Papers and Discussion: Ruskin, Botticher, Viollet le duc, Semper

Rinaldo selected issue in Botticher that a material can't be applied willy nilly to an architecture and be any meaningful style - it has to be related to the specific needs. But in that concept there is a developmental notion that architectural form emerges over time. This is a stunning notion in Botticher. That essentially, form can't be applied, but must rather be derived out of the consideration and processing of material logics. Another interesting feature of Rinalo's remark is that the comparison can be drawn between Foucault and Botticher -- interesting -- meaning thatt both are looking for the formation of a particular style within the conexts of its developmental qualities. In that sense, one supposes, a mode of thinking is not necessarily different than a particular style of archiecture. i think this is useful point. Be careful though, Foucault's point is not just about the history of ideas being philosophical and then turning into science -- rather that the way in which we understand all the qualities of the world, the nature of being, is in a way defined by how we set up categories, how we arrange and compare them, and the techniques we use to do that. Finally, Rinaldo makes an important point that what is being rejected is mimesis -- the idea of imitation as the basis of style.



Like Rinaldo Rikard points out the issue of mimesis.
Let's note the intensity of this problem.
Do not just imitate the outward visible forms as a premise for style.
Then Rikard goes on to identify a set of parallels witrh Foucalty, one of them being no doubt the relation to a new sense of work and economy. These are beginning to be understood as a specific value of labour locae within the anthropological unity of man and the horizon of finitude. We should first of all note that it is the economic and political conditions that define a style insofar as these are born out by the nature of work or as he calls it labor.
Second are the linguistic and third are the biological axes of thought. And indeed that there is a "nature" that is to say organic situation to something's "development." i would also like to note that one of the things at stake is how labor is understood as a force of work -- that is to say action -- that reveals itself in the nature of finish. To the degreee that such finish in craftsmanship is irregular, imperfect, etc., it is also a sign for Ruskin of freedom and of life as such.
* I made the point earlier in class that Gothic would now (after the REnaissance) be reconsidered as a fudamentally major development of architecture in western history, often, one should say, because of its more emergent qualities.

Maureen follows up in an interestung way, with Foucault's Panopticon. You may not realize it but thay too is essential here because of the various Christian based social reform movements that parallel the rise of socialist and comununist ones. But more importantly that imperfection is a force and it is axpressive of life. This is a bioloigucal notion as much as any and that his chemical parallel is perfect: the consituetnt elemts cannot be seen.

Ok, more later

i just wanted get these out