On Fri,1 Aug 1996 echampion@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> this is all very well and good, only,
> the Sydney Opera House as a competition proposal was thrown into the rubbish bin by the judges and saved
> by the American yet Finnish born architect Eero Saarinen (Dallas Airport etc). My point being, that saying
> "allowing the sky to be a sky" is not enough to be able to select architecture that is "alive" as you call it.
> There must be something more. Can we get prescriptive and not just descriptive?
> On the other hand, saying that a work of art must "allow" things to appear as they are, could be useful for a
> theory of the theory of art, a meta-aesthetic, that is a theory of what a theory of art needs in terms of criteria to
> be be more or less an acceptatble theory of art.
> I suggest that Gadamer's and Heidegger's writings might be better put to use in this regard.
> If people find such a project useful or a waste of time, please feel free to tell me. Especially if they know of
> people who work in the area (of meta-aesthetic), whether there is a better name (ie not reminiscent of
> metaphysics) or if they think that such a theory of the theories of art might in turn by necessity be a theory of
> art (and if so, if there could be a solution) I would be appreciate it.
> Regards
> Erik Champion
Erik: I suggest you look at the work of Fredric Jameson on space &
architecture. There, as I recall, the issue is not so much one of
prescription vs. description but rather a matter of designing or shaping
spaces (within a particular mode of production, eg. postmodernism,given
the available material conditions and social realities) that will enable
certain kinds of social behavior and forestall others. Hal Foster edited
a book that may help too, called <<The Anti-Aesthetic>>. There is one
essay in particular that might direct your thinking.It's Kenneth
Frampton's "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an
Architecture of Resistance." Critical regionalism, according to
Frampton, is a strategy "to mediate the impact of universal civilization
[the same bad movie, "the same plastic or aluminum atrocities" (acc Ricoeur
in History & Truth) with elements derived indirectly from the
peculiarities of a particular place. It is clear," Frampton continues,
"that Critical Regionalism depends upon maintaining a high level of
critical self-consciousness. It may find its governing inspiration in
such things as the range and quality of the local light, or ina tectonic
derived from a peculiar structural mode, or in the topography of a given
site" (21). Heidegger informs this effort, but, as you can see, Frampton
enables us to get passed the repetition of tautologies so common in these
discussions whenever they leave behind the specificity of the material
base with all of its frequently painful social and political
limitations. I hope this helps.
Patrick M. Murphy
English Department
SUNY Oswego
pmurphy@xxxxxxxxxx
iiiixmmmmmiiii+++
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