notes3.doc

- the sugimoto house - a movie + the sugimoto house is an example of a building formed by a distinctly modern set of values, a very modern canon or code + the tatami mat as module - the movable and removable screens free the space - the lack of specificity in a rooms purpose - the adaptability of the plan - the integration of the inside and the outside - the film, part of the Architectures series, shows the house and its unique features. - s11, Vitruvius and the image 6 -the villa + vitruvius and the house: + thomas cole and his five ages of man + wilderness, arcadia, civility, destruction, chaos - divine nature gave us the country, human artifice gave us the city - varro + the city as a creation of human nature, shaped by human nature, and subordinating nature's nature - aalto the two forms of life: city life and country life + city houses and country houses - the two types of houses: the town house and the country house + it is clear that a house in the city should be built in one way, and that a house in the country should be built in a different way. v.1.2.9. - the aedes or domus as the house belonging to the city, and the villa as the house belonging to the country - gathering the landscape in the country, inhabiting the matrix in the city + the difference between focal and serial centers, between a center and multiple centers - pliny's country houses + vitruvius and the siting of the house + the theory of prospect and refuge: we are biologically 'wired' to prefer sites and places that offer us protection from the rear (refuge) and that give one a view (prospect) of the landscape around us. - the villa savoye and maison le roche/jeanneret by le corbusier, the villa mairea by alvar aalto, the maison de verre by pierre chareau and frank lloyd wright's three houses are all examples of the refined use of the prospect/refuge theory. Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth house is not. - pliny the younger is famous for a lot of things, but especially for his letters. There are two letters he wrote that describe in impeccable detail his country houses: the Laurentian villa by the sea, and the Tuscan Villa in the hills. Those description have fascinated architects for almost 2000 years, and countless drawings setting out interpretations of the two villas have been made by a range of architects. - the villa as Pliny describes it is always a beautiful house: it returns its owner and her/his guests to the landscapes and dwellings of arcadian myth: to that happy time of the human race + the arcadian myth relies on the reintegration of beautiful building and sublime landscape + The Arcadian myth is a very old one. it is a dream about the happy life of the human race. Sometimes the world loses its face. It becomes too base. The task of the poet/designer is to restore its face, to indicate that the world need not be like this: it can be different. The true Arcadian myth, if it is rich enough, goes beyond one's personal state of bliss and is incapable of imagining happiness except as a universal condition. czeslaw milosz - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_(utopia) + arcadia (later acadia) as the first name given to Virginia and its coastal areas. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man