In a message dated 5/9/2009 12:15:11 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
Frances to Luis with many thanks and many words... (1) It is agreed that drawn drafts and scale models can be preparatory to architecture, but not likely always required; nor would drawings or carvings of buildings be tectonic or architectural in their own right on their own alone, if say the actual depicted product were never started, let alone completed or finished. It also seems that temporality and territoriality in initializing and finalizing an architectural product would be irrelevant to the product being tectonic or architectural. This also raises a further point in regard to fabrication or construction and even utilization or occupation as to whether the architectural product upon being initialized need be fully settled and completed and finished to be finalized as architecture. In other words, could the tectonic architectural product as art or as nonart be started and settled and deemed finished or finalized and indeed realized, yet remain incomplete or even unfinished, as many pictures and sculptures indeed are. _______________________________________________________________ LF response - Yes, many projects remain incomplete, unintentionally and many times intentionally if the project is to be built in phases. Each phase is a totality, a complete work of architecture, and each subsequent phase sums up to a new totality. The use/function of the building may change. Additions and remodelings often occur that either accentuate, propagate, contrast, or change the original edifice's underlying architectural ideas/forms/functions. Time and "acts of god" including war may destroy or deteriorate "the architecture" - for example the Parthenon, one of the great icons of architecture. All of these instances remain architecture. Say a residence, a work of architecture is completed, and the family moves in. Soon after there is an infestation of termites and they all have to move out for two days to have the residence tented and fumigated. Is it no longer architecture during these two days? Now expand the time frame, they never return and no one lives there for decades or ever again. Is it no longer architecture? It retains the inherent potency of architecture whether occupied or not, whether ever seen again or not. Luis Fontanills Architect Miami/Dade Counties, Florida **************Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.co m/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002)
