Beyond: Values and Symptoms
Excited that Beyond issue 2 is out. Alongside luminaries both literary and architectural including Douglas Coupland and Francois Roche, I have contributed a short story titled "Everything Dale Myres Could And Couldn't See". The story chronicles a digital animators increasing obsession with the assassination of JFK which leads to ever more byzantine recreations of Dealey Plaza and other sites noted for their conspiritorial nature - kind of Dan Brown via Nikolaus Pevsner if you will. Here is an extract: "Using Lightwave, Myres had been constructing a model of the assassination of President Kennedy. He began to collect data and documents, feeding the information into his model: the geography of Dealey Plaza, the positions of the waving crowds, the architecture of the Book Depository, the position and size of trees began to be mapped out. Myers assembled a growing library of documents, maps, newspaper reports, eyewitness accounts and photographs, triangulating between them to pinpoint positions, double check measurements, map out the sequence of events. As Myres worked through his project he felt a sense of abstract stillness leaking out from his screen. Myres' idea was that something of the clarity of his mathematically described environments might be able to be mapped onto the landscape of the real world. That somewhere where the direct relationship between action and reaction, between intention and effect were immediate might be able to inform to a place and a moment that seemed to represent the degree zero of the unresolved and unknowable. Through this, a non-negotiable truth might emerge. During the nights after animating red and yellow M&Ms, he made notes charting the Zapruder assassination footage frame by frame: Myres scrutinized each moment, movement and every object. He would draw diagrams, list material properties, note proximities and relationships to other objects forming a master taxonomy of the things that had occupied Dealey Plaza on November 22nd 1963. 3 x large traffic signposts 4 x sidewalk lamp posts John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure including 2 enclosed shelters Tool shed 1 x 3.3 foot (1 m) high concrete wall connected to each of the pergola shelters 10 x tall, wide, low-hanging live oak trees 5 foot (1.5 m) tall, wooden, cornered, stockade fenceline approx.169 feet (53.6 m) long 6 x street curb sewers openings, sewer manholes + interconnecting large pipes Various 2 to 6 foot (0.6 to 1.8 m) tall bushes, trees, and hedges."Frame 313 / 161.2 grain slug, traveling at 2,100 ft/sec. Hits R. occipital area of Kennedy's head, shattering occipital bone. Upper R side of head explodes, brains/bone in expanding pink cloud. Pieces of parietal and temporal sections skull remain attached by skin. Head lurches back to the left (8.0-8.4 seconds after the first shot). Body stiffens suddenly"
North Grassy Knoll:
Myres digital simulation of the Plaza grew. To assist, he built physical models which he could begin to inhabit. A 1:20 version of the grassy knoll, a 1:1 section of the Book Depository. Masking tape mapped out Elm Street over the studio floor. A desk stood in for the Presidential limousine. Myres walked around. He stood in Zapruders position. He stepped back and right as though he were standing behind the stockade fence. He crouched, occupying the space where Kennedy's head took the first impact of the bullet.
The physical and digital models grew in complexity, grew in their refinement as Myres fed more information into them. As he modeled, it expanded. The Triple Underpass was marked out into the parking lot. Slowly, Myres felt like a truth was emerging from his simulated landscapes, that the spatial mapping of the mass of accruing data was congealing into something solid."
If you want more, you'll have to buy Beyond Beyond: No.2: Values and Symptoms.
Beyond is a great addition to the pantheon of architectural publishing. Edited by Pedro Gadanho it provides a space for architectural writing (and writing about architecture) outside of journalistic or academic confines. Instead by embracing the fictional and the narrative it begins to show alternative ways of writing, thinking and representing architectural ideas - which might be closer to 'truths' than the supposedly factual or the heavily footnoted.
Contents:
More Scenes In Cartoon Deserta
Generic Powerpoint Template: Delivering Bad News
The Best New Building In London
Book Review: The Infrastructural City
The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition
Now Showing: John Baldessari Sings Sol LeWitt
Obscure Design Typologies: Life Guard Chairs
Osama bin Laden Cigarette Lighter: Novelty Products as Congealed Culture
Absurd Car Crashes: A Eulogy for J.G. Ballard
Now Showing: Dan Grahams 'Rock My Religion'
This Concrete 'O': On Serotonin, the M25, and the Motorik Picturesque
Church of the Literal Narrative
Philadelphias Floating Architecture
Now Viewing: Married To The Eiffel Tower
Le Corbusiers Image Hoard: Poeme Electronique
Giant American Signs: Original Learning from Las Vegas Footage
Giant Soviet Signs Cut Into Forests
Bricks Melted Into Icicles: Napalm Decorative
C-Labs 'Unfriendly Skies' & 'Bootleg' Volume
2 The Lighthouse: Self Storage & Architectural Hallucinations
Ceci N'Est Pas Une Pipe: Infrastructure as Architectural Subconcious.
Viva Sectional Cinematography!
Now Showing: The Installation of an Irreversible Axis on a Dynamic Timeline
Sim Seasons Greetings! The Rise of Neo-Winter
Geography in Bad, Festive Drag.
Simulations of Industry: High Tech Architecture and Thatcherism
From The Factory to the Allotment: Tony Wilson, Urbanist
Koolhaas HouseLife / Gan Eden: The Revenge of Architectural Media
Ruburb-ric: The Ecologies of the Farnsworth House
Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham Redux
Acts of Un-Building: Timelapse Demolitions
Yard Filth: Next Years Hot Look
Stonehenge: A Black Hole At The Heart Of British Architecture
The Popemobile: Mechanised Robes & Motorised Architecture
The Secret Language of Surface
Information Fields: Agriculture as Media
My Bloody Valentine: Sound as Substance
A Cubist Copse: Gehrys Serpentine Pavilion
Spouting Off: Some Thoughts On The Fountainhead
Form Follows Dysfunction: Bad Construction & The Morality of Detail
Vintage Tradeshow Surrealism: International Grune Woche
Moving Houses: Buildings In Motion
Desktop Study: The Strange World of Sports Studio Design
Married to the Eiffel Tower: More Objectum Sexuals
60 Years of The Crazy Horse Memorial
Married to the Berlin Wall: "The Best and Sexiest Wall Ever Existed!"
