Ping Grand Tradition

[Michael Bulatovich]

[EDS]

Good stuff. Having been taught in the 60's and worked under Gropius at TAC, I became untrusting of much modernism. So much bull! However I do really like Corbu. EDS

[Michael Bulatovich]

I came to similar conclusions through my experience as a priest's son ; ) and my architectural education in the 80's. It doesn't mauch matter what decade you studied after "The Rupture". (Not "The Rapture": Modernism!) You got quiet used to wading through rhetoric, and dogma. Aside from the obvious experience and learning, it's one of the main differences of an architectural (professional, not technical) education.

I remember that during the year before I applied to the school, I was reading voraciously in the faculty library. One particular watershed moment came when I viewed a pair of facing pages in a book by the AIA, I think, called "Architects on Architecture" (not exactly sure about that either..). About 50 brand name Americans got a full page photo and a full page of text to say whatever they wanted....

Isozaki showed a picture looking down from a helicopter hovering several hundred feet above the WTC roof, and he launched into his schpeel with an affirmation of 'humanism'....It was a zen moment for me.

What in particular? Aside from the obvious urban issues, I've always found him to be one the more problematic ones....gravitating more to Mies myself. Speaking of the 60's...did you ever draw thin-shell concrete? I always loved that stuff.

[EDS]

The mosque at the University of Baghdad. It held up well to gunfire. I was surprised to see it on the news as we invaded. Also several folded plate school roofs and a lot of precast tees, double tees and plank systems. Also total precast systems for housing. I've been upgrading a hockey rink with long span single tees recently (not originally mine) and making changes in those things is a bear! EDS