planned Susquehanna Road.)

quondam
Rita Novel
Wolfhilde von Schlittenfahrt
SuperImpose
Crystal Vanish
I'm with stupid>>>
singing in the shower
Precog
don't look at me
I like extremes.
every inch a gentleman
spoiled rotten cocker
Who did I used to be?
Frank O. Goldberg
petting zoo purgatory
once was
Off. o. Acropolitan Arch.
I’m laughing my ass off.
This is an advertisement.
001 Lauf
002 Lauf
003 Lauf
004 Lauf
Atlas of Rita Novel Tectonics
JohntheBaptist Piranesi
LeDeuzzy, Q.
Miss Rita Novel
Marcel Breuer
Random Access Memory

4 April
397 death of St. Ambrose; Good Friday Eve

5 April
1730 birth of Seroux d'Agincourt

6 April
1483 birth of Raphael
1520 death of Raphael; Good Friday
2005 death of Prince Rainier II of Monaco

This Raphael used to hang here.

1999.04.14
an alter-ego for Quondam

Just before going into the hospital, I started to think about creating an alternative Quondam environment, one that is accessed through Quondam’s main page, and utilizes the same collection and themes as Quondam , but nonetheless affords Quondam a “place” to be much more liberal, uninhibited, and all out revolutionary(?). At first it may appear that this is borrowing the theme of schizophrenia + architectures, but that is really not the intention at all. The main objective is to apply all the new dexterity implications inherent in CAD and the digital revolution vis-à-vis architecture and representation. Perhaps the alter-ego can go so far as to present the notion of an alter-ego to architectural history as well.

...begin this “alter-ego” virtual museum through presenting any number of cad model distortions and collisions. These new “models” will in turn offer the opportunity to create and engage in new architectural environments that will come to represent a totally new and unprecedented world of architecture.

Perhaps this alter-ego museum will most resemble schizophrenia + architectures in that really anything can go on there. Actively indulge in taking up any of the more unconventional ideas and take them to whatever mean or extreme. Perhaps the correct term for this other Quondam place is super-ego Quondam, a place where architecture enjoys the virtuality of digital infinitude.

The alter-ego may ultimately produce something akin to what Piranesi continually produced through his engravings and texts...

[This note was first published online within [b]schizophrenia + architectures[/i] toward the end of 1999. Also, there was briefly online an alter-ego Quondam via a madnouQ link. OMA's spawning of AMO was extremely coincidental.]

2000.04.16
exploiting Quondam

...tired of doing all the serious work at Quondam... tired of not having creative fun. ...it’s time to begin OTHERWISE EYES. ...start “invading” the existing pages with new data that is there like product placement or is disinformation or is just infringement text/imagery.

...the notion of a museum present throughout, albeit a museum completely otherwise.

...feeling that even with the invasion/unethical approach, an architectural philosophy will come through...an iconoclastic approach engendering originality...changing the Ichnographia, adding “bold” topics to the Encyclopedia, P. as a hyper(?) museum of architecture, Synopsis of Architecture by Papidakis and L., “how to be the best architectural client,” hyper building additions, religious conversions (Hurva goes Christian, etc.), Seroux and the Denkmal (plus more [like Durand]), the P. model with all the other site plans grafted on, the NOT THERE imagination.

=====

1812.04.16
Ury

After spending the morning writing a letter to his son Miers Jr. in St. Petersburg, Russia, Miers goes out to garden (where the mailbox is now) and is attacked by a bee, and is ill the rest of the day.

1998.04.17
the next four-five months

The work on the Ichnographia is well on its way... Besides the actual work on this project, it is becoming more and more clear that the methodology behind Piranesi’s plan is very applicable to a rethinking of my own neighborhood. By that I mean that the Ashdale Valley, Rising Sun & Tabor, Cedar Grove, Tacony Creek, etc. all add up to a stimulating narrative, and can well be “drawn up” as an Ichnographia. This is where my Campo Marzio work and my Tacony Creek Park work overlap intellectually, and I will elaborate on how this relates to Tacony Creek/Cedar Grove in a subsequent note.

=====

1998.04.23
the Ichnographia as “theme park”

Because of my potential trip to Rome in June, I have mentally played with the notion of the Ichnographia being used (perhaps for the first time) as a “guide map.” Using the Ichnographia as a guide would seem ridiculous to most because the large plan has always been dismissed as a pure fantasy. It can act as a guide, however, especially if one is aware of the textual background of the plan, meaning the historical texts which describe ancient Rome.

Along these lines, I came up with the idea of looking at the Ichnographia as a ancient Roman theme park--a virtual place where one can vicariously experience the ancient city as well as learn about the history of the city. I am not at all a fan of late 20th century theme parks, but their “virtuality” has not escaped me. Judging by what is created today in terms of simulacra and mass entertainment, it is as if the Ichnographia is like their uncanny prototype.

The themes Piranesi uses are numerous:
a. the Imperial genealogy of both the Bustum Augustii and the Bustum Hadriani.
b. the forward and backward “ride” of the Triumphal Way.
c. the military themes along the Equirius.
d. the numerous garden designs
e. the nemus Caesaris and the Bustum Hadriani

In a way, the whole typological catalogue is nothing but one variation on a theme after another.

