Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head

Apologies for the lack of posts in January. We'll do out best to make up for it in February.  Our recent détournement-of-sorts to the American Southwest has generated many unexpected surprises - all of which have been well documented, yet are taking a bit of time to make sense of.  In the meantime,  a glimpse into the work of one of last century's most prolific cartoonists, Bernard "Hap" Kliban.

Figure 1. cover illustration, circa 1976*

At first glance, B. Kliban's cartoon drawings look childish and immature.  Decidedly low-brow, in fact.  Although upon further consideration, we come to two important conclusions. 

One: the author (despite presenting work that has the aesthetic of a bored high school student) has managed to get his work published and, in fact, has made a living off of it.  This observation alone is noteworthy for today's struggling architect.  

Two: the value of simple cartoon sketches in presenting a fundamental conceptual/spatial idea should not be underestimated.  All of the following drawings graphically construct a narrative in a universally understood manner.  In doing so, B. Kliban demonstrates the power of graphics in communicating a message to the observer/cultural consumer. 

Figure 2. high-tech failure

A good deal of Kliban's work involves the creation of ironic and paradoxical spatial constructs.  To put it simply, his scenes visually tell a joke.  But what is most compelling about Never Eat... is Kliban's commentary on the "sacredness", or monumentality, of architecture.  Cartoons are used to construct radically "anti"-monumental, or Non-umental spaces.  In fact, his most powerful illustrations are those which have quite visibly let down the people interacting with his creations...a depressed tourist here, a sad looking visitor there: 

Figures 3, 4, 5. Examples of Kliban's anti-climactic architectural monuments, or, "Non-uments." On a side note, his "Nixon Monument" looks strangely similar to a proposed George W. Bush monument.

Perhaps this is how humor is most easily achieved: by creating unexpectedly anti-climactic scenarios.  Kliban was a master at this.  After earning a living by making illustrations for Playboy in the 1960's, he went on to develop a series of images that, in a dystopian manner, full handedly mocked the images broadcast by "playboy".  Via Wikipedia:

The books that followed Cat [Kliban's most popular work] consisted mostly of extremely bizarre cartoons that find their humor in their utter strangeness and unlikeliness. Many of these are cartoons that Kliban drew for Playboy. They often contained dysmorphic drawings of nude figures in extremely unlikely environments, as if to spoof Playboy's own subject matter. Another frequent subject of satire were the type of wordless, step-by-step visual instruction manuals typically found with such things as office furniture. Kliban also had a recurring series of drawings called "Sheer Poetry", in which the page would be split into six panels, containing images of objects whose names, when spoken in the order presented, would form a rhyming, nonsensical verse.

Kliban's satirical take on everything from life's most ordinary moments to the most spectacular events establishes a body of work which is both whimsical and inspired.  What would happen if Kliban's illustrations were to be adopted as a set of instructions for the construction of a series of monuments to the his legacy? Would onlookers laugh? Or would they denounce the constructs as deviant appendages to the city?  Let's be honest: the health and welfare of the public would certainly be at risk with many of Kliban's ideas. 

Figures 6, 7. Radically experimental architecture juxtaposed within the ordinary city.

The ultimate question emerging in Kliban's architectural cartoons is this: will the legacy of radical architecture be confined to print media; remaining forever unbuilt?  How does the experimental artist-architect (conjuring up visions of rubber towers, "world's largest" monuments, and wobbly clown aesthetics) make a living?  Kliban did it by working for the institution, then mocking the institution.  Perhaps such low-brow, critically un-acclaimed ideas only come into being through rebellious acts of deviance by otherwise respected professionals?  An architecture of secretive and subversive conjectures.

*All images in this post have come from: Kliban, Bernard. Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head & Other Drawings. New York: Workman Publishing Company, 1976.

Extra-Ordinary Buildings

Extra-Ordinary architecture is the opposite of Extraordinary architecture. It is terrible and naughty. In adopting Venturi's definition, Extraordinary (EO) architecture is heroic & original, while Extra-Ordinary (E-O) architecture is ugly & ordinary.

EO vs. E-O:

Homecoming Queen vs.Ugly Duckling

Iconic Buildings vs. Ordinary Buildings (subverting Iconic Buildings)

"Duck" vs. "Decorated Shed"

$$$$ vs. $

"I fit in with the crowd" vs. "I am (flamboyantly) restrained"

minimalism vs. M A X I M A L I S M

high art vs. pop art

"idiot avante garde" vs. "everyday populism"

"good" aesthetics vs. "bad" aesthetics

critically acclaimed vs. offensive and embarassing to the profession

Figure 1: "Look at me."

