"The apse of the Combray church; what can one say about it? It was so crude, so lacking in artistic..." - “The apse of the Combray church; what can one say about it? It was so crude, so lacking in artistic beauty and even religious spirit. From outside, because the crossroads which it commanded was on a lower level, its crude wall rose up from a subbasement of quite unpolished ashlar, bristling with flints, and having nothing particularly ecclesiastical about it, the windows seemed to have been pierced at an excessive height, and the whole looked more like the wall of a prison than the wall of a church. And certainly, later, when I recalled all the glorious apses I had seen, it would never have occurred to me to compare them with the apse of Combray. But, one day, at the bend of a little street in a country town, I noticed, opposite the crossing of three lanes, a rough and unusually high wall with windows pierced far above and the same asymmetrical appearance as the apse of Combray. Then I did not ask myself as at Chartres or Rheims how powerfully it expressed religious feeling, but involuntarily exclaimed: “The church!””

- Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swan [tumblr]

Symbolic classicism as the flat application of signs is out.

Volumetric classicism as the deconstructive application of performative rules is in, and is interesting.

Another quick post — I have been insanely busy applying to M.Arch programs, and haven't had much time for, oh, the internet. Or really much of life outside of architecture and figure drawing, as pretty much all my friends can tell you.

But as a result of that I've updated my portfolio. Take a look:

warning:  23mb file. And that's with the JPG compression pushing my personal aesthetic limits. I'm a stickler for image quality.

And: Happy Festivus!

Just a quick post to point out some new photos! These are a batch for the NNY Photography Corps. If you don't know what that is, check out this finely-crafted link.

This batch is a series of photos from 3 boroughs, 25 in all. Right now we're in an open period, which is sort of a two-week free-for-all where we are sent out to take photographs of whatever. Which hopefully will generate some ideas and discussion for how the exhibition will shape up.

Here's the set.

But anyway, the eye candy:

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I was flipping through Yasser Tabbaa's wonderfully written book The Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival today, in between polishing cover letters and dealing with magazine business, and found this gem:

Ibn Muqla lived in the 9^th and 10^th centuries and was not so much a great calligrapher as a great geometrist. He is often erroneously credited with inventing the naskh script, although he did develop a highly orded geometric system which standardized arabic scripts and later evolved into naskh. Some typographic context: at this point in Islamic history the only highly developed script was Qur͗ānic Kūfic:

Kūfic script is characterized by those attenuated horizontals and a thick solid appearance. Diacritics appear late in the game. It later is stylized to an almost-abstract ornamentation on building façades. Kūfic script is pre-Islamic, and (surprisingly) originated in the city of Kufa, present-day Iraq. continued »

   Ernest Williamson III is a visual artist and poet. Armchair/Shotgun is featuring six of his paintings in its upcoming Fall Issue. He is a Ph.D candidate at Seton Hall University and a professor at New Jersey City University and Essex County College, where we spoke.

Ernest Williamson III: The thing with me, in terms of my methodology as it relates to painting — well, I have the canvas or the piece of paper in front of me and then I use a combination of colors, and I put it arbitrarily on the paper. And then I look at it, and then I see things in that. I see things within that — people would call it a mess — but within that conglomeration of colors.

For example, the paint is put there and then it's shaped with some elements of body parts, or faces that you can see throughout the work like this. So it's not the type of methodology where I envision something and then I paint that. It's, I get the paint on there, and then I situate it by what I see on the paper. So it's like a chaotic non-methodological method of putting paint on paper and then trying to sculpt out of it.

W. Gavin Robb: So it's a two-step process: you have the creation and then almost like a critique.

EW3: Right. Like at this chalkboard, we see the chalkboard and we see little white streaks. That's the given. Now it's up to me to see something out of it that is relatable and seeable by people.

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Testing, testing. One-two One-two. Oh, good. Looks like this thing works.

So. Welcome. Come on in, take a look around a little. This is me:

And there are a few things that I like to do:

1. Design buildings
2. Think about buildings
3. Design other things
4. Think about other things
5. Take pictures
6. Write about architecture and design

On this website, I'll try to do as many of these things as possible. I live in Brooklyn, and generally like to think that I come across a lot of interesting things in day-to-day life. Most of these things I relate to architecture or design. I'd like to put some of these things on the interscape.

Oh, and I'm also a designer and photographer as well as an architect. My portfolio is over there. If you're looking for a web, print, graphic or architectural designer, shoot me an email. That goes for photographer, too. I've been known to work for bourbon. continued »