In no way do I want to cheapen my interpretation of the Campo Marzio by relating it to modern theme parks, but the fact remains that there are similarities. Does this mean that Piranesi is yet again (200) years ahead of his time in terms of planning? Does this correlation shed new light on the present relevance of the Ichnographia as a planning paradigm that prophetically explains architecture’s state as well as shed light on the future? These are certainly questions that I never expected to be asking myself, yet I have thought about the possible urban design relevance of the Ichnographia for today, but not from the point of view of modern theme parks.

I guess this is just another issue to consider, but it is also a very far reaching one because of the implications toward a possible understanding of the future of architecture.

=====

2007.04.17
there's a movie in there somewhere

Ever since learning about Helen Gregoroffsky Fisher, I've wanted to see The Europeans again (a movie I haven't seen in almost 30 years, and little did I know I was a Merchant/Ivory fan way back then). Henry James wrote the novel, and I want to read that soon, although Miers' journals probably draw a better picture. Anyway, I finally saw The Europeans again last night, and yes it all relates quite well. Now I envision a new movie, Learning from Helen Gregoroffsky Fisher.

...and speaking of Agitation!

from: lauf-s
to: archipol [a now defunct email list at Archis]
re: regrets, of course
date: 2001.08.21

I received 1593+ emails, and for about 20 minutes Sunday morning I wasn't sure what shape my email or system would be in afterwards, or if I lost other emails. Luckily all turned out to be OK. I'm sure many others had the same exact feelings, and probably have even more reasons to be upset. I truly wish none of it happened.

I can't say I feel responsible though, because it seems that my email Happy Saint Helena Day triggered something that I and everyone else was totally unaware of.

For what it's worth, if I start writing about the archipol incident of August 18-19, it will have to be as a reenactment of the other EPICENTRAL events.


from: Ole Bouman
to: archipol subscribers
re: archipol mailbomb
date: 2001.08.21

Archipol owes you a clarification of what happened to your e-mail facility last weekend. First of all: it wasn't caused by a virus.

Archipol is an almost sleeping giant. It was... Till one of its persistent contributors, lauf-s, has something to share with us.

Then this:
Mary Jo Torrey's 'out of office' e-mail notice resulted in a kind of e-mail bomb in the mailing list. The notice bounced back and forth between her mail server and all the members of the mailing list at a speed which runned up to 100 messages per minute! Even the e-mail system of our provider almost collapsed. All the members of the list became thousands of e-mails until our provider put a halt to it by unsubscribing Mary Jo. According to our provider this is a very rare phenomenon, which might be a perfect thing for activist action, but which is fatal to a group of serious people waiting for the final awakening of Archipol.

Although we bear no responsability to the side-effects of automatic responders that people might use, we want to apologize for the great inconvenience. We hope that you will be still there when the real Archipol is raising its voice. We are now working on a post-New-Economy version of a mail-community which will be launched in the near future.

We keep you posted
(if you still have the stomach for it...)

=====

4. Rosa
4. gardens of satire
4. saintly email bombs
4. mnemonics
4. all the errors that remain herein

--dedication of A Quondam Banquet of Virtual Sachlichkeit: Part II

=====

I'm waiting for Volume's "Behind the Times!" issue or maybe that's what they all are.

Sometime in the future republish all emails I sent to archipol at Quondam. This will pretty much be a full archive of the "sleeping giant" since I was almost the only person to ever send anything to archipol. Maybe call the feature Dear Comatose.

Now, where exactly did I store that html file of the archipol archive list showing the hundreds of Happy Saint Helena Day emails?

Coincidently, the email I sent to archipol 1999.04.18 was entitled tsPOWa, which was my first email ever about St. Helena.

regarding An American (Wall) in Baghdad

From: quondam001
To: design-l
Subject: re: city making and city breaking
Date: 1998.12.17

It has not escaped my attention that Operation Desert Fox has spurred some discussion here within the design-list that very much resembles the notion of humanity presently working metabolically, i.e., equal doses of creation and destruction. With regard to what I last said here concerning the possible notion of an assimilating architecture, my further elaboration of their presently also being an imaginative operation of a metabolic nature now seems very timely. I thus wish to interject one example of metabolic architecture/urbanism.

Berlin: foremost metabolic city of the 20th century

No doubt the city of Berlin, Germany has undergone unequaled metamorphosis throughout the course of the 20th century.

Berlin reached one of this planet's highest levels of urban density within the first quarter of this century.

In the 1930s, Berlin became capital of the National Socialists Third Reich, an unprecedented create/destroy political machine, extreme even in its assimilation, the Holocaust purge.

1945, the Battle of Berlin leaves the city all but totally destroyed.

During the Cold War, Berlin increasingly becomes a very real duality, a duality much like metabolism itself.

1989, the Berlin Wall opens, falls, and within a few years the city is again united.

Y2K, Berlin begins the 21st century as a completely new German capital.

The pattern of creation and destruction completely pervades the last 100 years of Berlin's history, but then again it is also the capital of one of the 20th century's foremost metabolic nations.

Berlin and Germany are not alone in their metabolism, however. One only has to look at Japan and its two A-bomb cities, the two Koreas, the once two Vietnams, and there is always Israel and Old Jerusalem.

No one has yet suggested the likelihood of two Iraq's and/or two Baghdads, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if that place somehow became very metabolic as well.

Stephen Lauf

[This email was also sent to archipol sometime early 1999.]

the
first
hybrid
[architectures]
conference
of
the
21st
century

redux