This time, I will try another “the six degree of separation” game that choosing topics from a film, a book, an innovation in technology and a food item. I choose…

• A film: “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”
• A book: “Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner
• An innovation in technology: LED lights
• A food item: Pizza

As I have done last time, I want to introduce each topic at first in short.

“Mr. & Mrs. Smith”

(Image left from: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MrAndMrsSmith)

This is an American action comedy film directed by Doug Liman and witten by Simon Kinberg in 2005. It begins with an interview of “a bored married couple”, Mr. John Smith by Brad Pitt and Mrs. Jane Smith Angelina Jolie. In truth, both of them have a secret job as a spy agent and yet they do not know his or her partner is also a spy until both are assigned to kill another.

Rose for Emily

A Rose for Emily by American author William Faulkner is a short story of Miss Emily Grierson’s mysterious life and death which is viewed by several townspeople who serve as the collective narrator. It is first published in 1930. The town which is Faulkner’s fictional city, Jefferson, in his fictional county of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.

William Faulkner’s Image from: (http://www.foothilltech.org/rgeib/english/orwell/primary_sources/faulkner.jpg)

LED lights

LED Christmas light (flickr.com)

According to 　the website of Energy Star (http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=lighting.pr_what_are#what_are), “LED stands for light-emitting diode. LEDs are small light sources that become illuminated by the movement of electrons through a semiconductor material”. LED lighting is believed that more efficient, long-lasting, versatile, and durable than other existent lightings. One can use energy and light efficiently. More people start to change their light bulbs to LED and/or Energy Star qualified lightings ever due to Green actions and saving money.

LED Video panel (flickr.com)

Pizza

Yummy Pizza (flickr.com)

Pizza is … PIZZA. Should I have to define this? Pizza is believed as an American popular food by many people worldwide including Americans themselves. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Pizza is that “an Italian dish consisting of a flat round bread base with cheese, tomatoes, vegetables, meat” and so on. Once I was said that pizza is the greatest and healthiest food ever that one can eat vegetables and meat, which human beings need, on the single piece of pizza.

To complete the game “the ‘four’ degree of Separation”, I begin with the organization Make It Right. This was created by Brad Pit to help the survivors of Hurricane Katrina at the lower 9^th ward by building housed with lower costs for them.

In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Mr. Smith…Mr. Pit carries guns for his job to complete his task. Unlike the film, he uses construction tools to fight to wrong situations in New Orleans to make them right. I think he can be a good business man to invest new business and to get the chance.

Brad Pit

(http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/famecrawler/archive/2008/04/03/brad-pitt-on-american-idol.aspx)

A scene from the film

(http://bridalbird.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/ushouseproblem.jpg)

Mr. and Mrs. Smith own a great rich house. In New Orleans, he helps people to rebuilt their house by great architects and provide the house with lower costs. The architects design their houses based on traditional southern architecture like shot gun house, camel back house, and Creole cottage house. There are plans of architecture in Make it Right website. Architects choose the designs based on vernacular architecture due to it suits their life style and community. Paul Oliver quotes Frank Lloyd Wright’s words in Dwellings that “Folk building growing in response to actual needs, fitted into environment by people who knew no better than to fit them with native feeling”. I believe that the architects use this idea to make their home more like home they had before Hurricane Katrina, and to provide safety to protect from and prepare for disasters.

The most of houses are modernized by high quality design. Because New Orleans has own unique atmosphere, the architects might be asked to design houses to suit its environment. If a house has too ordinary like other states, or too unique comportment like the Archigram, unique character of New Orleans could be lost or illuminated. Miss Emily in Rose for Emily has kept her tradition for own and family’s sake even though the town has been developed and modernized. Because only her house and she are still in the past, people in the town see her differently and strange. It can be said in design that architecture should not be off the ordinal too much because people may feel uncomfortable to be around. It leads a question that where the midpoint of great and new design to be recognized and design for people who want to maintain their tradition and original.

left image from(www.makeitrightnola.org/)

Using new techonology to make our life better and efficient is not bad thing. Like LED light, people has recognized changing typical light to LED light can save their money. Even thought it costs at the beginning, it will be paid back. This investment is sustainable. Since people want to save money and the earth, it is a good example of use of technology.

What healthy is another question. Fully organic food is believed healthy, but it costs much higher than normal life. An egg contains good protein but it could be bad to people who are allergic to. I know some people believe that pizza as healthy food to eat vegetable and meat in a piece, but they also know that they should not each pizza too much because it has high calories.

So what makes things right? I believe that there are nothing right as a meaning as correct. If one like to paint a house all red, it is right for the person. If one wants to have a house like Archigam or vernacular architecture, it is right. I do not mean that it is right for others. Community may not want to have the red house. Neighbors may not want to live next to the vernacular house. The important task of an architect will be how one can find the midway in issues surrounding architecture. Michael Sorkin says in More or Less that “the house must respect sustainable practice…and accommodate our social and individual differences”. I believe it is true and important.

Hurricane Katrina has brought up “a problem of landscape design” according to Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley in What is a City. What will be the solution? According to the dictionary, the word right means that “morally good or acceptable”, “truth or correct as a fact”,” in a normal or good enough condition”, and so on. SO WHAT MAKE IT RIGHT?

Are Gotham City, Flying Buttresses, International Space station, and Alice in Wonderland Architect

According to the Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture by Penguin Reference, the definition of architecture is that “the art and science of designing structures and their surroundings in keeping with aesthetic, functional, or other criteria….(and) is that understood as encompassing the totality of the designed environment, including buildings, urban space, and landscape”. On the other hand, Sir Peter Cook, Leon Alberti and Geoff Manaugh suggest that architecture is more than a building, it is everywhere and involves everything. Manaugh says in his book BLDG BLOG that an architect should not be afraid of one’s enthusiasm. So is all architecture?