A simple wood-clad gable shed outshines it's historic brick-clad neighbors by presenting an attention-grabbing false front facade to the street.

Figure 2: "Monumentally tiny."

A curiously small, unassuming concrete building stands along side typical residential buildings. Perhaps a long lost twin brother of an obscure conceptual Corbusian house?

Figure 3: "Historical Marker."

One of my personal favorites: an economical concrete block office wearing a rather spectacular historic cupola top hat. This perhaps is the defining image of an extra-ordinary architecture.

Figure 4: "Elevated to new heights."

A shotgun-style house monumentally elevated on a CMU block pedestal. I am giddy with anticipation awaiting the installation of an equally monumental staircase for the front door (which seems quite lonely right now).

Figure 5: "Suburban Irony."

Oops! An asymmetrical entrance on an otherwise perfectly symmetrical building. Those witty developers! How dare them!

Figure 6: "Tectonic Follies, or, Built Jokes."

Ahhh suburbia: A large surface parking lot is presented with a monumental entrance to a retail building...just kidding. That's a brick wall. Ha. You stupid shoppers. This building mocks its want-to-be shoppers, luring them into parking near what they think is the entrance, only to force them to walk all the way around to the entrance on the opposite side.

Neo-Venturian Activism, Anyone?

"Suburban sprawl eludes our concepts of urban form.  It isn't enclosed or directed like the space of traditional cities -- it is open and indeterminate. [...] Traditional urban architecture is praised for its "unity" and suburbia is denigrated for its "conformity." [...] In the undefined space of the commercial strip, we find our way through signs and symbols, and in the vast space of suburbia there is a similar need for explicit symbolism." - Robert Venturi

Venturi Scott Brown and Associates’ Signs of Life exhibition – a by-product of their 1970 Yale studio, Learning From Levitown – explored the chaotic topic of American suburban aesthetics.  The messiness of a landscape otherwise unacknowledged by academia and the profession demanded new methods of documentation and analysis.  It just so happens that one of the most exciting aspects of VSBA’s work during this time was the manner in which they adapted their urban analysis techniques to a non-place (suburbia).  I'm referring specifically to the hierarchical maps of signs on the commercialized "Strip" of Las Vegas, their overwhelmingly informative image-boards, and yes, even those infamous scenes of banal suburban spaces speaking (via glorified cartoon bubbles) about the multitude of – often ironic – juxtapositions of architectural styles found embedded within the fabric of our everyday lives.  

Experimentation with documentation and analysis emphasizes the value VSBA places in understanding context – that immediate and no-so immediate surroundings can inform and interact with a specific building and visa versa.  And nowhere is this lesson more critical than in the suburbs where "messiness" and "chaos" are the only adjectives to describe the product of sprawling, vehicular-scaled spaces with a developer-led haphazard eclecticism of nostalgic architectural styles and time periods. There is something to be said for the blatant, matter-of-fact manner in which VSBA communicates how the built environment communicates to us.  It's almost as if you don't know whether you are expected to laugh or take notes.  This type of "serious-but-funny" inquiry strikes me as both dynamic and richly layered, and a characteristic theme of VSBA's work as a whole.  Such qualities are evident in the 1975 City Edges Planning Study (Philadelphia).

It was as if VSBA’s playful cartoon bubble descriptions, originally a fantastical thought contained within the walls of the art museum, were all of a sudden released into the wild.  Now the billboards surrounding prominent roadways could be exploited for the dissemination of information to passersby about their environment. 

VSBA’s seminal work in articulating the relationship between constructs and context is neither wholly unique to VSBA nor at the leading edge of contemporary theory.  On the contrary, their work builds upon a line of thought that was shared by - among others - Renaissance-era Mannerists who dealt with themes of dialogue, play, and communication centuries ago.  Today, nearly forty years after VSBA's work with signs and symbols in the American city, street artists are subversively working with the same ideas.

Alas, the economy we are in has afforded us the blessing of vacant advertisement space: and no media is left out (television, print, and billboard space is all up for grabs!)  This provides an extraordinary opportunity to revisit VSBA’s extra-ordinary work concerning signs and symbols contained within the American landscape.  No longer will billboards along thorofares and highways needlessly promote messages of local and national corporations; of private interests and narrowly held points of view. Rather, the space can be used to promote a more civic and nationalist agenda at a time when the entire country is recovering from the worst of the economic downturn.  At the very least, Venturi-inspired environmental graphics can contribute to and expand upon the American landscape, rather than adding a particularly inauthentic quality to our beloved towns and cities. 

