16

this huge rug on Mytle-Broadway were supposed for the train, but now, it is totally useless. 

Elliott thought the park(of uselessness) could go on to these rugs. a tempting idea!   

the scale of this rug is similar to my proposal. ( it feel not bed to walk under it actually) and the engineers of it definitely did a reasonable but beautiful job.

when i took pictures, some kids asked me what i were doing, i told them the idea of the park, they didn't look interested. 

midterm review

pages for the midterm presentation.

preparation of midterm review is like a process become a nuts. i fell i need a lot of discussions with people now.

things i found i need to think about more.  thanks for the juries and everybody!

1. how irrationality related to uselessness.

2. how uselessness attack commercialized/ normalized( standardized) society. 

3. what exactly is irrational metrology of design. how to value a irrational design. 

the good thing about irrational thinking is it is personal, sentimental, intuitive and could be   

creative. but architecture is never about one individual, how to use this kind of thinking take care of other people's need is really a tricky question. it is embarrassing to commit that my design is to serve my desire,,, i am not that egocentric. 

15

introduction ( plain edition! )

a. beside all the uselessness what does the park do:1. introduce nature wildness to the dense city ( so i am gonna grow something on the park).
2. provide an alternative walking experience ( slower pace, different view) in the city.


b. park's ambition: ( which make this park different with highline)
1. criticism consumerism, show uselessness is birth-land of Marvelous.  


c. my ambition:
by peel off functional agenda of architecture, experiment irrational design metrology. 

surreal fans

"Surrealism: none., and <masc.> Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations."

first surrealist manifesto, 1924,  Andrew Breton

disfigure the subject is not the purpose. surrealist estrange and de-familiarize ordinaries to substantiate perception. the movement may started with association of unconsciousness and creativity ( in the belief of omnipotence of dreams and undirected play of thought...) to document human's mind; beneath all those apparently craziness, there is imposition of critical and intellectual control on the flow of the unconscious. Dali call this "the paranoid critical method ", which is “the spontaneous method of attaining knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectification of delirious associations and interpretations." the ambition of the surrealism is to criticism the world of reality. 

14

some more renderings.
see how the park looks on the old photos of manhattan streets.

13

screen text, design process kind of got stuck, so started to try rendering things.
went to disaster design lecture yesterday,  the interesting point i picked from there is architecture design could be about preservation and selection. and what we choose to preserve would make difference in the future. 
i feel that every effort we put on to preserve a culture could be a distortion, and any decision made on selection might lead to injustice.  
not ready to do things like that, so the first thing about useless architecture: transiency, be inclusive and exclusive of everything. 

casa malaparte

Casa Malaparte, Designed more by its owner( a journalist) than its architect, is " the best-know example of a building designed in the ambit of the original group of surrealists." 

"even the form is blurred- is it a perfect geometrical wedge, or a distorted rectangle? a pristine, a-historical, geometric block, a violently marred, decapitated plinth lacking a temple, or a fragment of a ruined theater? a violent eruption of the chthonic forces of the earth, or a colossal stairway to the sky?"

the tangency of the world, Jacqueline Gargus