"The structures of McKim, Mead, and White, for conspicuous
example, gave America, above all gave New York City, the
metaphor it needed to define its own ideal history and its
imagined place in the future it hoped to shape. Their
buildings distill America's vision of itself at a
particularly optimistic moment, and to the degree that they
succeeded in making this vision palpable, these master
builders of the consciousness of their age helped to
transform the lives of those who used their metaphoric
shapes. Consider the campus of Columbia University. It is
not, by metaphoric implication, a cloister; so its users are
not, by metaphoric implication, monks and clerics,
preserving the relics of learning against the surrounding
darkness. It is rather an architectural reenactment of a
Renaissance reenactment of a dreamt classical city believed
to be real, and because it is a city in connotation it can
and does emblemize the city it is part of. Its users are
open to economic, political, and artistic currents of the
wider world. Life at Columbia is altogether different than
life at "cloister" universities, and its architecture is a
paradigm of success in this symbolic transformation of its
users, for use confirms the metaphor of a building as
reading completes writing."
--Arthur C. Danto, "Building Metaphors" in Precis: Beyond
Style --The Journal of the Graduate School of Architecture
and Planning (Columbia University: Fall 1984), p. 99.
Did Danto just pre-Derrida deconstruct Columbia
University['s architecture] better than Wigley might do ex
post facto Derrida? Or is reenactment what will always shape
Columbia University and its users?
he ain't heavy
http://lists1.cac.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9912&L=design-l&P
=R7123&I=-3
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example, gave America, above all gave New York City, the
metaphor it needed to define its own ideal history and its
imagined place in the future it hoped to shape. Their
buildings distill America's vision of itself at a
particularly optimistic moment, and to the degree that they
succeeded in making this vision palpable, these master
builders of the consciousness of their age helped to
transform the lives of those who used their metaphoric
shapes. Consider the campus of Columbia University. It is
not, by metaphoric implication, a cloister; so its users are
not, by metaphoric implication, monks and clerics,
preserving the relics of learning against the surrounding
darkness. It is rather an architectural reenactment of a
Renaissance reenactment of a dreamt classical city believed
to be real, and because it is a city in connotation it can
and does emblemize the city it is part of. Its users are
open to economic, political, and artistic currents of the
wider world. Life at Columbia is altogether different than
life at "cloister" universities, and its architecture is a
paradigm of success in this symbolic transformation of its
users, for use confirms the metaphor of a building as
reading completes writing."
--Arthur C. Danto, "Building Metaphors" in Precis: Beyond
Style --The Journal of the Graduate School of Architecture
and Planning (Columbia University: Fall 1984), p. 99.
Did Danto just pre-Derrida deconstruct Columbia
University['s architecture] better than Wigley might do ex
post facto Derrida? Or is reenactment what will always shape
Columbia University and its users?
he ain't heavy
http://lists1.cac.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9912&L=design-l&P
=R7123&I=-3
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html