I'll leave you with these rather simple proposals for unassuming billboards I pass every day on my commute to work.  Rather than spending the time to photograph each case study, I've found Google Street View to be a much quicker and perhaps easier-to-digest method of representation.  These were influenced both by VSBA's passion for discovering the signs and symbols of American life, and street artists attempts to reconfigure advertisment space in the public sphere.  A sort-of Neo-Venturian Activism, I guess?!

Figure 1.

The first example occurs at a prominent intersection just before the entrance to a highway.  The billboard attempts to point out a historic hilltop neighborhood, which happens to be ironically partially blocked by its own form.

Figure 2.

Next, we see a spectacular downhill approach to the city, framed by painted ladies staring longingly at the city below.  This image is wholly a representation of "San Francisco" - both in spirit and content.

Figure 3.

With the silhouette of the city skyline beyond, this billboard references the vacant lot immediately in front of it.  It favors the extra-ordinary over the extraordinary, and for that I believe VSBA would be proud.

Figure 4.

Finally, a billboard that challenges its immediate surroundings - those which have become quite uninteresting and dull over the years.

De-Monumentalization of the Sears Tower and Beyond

IMAGE SOURCE: urbangreenberg.wordpress.com/

The Sears Tower has officially (as of yesterday) been renamed to Willis Tower according to the iconic skyscraper's owners. CNN's story about the name change claims 90,000 angry people have joined the Facebook group, "People Against the Sears Tower Name Change." Note: the group size is currently up to over 93,000 members...probably much larger by the time this post gets to you. Many people are downright refusing to stop calling the building the "Sears Tower."

According to the Facebook group, whoever owns the most square footage in the building has the rights to name the building, which is why a British Insurance Company, Willis Group Holdings is buying out all unused office space!

This simple act of name changing has - in some bizzare way - de-monumentalized Chicago's famous building, reminding architects worldwide that architectural popularity commonly extends beyond the physical design of buildings. Has the Sears...I mean Willis Tower become the world's next Non-ument!? Its tough to tell at this point, but here at Mockitecture we jump on the bandwagon of any and every popular trend. Chicago's recently started trend of de-monumentalization is no different.

I present to you, the NEW Leaning Tower of Pisa, renamed, "An Ordinary Tower":

Next, the Eiffel Tower undergoes a bit of shrinkage:

And finally, in a defiant act of over-monumentalization, or enhancement per-se, I present the new and improved Midwestern city...a river town turned oceanside metropolis (thank you Miami, for the lovely aerial beach imagery):

Stimulus Funds Gone Awry

Yesterday, The Infrastructurist posted an interesting article on the ineffectiveness of the stimus bill in supporting small eco-business growth in the Midwest (St. Louis, to be exact). The company featured specializes in painting roofs with a reflective white coating. We all know the benefits to this simple conversion: less absorbed sunlight = cooler summertime temperatures = less energy dedicated towards cooling the building.

Here at Mockitecture, we are interested in fads. With the "green" movement in full swing, what would happen if eco-businesses were funded to the max full of taxpayer dollars!? Would mark would they leave on our unhealthy, over-consumptive lifestyles? Like a parasite, they would certainly target and invade the epicenters of consumption: suburbia's sprawling shopping centers and beloved McMansions.

In a culture dominated by image and simulation (e.g. a suburban house screams, "I am a palace, not a cheaply constructed box."), this "white roof" thing would take some getting used to. After all, these houses sport faux wood shingles, simulated clay tiles, and an assorted selection of eye-pleasing colored asphalt shingles. But let's say this painting company, pumped full of steroids ($$$) by Uncle Sam, started white-washing entire suburbs. What would happen? I present to you, the Non-Roof:

50 years from now, we may look back on this silly early 21st century "stimulus" era as a time defined by acts of anti-architecture or anti-design in general...where massive resources were hastily channelled into retrofit projects that ignored original design intent and logic altogether. These follies of our time - catalyzed by a desperate investment in "infrastructure" by a desperate government - have the ability to change what is socially accepted as "normal." In the end, we are left with a curious image of paranoia, identity crisis, and paradox.

What is...a SHADOW CATCHER?

Ever since mis-hearing someone who was speaking about "Shadow Casters" (i.e. spot lights), I have been intrigued at the thought of a Shadow Catcher.  Perhaps it is just the mystery of not being able to define what a shadow catcher is/looks like, that has peaked my interest.

Maybe shadow catchers are walls haphazardly placed in the landscape?  Or, maybe they are massive holes...crevasses in the landscape?  Glass fronted buildings facing the sun seem to consume shadows originating from surrounding buildings and sidewalk activity...maybe they are shadow catchers?  Who knows?  Perhaps the eWorld will help me out with this one.  Any ideas?

