Eiseman, Folding, Rebstock

warning: this is the first day this month that I haven't had coffee.. :(

To some extent, Eiseman is saying that architecture can now experience that shift in The Wizard of Oz when color came into view. Actually, he means something much deeper (I hope), almost another dimension but by the last page he leaves me highly skeptical, unconvinced, and worried that he is recycling too much of his jargon.

Maybe working with ideas such as the fold will enlighten us architects. His portrayal of the Rock Show struck a key of interest and the sound bite surely hits home especially with the herd mentality to summarizing your blog posts with a single, encapsulating image. Are we architects destined to obey this fad? Must we create experiences, animations, temporal systems while neglecting the building, the bricks, the rain? I hate to think we are shackled to figure ground drawings however to say that design is a non-dialectic process seems renascent of the pessimistic post-modernists. "But as in most disciplines," he leaves us with "they are no longer thought to explain the complexity of phenomena." Thanks for getting somewhere with your article, Eiseman.

And of all cities to analyze, he picks the absolute deadville of a town in Germany, Frankfurt, where even the old folks go mad with boredom. The only successful thing that city ever did was suck up my ATM card and whimper, "Es tut mir leid.."

I can see why we are reading the piece: someone turns his back on Cartesian rationalism. However, it doesn't take a fold to re-articulate "a new relationship between vertical and horizontal or between figure and ground." The color blue could do just fine: it's not black or white, figure or ground. Or maybe even crumpling up the article, toss it in the waste basket. How's that for revealing "other conditions that may always haven been immanent or repressed in" me. Slight shift on context, but at least you get what Iam trying to say.

"The fold can then be used as both a formal device and as a way of projecting new social organizations into an existing urban environment." What does it mean to project new social organizations into existing urban environments? If it means "the library needs to go over there," so be it. If it means, "I am a wizard who can magically orchestrate social interactions despite existing conditions," then I get a little lost.

sorry if you had to read this..