To begin to answer this question, I would start to play with the “Six degree of separation”. I chose four subjects to start:

1. Batman/ Gotham City (Superhero)
2. Flying Buttresses
3. International Space Station
4. The animated movie “Alice in Wonderland” by Walt Disney

Because I am not familiar with some of those subjects well enough to discuss the question, I searched what they are.


1. Batman/ Gotham City

(Batman (1989), Directed by Tim Burton,Production Design by Anton Furst
Photo from an article “Gotham City, continued” by Matt Singer on 07/23/2008
http://www.ifc.com/news/2008/07/gotham-city-a-visual-history.php)


Even though one can find Gotham City’s (http://www.gothampolice.com/), and City of Gotham Police Department’s official website (http://www.gothamcitymunicipal.com/), it is a fictional city, the home of Batman. “(Anton Furst’s) Gotham (City) was a moody, messy tangle of granite and steel peaks and spires”, according to Matt Singer.

The name Gotham is also known as a journalistic nickname of New York City first used by Washington Irving. Frank Miller, who is a creator of Dark Knight Returns and Sin City, has a famous quote about New York and the comics that "Metropolis is New York in the daytime; Gotham City is New York at night." (New York Is Comics Country by Heidi MacDonald and Peter Sanderson -- Publishers Weekly1/30/2006:http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6302532.html). It is understandable that because those films take in the United States, the city might be an existing city. People like to use a city people are familiar with to make them believe the story as true.

(A tourist map of Gotham: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2006/12/29/55-a-tourist-map-of-gotham/)


2. Flying Buttress



The Sainte-Chapelle in Riom, Modeled after Louis IX's palace chapel in Paris
(Photo:http://architecture.about.com/od/earlychristianmedieval/ss/gothic_5.htm)






According to the dictionary, flying buttress is that “an arch or half-arch transmitting the thrust of a vault or roof from the upper part of a wall to an outer support or buttress” One can see this kind of buttress in the Gothic architecture such as Bath Abby, Bath, England, and Notre Dame, Chartres, France. Because the Gothic architecture was to achieve light looking, vertical buildings, they invented ways to hold vault pressure without heavy walls.



Flying buttress (image: http://opendimension.org/blender_en/arch_pressure.php)









3. International Space station
NASA Glenn Contributions to the International Space Station (ISS) Electrical Power System
(Image: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/fs06grc.html)





International Space Station is a place where people from the world can live and study for a long period time like “a little city in space”. It is under “construction” 250 miles above the ground by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, Brazil, and European Space Agency, and is about the size of two football stadium. NASA and their partners count Expedition 22 now. The benefits are future space travel, medical advance, new material, understanding earth and space, and advances in technology. The life in the space Expeditions is controlled well to create a comfortable space including food, sleep, exercise, clothing and personal hygiene.

(the international space station: http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schooladventures/spacestation/)


Image Left: Expedition 22 Commander Jeff Williams performs a check of the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) experiment in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html






4. Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland is an animated movie original from Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.

Down the Rabbit Hole.
Appears Courtesy of American Royal Arts . (http://the-office.com/bedtime-story/alice-background.htm )

The story starts with a curious girl, Alice, finding a white rabbit which dresses like a human. While she follows the rabbit, she looses her way into wonderland. She meets strange people in the world on the way to find a way to go home.

(http://www.ioffer.com/i/125034087?source=eiesi)

So, let me go back to the question to connect four different subjects into architecture: is all architecture? I want to say no because architecture I believe is “the art and science of designing structures and their surroundings in keeping with aesthetic, functional, or other criteria”. If I were a follower of Archigram, I would answer this question yes, it is architecture. Yet, these four subjects are a part or an inspiration of architecture. Gothman city can be built inspired from the movie, Batman. Flying buttress is an architectural function. Alice in Wonderland is an inspiration of architecture in Disney World.

In my opinion, what makes architecture as architecture is that if the architecture can be built and lived in efficiently and comfortably by humans. Many architects argue Disney World is not architecture because it is an amusement park. Most people dream to go there for fun but not to live or go to work from the park. I would say that architecture in Alice in Wonderland could be an inspiration to design new “the art of building” in Disney World, but not in Dallas, TX for example. Flying buttress is a structure, or, I could say, a tool of architecture to make the building stand aesthetically and functionally. People do not say a pan for cooking is cooking, it is a tool to make cooking easier and better.

About Gotham City, it is a city in the movie not a real city. An architect would create a city like a Gotham city if people want to make Batman World, but nobody does yet. It could be called as a possible imaginary city an architect may design, but I want to say that it is not architecture yet.

Heidi MacDonald and Peter Sanderson say that because “the vast majority of comics artists and writers lived nearby, and they couldn't resist making their hometown an important part of comics mythology”, cities in comics are alike existing city (Publishers Weekly).


Now, I have a question that is the International Space Station architecture? And is an astronaut an architect? Leon Alberti says that an architect is not a carpenter and “the carpenter is but an instrument in the hands of the architect (3).” So is an astronaut a tool in the hands of the architect? Alberti also says the architect should be providing safe and welcome protection, and innovation (3). Does it not sound like the astronaut and the engineer are architects? If I say furthermore; is architecture in Alice in Wonderland welcoming? If Alberti says that the architect is distinguished by types of budings and having “a good sense of what is appropriate” in the art of building, is not Gotham City architecture? (5, 315)
(“Prologue” and excerpts from “Book Nine: Ornament to Private Buildings,” from On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988) 2-6, 315-319.)