"This was parking lot, now its a peaceful oasis"

Many mockitectural thinkers are debating how mockitecture manifests itself and the appropriateness of the design inherently attached to the message. This is the //[un]titled [un]experiencable park// by N_O_R_T_O_N. It consists of a blank spot of land, preferable some sort of abandoned industrial site. It would ideally be located along the edge of an impoverished area. The park would be a beautiful creation. It would be a well-manicured area, and one lucky person would be called upon to groom it. This person would spend everyday watering the flowers and trimming the lawns. At the outer rim of this urban oasis would be a barbed wire fence. A very aggresive barbed wire fence at that. The only person who would be allowed in the park would be the caretaker.

Now I realize that this is not everyday architecture, but the space created in this concept brings with it many good points. is it not a wildly exaggerated characiture of the spaces we create with gentrification? how would people react to it? Would they laugh? Would they be angry? Would they attempt to interact with the space?

I remember in high school there was a fence that guarded the parking lot I liked to park in. Many times, there were no spots left, so we would have to park at a nearby street. It was much faster to jump over a fence on the way back to school. The deans didnt like this, so on the last day of school, some people cut a hole in the fence. This is mockitecture. Fences tend to have a power beyond the control of people's movement. Just the sight of a fence will create hostility in a person, even one with a gate that they are freely allowed to move in and out of.

Back to the park. This experimental space reminds me of Pop Art's questioning of the privatization of public space. Claus Oldenburg bought and ran a store in 1961 as an artwork in environmental form. While Oldenburg was dealing with the advent of comsumer culture, this same technique could be useful in questioning the elitist brutalism that is re-privatization of private and public spaces. Even when a space is private, it interesects with the public sphere. This is especially true on the scale of a neighborhood. when enough private spaces are transformed, the public space goes with them. This is true in negative ways and positive ways.

Meaningless Places And Purposeless Spaces

Advocacy of anomalously meaningless space and programmless place is a raging debate among mockitectural thinkers. American ideaologies and current contextual practicionalities consume every inch of our space and make it do something. This is really an extension of a society constricted by programming every minute of the day. Mockitects must fight this growing trend by programming meaningless spaces.

Meaningless as meaning accomplishes two goals:

1,,,wHY mUST eVERYTHING bE aSSIGNED A tRIVIAL aND kITSCH mEANING tHAT nO oNE gETS?

Is there something to be said for meaninglessness as a philosophical stance? Some of the foremost philosophers of our time are "wandering the streets of the East Village, [spending] so much time contemplating the meaningless of existence. I sometimes felt like a ghost." Are we chasing our tails trying to assign meaning to everything, when really a critical breakdown of space is in order?

2,,, mEANINGLESS sPACE iS oPEN tO iNTERPRETATION AND cUSTOMIZATION.

These are the new Piazzas. Renzo Piano got angry, which is out of his character, when a meaningless space was ruined with benches at the High Museum in Atlanta. We may find ourselves enjoying an open field or balcony more than a cafe or "study area" Could meainglessness create new places? When people are free to hang out in a place with no meaning attached to it, they will assign thier own meanings, and have their own experiences/opinions of the space. Would this make the space more of a place if they can interpret it as they want, individually? This would bring me back to another point? Is the entire process of public place making futile and pointless? Does placelessness foster people to make their own places? A blank Canvas, perhaps?

Fashion:Architecture,,,,,,Taste

This is a sleeping bag suit. It is mockitecture fashion. While being goofy on a level unuslurped by mere noveltiness, it is functionally [re]ally unfunny. I want to wear this to a cafe or movie theatre. Fashion can be funny.

Architecture can be funny, too. This is a nonument. Pure Mockitecture! One of many mockitectonic projects by London based FAT, this is quite a doozy. The Hague needed someone to watch thier bicycles, apparently, so FAT designed this, a Bicycle Surveillence Hut. (While this seems funny to us in the United States, It is a serious issue in the Netherlands."

The concept is:

"part monument, part strange fortification, and part folly, deriving from seaside architecture, fortifications, lighthouses, and earthworks."

It is mockitecture because it expresses function in a playful way. By deriving form from the function, we can connect to the events that take place here. The castle like wall that surrounds the hut makes reference not only to medieval bicycle surveillence huts, but also to follies, which is the earliest form of mockitecture. As an object, the hut is very dynamically hilarious. Especially when the tiny building at the top periodically catches fire.

FAT wins the Mockitecture firm of the year, and we will bring many more example of their mockitectonics.