Analysis Of The Book ' Hylozoic Ground '

Oscar Wilde is quoted saying "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken". Being yourself sounds like an amazing thing to do these days. Not only does the concept sound amazing it also sounds challenging. How can being yourself be challenging? With so many outside influences it is easy to get sidetrack and distracted from the inner you. The true self is covered up with conditioned fear based thinking. This is born from the fear of rejection. For example, The "Foundations of the Earth" by Randall Kenan explores the fear that some have of religious consequences. Consequences that their faith has implied on them. Kenan describes a woman's journey through these

From the beginning of my architectural education I have been inspired and influenced by political realities and issues throughout Canada and the wider world. Discussions relating to how architecture participates in political change, conflict, movements, and other events have refined, shaped and sustained my interest in the field. Growing up in suburban Winnipeg I have been continuously struck by the lack of architectural authenticity, consideration and intention found on the fringes of the city. These monotonous architectural landscapes promote and enable political inactivity. Among and in-between the many strip malls, condominiums and stucco-clad houses, there is no space for political activism or protest. In a reality where consumerism

The skeletal characteristics of these hominines suggest that their mode of locomotion was likely a cross between occasional bipedalism and obligate bipedalism. From the reading we have learned that obligate bipedalism is bipedal locomotion that is practiced all of the time while occasional bipedalism is bipedalism that is practiced on occasion. The ratio of arm length to leg length (longer arms) suggests that they did spend time climbing trees, however the cranial and post cranial traits of these fossils suggest that they spent much of their time on the ground and likely ambulating bipedally combined with a variation of upright walking and knuckle walking. This is evidenced by two factors: the fact the foramen magnum of the skull is centrally located, and the ratio of arm to leg length. In creatures with bipedal ambulation, the foramen magnum is located in the center of the base of the skull to keep the head aligned over the center of gravity of the creature. If the fossils were walking primarily with their knuckles, the

In chapters two and three titled “Sites” and “Movements” respectively, Howard makes the case that there is a “dialectical” relationship between the subject and the landscape (both social and physical) and

I have not had the fortune to travel to many places, but did not really need to in order to write about one of my favorite places. I have chosen to write about Vizcaya, a place in which I have personally been able to experience and enjoy many times throughout my life. Although Vizcaya was constructed in what would be considered modern times, Vizcaya’s Gardens were inspired and designed in a European Renaissance style. Its formal gardens and design are reminiscent of Italian home and garden design of the late 15th to 18th century, influenced by Veneto and Tuscan Italian Renaissance. These splendid gardens are very formal and orderly, created for the environment of the user. They are very symmetrical and include all sorts of fascinating elements

Landscape, when applied to an urban context, no longer refers to prospects of a pastoral scene but rather becomes a mean of connecting objects and spaces around it, as well as accommodating the dynamic processes and events that move through it. These urban landscapes are not only defined by their form, but by the program that surrounds it, as well as its ability to connect with the user through its underlying function. The snow dump known as the Bayview yards, is an example of such urban landscape. Bayview Yards is a 16 acre piece of land that is currently home to a derelict city workshop and a massive area designated for a snow dump. Through the site’s history and function a new opportunity comes forward to redefine the landscape, extenuating

Sculptor Nancy Holt defined three forms of collaboration, that artist who work on site specific location must consider. These three form of collaboration between architecture and art which include,”… ‘conceptual’ …working autonomously, to create complementary works… ‘correlative,’…greater interaction … two professionals inform the works of each other… ‘cooperative’…a working team of architects, sculptors, landscape architects, fabricators, engineers, and community workers…” (Marter, 315). Many artists have recently accepted the challenges of blighted urban areas by creating "situations" rather than monolithic abstractions. Such artists as Mary Miss…[and]…Nancy Holt, … and others were determined to raise the social consciousness of architects and to forge a new relationship between public site and viewer (Marter, 315). A perfect example of Holt’s third form of collaboration is her work Dark Star Park. This site specific piece sits on, “two-thirds of an acre, consists of five spheres, two pools, four steel poles, a stairway, a large tunnel (for passage), and a smaller tunnel for viewing only” ( Mater, 316). This work is a stark contrast to Holt’s piece, Sun Tunnels, which was set in the Utah desert. “These consist of for big concrete tubes, each almost six meters long and three meters wide, positioned to form two

Physical space can inform researchers on how people interact with that space, and influence social behavior. Applied anthropologists have a very important tool in their practitioner’s toolkit that allows them to disseminate behavior, actions, and help create spaces that will meet the needs of the population using ethnography. Ethnography allows practitioners to use their observational skills to improve the design of a product, landscape, environment, or assist with an infrastructural design based on the needs of the individuals that will access such facilities (Rijsberman 2012). To do so, it is extremely important to know the impact of physical surroundings and environmental behavior and understand that environments have a strong influence on people’s interaction with the physical landscape.

