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Infrastructural Urbanism
By Stan Allen

I guess one overlooks to find the subtle limits of the limitations of what Infrastructure is. It is cause due to little or minimal connoisseurship of the meaning itself. Something interesting mentioned was that “the aircraft stands for a moment in which the technical and aesthetic formed a unified whole,” this is quite true when the continuity of the form overtakes the structure, and one could start to imagine/implore on these possibilities of the meaning behind it. Something interesting was to read how the consequence of shift from technologies of production to the technologies of reproduction by the grafting of conventional signs onto a technical frame (one could see this by the Bomber Factory).

Something that caught my attention was when was mentioned that Postmodernism in architecture is usually associated with a rediscovery of architecture’s past. This is very true especially when the rediscovery supersedes in a way, but maintains the attributes of previous works. It is somewhat of what we do now days with architecture. We still use the readymade forms but it is detached from the context itself and redefined with new discoveries. It was interesting how architecture is referred to as meaning and representation, but that in the sixties there was little attention paid to its instrumentality, or the difference between representation, and materiality. But nevertheless meaning is still an issue in architecture.

Also mentioned is that architecture’s frame moves, and is in constant competition with the media surrounding it (film, painting, literature, and performance art… ects) Architecture has the power to transform reality, and architecture is to its materiality indirect. An architect operates on reality at a distance, unlike a Gardner, or Woodworker, where something concrete is made. “Architecture is a material practice”... And it is usually operated through the mediation of abstract systems such as notation, projection, and calculation.

How to Construct an Architectural Genealogy
Mat-Building…. Mat-Buildings… Matted Buildings
By Timothy Hyde

The first thing to think about is the word itself… “Mat-Building” it describes a process, and refers to a product/consequence. It basically is composed, and seen throughout the projects mentioned as programmatic and circulatory elements which lead to a play of solids and voids within a legible geometric order. It was interesting because “Mat-Building” is also used in a scale where the architecture becomes urbanism as well. Instead of identifying a distinct object, “Mat-Building” weaves itself into the surrounding context, creating a building that performs as a city. An interesting point though is that Mat building always remains as a process, regardless of the formal characteristics of its product.

Mat-Building is something that finds genetic sources for its physical appearance. It is also a studied response to how to give space to the active unfolding of urban life without abrogating the architect’s responsibility to proof some form of order. Extremely important to think about what was mentioned (“If there is no order, there is no identity but only the chaos of disparate elements in pointless competition”)…. This is something we tend to forget in time to time, and end up with competition leading to nothing.