Inflatable Icebergs: Sublimated Guilt Has Never Been So Fun
The Cinderella Effect: Phantom Architectures of Illumination
Two Deaths and a Retirement: The Strange Shape of British Architecture
If London Were Like New York: Antique Schizo-Manhattanism
If London Were Like Venice: Antique Geo-Poetic Speculations and Hydro-Fantasy
41 Hours in an Elevator: The Movie
NASA: Mapping the Moon with Sport
Lemon Squeezy: Design Tendencies after the Juicy Salif
The Nihilistic Beauty of Weapons Arranged in Patterns
Dogs: Britains Greatest Design Obsession
Detroit Sucks: The Motor Shows Last Gasp
Authentic Replicas: Football and the Franchising of Place
Folk Football: Landscape, Space and Abstraction
A Wishing Well with a Fat Up Pipe
The Camoufluers and the Day-Glo Battleship
Pseudoccino: Instant Coffee Foam
Blown Up: More Inflatable Military Stuff
On Christmas Trees, Folk Forests and Staples Office Supplies
Hampton Courts Shrouded Sculptures
Named Fabric: 20 Sponsored Pieces of Architecture at the New Museum
Form Follows Felony: The Secret Home of the Un-Dead Canoeist.
Architectural Magazines: Paranoid Beliefs, Public Autotheraphy - More on Clip/Stamp/Fold
James Bond Lives Next Door: Suburban Imagery as Industry
The Ghost of Christmas Futurism
Chapters for an Imaginary Book About Architecture
Shrouded Plinth - Urban Striptease
In the Night Garden - Surreal Landscape of Nostalgia
Kim Jong II, The Great Architect
Place Faking: Instant Heritage for the Thames Gateway
The Marc Bolan Memorial Crash Barrier.
Enjoy The Silence: Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones
Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham
In Search of Britains Vehicular History
Scary Suburbanism: Why Horror is at Home in the Suburbs
I Like Your Manifesto, Lets Put it to the Test-o
How to Become a Famous Architect
Northampton - Sci-fi Pop Planning Promotion
Advertising Central Milton Keynes
The Velvet Underground at the Glass House
Duplikate: Kate Moss on the Production Line of Individuality
Hollow Inside: Starbucks Foam and the Rise of Ambiguous Materials
Revisions to the Architecture of Hell
Crufts: Dogs, Design and Aesthetic Genetics
Eos Airlines: Executive Bubbles over the Atlantic
Google Earths Vertiginous Mapping
Church of the Ascension and Descension
Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles
Reading Lines: Skateboarding and Public Space
Chris Cornish: Prototyping History
The Most Visited Location in the UK
Anything to Feel Weightless Again: The Cargo Lifter and the Tropical Island Resort
'Its beauty will know no season'
2000 Years of Non Stop Nostalgia. Or How Half Timbering Made Me Whole Again.
Backpeddling into the Future: The Historical-Futurism of British Architecture
Miss Selfridges' Feeling for Fake Snow. The Oxford St. Lights and Why We Need Artificial Winter
New Tory Logo: A Hazy Shade of Politics
Jeff Koons, Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Serpentine
Celebrity Scents: The Bittersweet Smell of Success
Imperfect Pitch - Football, Space and Landscape
Product Placement: Making the Impossible Possible
Suburban Growth: Matthew Moores Field of Dreams
Perfect Sound Forever: The Secret Function of High End Stereos
A Little Light Product Placement
Some Advice To A Young Designer
Useless Proclamations for a Beautiful City
Topsy Turvy VSBA: Inverted Heros of an Upside Down Avant Guard
Everything Flows: ideological cartography
How Geostationary Was My Valley?
The Psychotic Utopia of the Suburbs and the Suburbanisation of War.
In a Lonely Place - Under Construction
Mach 3 Nitro Gel - Design that's foaming at the mouth.
Marchitecture. Architectural things to do in London this March
What happens when you cross a pen with a car?
Football Pitch: Best of British
The First Cut is the Cheapest - Blenheim Palace: pop architecture that goes for the jugular
Holiday Snap II : Giant Glowing French Balls
Holiday Snap: Canadian War Memorial, Vimy, France
Anatomy of an Architectural News Story
Its All About the Big Benjamins
Poundbury, unexpectedly, in the rain
The Exploding Concrete Inevitable. Lou Reed and the Casa da Musica
Untitled (Plastic Sack and Timber)
Berlin 1945 - The Obscene Picturesque
Interview: Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane
An Incredible Smell of Roasting Coffee
Langlands & Bell - The House of Osama Bin Laden
Architectural Criticism gets Sharp
Venturi, Scott Brown and my love that dare not speak its name.
Douglas Coupland: Design and Fiction
Christopher Dresser at the V&A
Fugitives and Refugees' - Chuck Palahniuk
Just What is it That Makes Yesterdays Homes So Different, So Appealing?
Everything Counts - The Sound of Geography Collapsing.
Other:
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IconEye
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If architects are freely producing art and literature which may or may not relate directly to a traditional role of architecture, I imagine that they could also become political in ways that architects have traditionally avoided? We could have more political punditry/activism by architects without fear of not being architectural enough or not acting in a professional manner.