As suggested by the title, this piece of literature attempts to highlight the importance of sensory experience in architecture. It is indeed a response to what the author terms as ‘ocularcentrism’ of Modern Architecture. Ocularcentrism is the act of prioritizing visual stimuli to all other sensory stimuli available to a human perception. He quotes famous German poet, Goethe, in his defense, “the hands want to see, the

The book of Genesis is often referred to as the book of beginnings. Genesis is the first book that begins the Old Testament, it is also the first book of the entire Bible. The Lord also began the world in the book of Genesis, He made the heavens and the earth, man and woman. In Genesis chapters one through eleven, the Bible teaches us stories that most of us have grown up hearing in Sunday School such as the creation account, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood and the tower of Babel. In this book of beginnings, we are shown some of Gods characteristics; we see that God is love and He showed His love by creating us and the world, on the other extreme, we also see the wrath of God. Through these teachings, we are able to see that God ultimately in control and holds everything in His balance. The stories of Genesis aren’t just stories; they are real life accounts that can help build and shape a worldview on things regarding the natural world, human identity, human relationships and civilization.

In 1966 Claude Parent and Paul Virilio formed the Architecture Principe group with the aim to investigating orthogonal space and oblique space through the senses of our body. In the virtuous man the body is in the center of 2 constructs, which is an example of the subject/object relationship of man vs environment, figure vs ground. In case of Parent and Virilio, a body sensing an incline slop though gravity makes us conscious about our environment while travel thought it simultaneously. In contrast, flatness is static and artificial. Terrain is form by nature, therefore stimulate our sense of space and create experience thought it. The thesis is to develop a set of methods to utilize the oblique plane into modern environment. In hopes of a different spatial possibility comes into the stack up city.

In Wright and An alto's houses, a powerful sense of insides is generate by opacity. Which, in Falling water is express in roughly dressed stone masonry walls and, in Villa Mairea. By white-painted, solid walls. The transparency of glass windows in both houses thereby connect the two. In both houses, the architects created a strong sense of insideness yet, at the same time, devised ways to connect inside and outside and thereby create a robust continuity between the two. This inside-outside relationship can be translate into environmental and architectural experience in four different ways: (1) in-betweeness; (2) interpenetration generated by inside; (3) interpenetration generated by outside; and (4)

“Human houses should not be like boxes, blazing in the sun, nor should we outrage the Machine by trying to make dwelling places too complementary to Machinery. Any building for humane purposes should be an elemental, sympathetic feature of the ground, complementary to its nature-environment, belonging by kinship to the terrain.”

In 1967, the french theorist Guy Debord, outlined his concept for a future spectacle society, whereby ….. “Quote about capital”. Presented as a treatise on the modern humman condition; Society of the Spectacle is a piece that explores the contemporary effects of power, which it seems in more recent times are becoming increasingly tied with the idea of a media and consumer society; a system based off the production and consumption of images, information and commodities. In the discourse of arhcitecture specifically, it seems Debords predictions have bled into the culture of modern design, as expressed by Anthony Vidler: “Recent proposals and debates over the architectutural devlopment of ground zero have highlighted the way in which, over the last two decades, the public role of architecture has been gradually reduced to the symbolic and the emblematic. Its forms of expresion are no longer closely tied back to urban issues and physical planning questions.” (Toward a theory of the architectural program, antohny vidler, page 1) These discussions and critiques, indeed, seem to bear out Guy Debords 1964 anticipation of an all-pervading spectacle culture where in essense, we have moved into a system of architecture overinvested in symbolic form, “where flash and bravura win out over contemplation”. (- nordic from on aestehtics and function in architecture - page 1. )

The book consists of twelve chapters that propose this idea that designers should explore the nature of our senses’ response to the spatial built forms that people invest their time in. It tries to cover a specific topic in each chapter that in order to deconstruct the book, it is necessary to cover each chapter individually.