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.)