Papers by Matthew Mindrup
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Architectural Theory Review
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture, 2016
The design and construction of architecture rarely go according to plan. Unexpected problems, mis... more The design and construction of architecture rarely go according to plan. Unexpected problems, mistranslations and accidental discoveries can permeate the architectural design process producing surprising results. The ancient Roman architect Vitruvius recounts how Callimachus experienced a similar form of creative inspiration in his serendipitous discovery of a basket, roof tile and acanthus plant as the model for the design of the first Corinthian capital. For the Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, Callimachus’ discovery is an example of a sagacious individual who has learned to anticipate aberrations in the creative process claiming, "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." Picasso’s friend, Le Corbusier embraced this approach in design by collecting “objets à réaction poètique” (objects of poetic reaction) that he kept in his studio to stimulate the architectural imagination. Perhaps the most famous object in Le Corbusier’s collection was the crab shell he found while roaming a Long Island beach in 1946 and became the structural model for the roof in his 1955-constructed Notre Dame du Haut chapel in Ronchamp, France. Like the basket, roof tile and acanthus plant, the crab shell was not created as a model of architecture, but interpreted as one. These strange tales of architectural evolution are examples that demonstrate what Louis Pasteur described as a “prepared-mind;” a mind actively engaged in a problem prepared to recognize an everyday object or event as inspiration for architecture. As evidenced by a diverse collection of histories of architectural evolution, this chapter explores the mutability between the everyday and the extraordinary through an examination of the cognitive relationship between the quotidian and their translation to architecture. Taking our inspiration from Umberto Eco who once observed how “every story tells a story that has already been told,” this chapter proposes to explore the thread holding these stories together. Paul Emmons, Marcia Feuerstein, and Carolina Dayer, eds., Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture (Ashgate, 2016)
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Material Imagination, 2016
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Today,much of the practice of architecture is removed from the physical act of building and archi... more Today,much of the practice of architecture is removed from the physical act of building and architects must employ different graphic means, including drawings to study and explore proposed constructions.Yet,drawing tools and their processes are not the same nor do they produce the same results. The hand moving a pencil across a drawing surface does not naturally produce a consistent line,but one that is varied,producing different associations in the mind of the architect.Further,each additional mark on an empty surface of paper records an act of intention but also invites the architect to enter into dialectic with the emerging graphic construction and their mental images. Attending to the facture of drawing invites the architect to consider the corresponding making of a building to counter the arbitrary willfulness of the sometimes overly rampant designer's formal imagination.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
ii
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
ABSTRACT
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
ii
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
ABSTRACT
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, 2013
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Fabrications
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Architectural Research Quarterly, 2021
In the above cited quote, Kevin Roche, a principal associate at Eero Saarinen’s architectural pra... more In the above cited quote, Kevin Roche, a principal associate at Eero Saarinen’s architectural practice in 1957, recalls an early morning discussion about the design of the Trans World Airlines’ (TWA) Flight Center. Roche’s story about Saarinen reminds us that at the beginning of an architectural project, a solution may come from any variety of sources, not least of all from everyday objects. This was certainly the case for Saarinen, who found the seed for his design of the structural shells of the TWA Flight Center in the rind of a grapefruit. Despite its seeming novelty, Saarinen is not unique in his approach to the generation of architectural form with models; the Greek-French composer, architect and engineer Iannis Xenakis, who while working with Le Corbusier in 1957, used strings and thick wire to design the hyperbolic shell for their Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Expo. That a model will play a defining role in an architect’s approach to structural design is also demonst...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
For over 500 years, architects have continued to extoll the utility of scale architectural models... more For over 500 years, architects have continued to extoll the utility of scale architectural models for visualizing “the entire work in miniature right before their eyes.” Yet, when the 37-year-old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe arrived in Rome in 1786, he was immediately surprised to find that the antique ruins he came to know from cork models at home had become “familiar objects in an unfamiliar world.” The models which Goethe recalls were popular eighteenth and nineteenth century souvenirs of the European Grand Tour. Initially used as table settings to encourage erudite discussion about antiquity, these objects inevitably found their way into academic, private, and museum collections alongside full size plaster casts, actual building fragments and scale reconstructions. For the study of architecture however, using these models was not unlike trying to read a book with missing pages and one had to imaginatively fill-in the spaces between fragments. When the authority of classical antiqu...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In From Bauhaus to Ecohouse, Peder Anker vividly exposes the beginnings of ecological design unde... more In From Bauhaus to Ecohouse, Peder Anker vividly exposes the beginnings of ecological design underlying the architectural project of modernity. As Anker rightly observes, architectural historians have largely ignored the importance of biology to Bauhaus design pedagogy, a significance that was greatly expanded during the mid1930s and influenced the development of ecological design throughout the Cold War years. While recent concerns about global warming have drawn attention to environmentally sensitive design in contemporary architectural discourse, Anker argues that the project of sustainable design has been ongoing for nearly a century.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
ABSTRACT
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by Matthew Mindrup