Subject: re: art gallery/artist-in-residence thesis

From: jackson stephanie <[email-masked]>
Date: 6 Aug 1995 09:03:30 GMT

Touch - A Meeting of Parts.

As my Dissertation topic for fifth year Architecture at Curtin University of
Technology I'm designing an art gallery complex on a semi-demolished flour mill
site in Cottesloe, Perth, Western Australia.  It will contain two large
permanent collections, 6 temporary galleries for local artists, a commercial
gallery, a workshop with dark rooms etc., an artist-in-residence accomodation
an studio gallery, a bookshop, cafe and associated administration areas.

The site organisation is based on the pavillion in the park; as opposed to a
perimeter building enclosing a court.  I have been looking at projects such as
Isosaki's Bass Institute, OMAs La Vilette, Meier's Kunstmuseum in Frankfurt
etc.  

The site is a large wedge shaped block adjacent to the railway, two busy
streets and a quiet residential street.  There is a 1850 m2 flour mill building
on the site, a disused railway siding running down the middle plus a bizarre
geometrically organised garden of poplar trees.

My direct influences for the choice of programme and site has been through some
investigations into site and the joining of objects to their site (by this I
mean figure/ground, aura (Eisenman), context etc.) I have been reading heaps
including Rosalind Krauss, Michael Benedikt, Carol Burns, Peter Eisenman, Greg
Lynn etc.

If there's anyone out there who has any comments on the connections of
buildings to site, programme to site, new buildings to old buildings, the state
of art in the nineties, folding in architecture, romantic discourse about
beauty in the section (or anything slghtly relevant) please send info and/or
good vibes to:

			[email-masked]

thanks,
Steph.

---

From: [email-masked] (SCRINIA)
Date: 11 Aug 1995 19:51:10 -0400

I'm sure you're not big on unsolicited advice (how's that for an opener?),
but I'll neglect my better judgement and  provide some anyway...
Whatever else you do, avoid reading Eisenman.  Eisenman's comments about
Derrida, and Derrida's comments on Eisenman are both telling and to the
point; each seems to respect the other so far as his area of expertise
extends, but Peter seems to think that Derrida doesn't know what he is
talking about when it comes to architecture, and it doesn't take a
philosopher to know 
that Eisenman's theoretical writing isn't the the most disciplined.  Don't
trust Tschumi either.  (is there something bad in the water at Columbia??)
 His texts seem accessible enough, but his history isn't all there - take
the "De- Dis- Ex-" DIA Foundation article - mostly speculative (which if
you're reading George Hersey, I somehow don't seem to mind), not much
substance.Also, I would council skepticism whenever you get near Krauss. 
Not because I don't respect her area, but because her area is quite
tricky, and you need to be introduced to Lacan by someone who disciplines
the text in such a way as to make the material accessible.  Jacquiline
Rose has written a very good introduction to Lacan's "Ecrits", and for my
money, if you want to get at the Lacanian angle on language and semiotics,
try two books by current Berkeley Rhetoric faculty: 
"Bodies that Matter" by Butler, and "The Subject of Semiotics" by
Silverman.  Both seem to do a bang-up job of summarizing Lacan in a
shockingly short time, and the rest of the work is both lucid and
intriguing.  This brings one to an interesting point: if you are about to
engage these questions of object and site in terms of the "object in
field" vs. "field in object" dialectic (the two building types you
mention), then this question of insides and outsides becomes entirely
germane to the discourse on psychoanalysis.  Construction of the subject,
interior of the subject, etc., etc..  My guess is that this may be the
most difficult (it certainly is for me), but most fruitful area for you to
move into.  Get guidance.  I wrote my master's on Alberti and quattrocento
architectural semiotics at Cornell, and had very little help with the
material.  Wasted ungodly 
amounts of time.  Took an extra three months to complete.  Expensive. 
Discouraging.  Talk to the M.L.A. people at your university, if you have
to.  Avoid the Psych dept.  They're never any good.  Try French Lit.  Good
luck.  Drop a note if you're ever in need...
Aloha,

FRITZ JOHNSON