Exercise 1.1a

Sophia LaVigna

ARCH222

One of the first thing Allen discusses are his concerns surrounding the switch from “the analog to the digital” as said in 01 From Object to Field. He goes on to discuss the different behaviors of the architecture’s users. I founds his comments to be interesting because as civilians wants, needs, and abilities change throughout time, the surrounding buildings will have to change too. Hearing how there has been a shift over time from intricate work to a more minimal design made mw think about how design is constantly changing based off the needs of people and what is relevant during that time.

The next section 0.2, Geometric vs, Algebraic Combination, discusses the different elements of architectural design. Allen discusses how the different elements have relationships with each other depending on the function and design of the space. I found this comment to be interesting because it described how different elements that look like they would not come together often work when placed within the bigger scale of the setting. These independent elements come together to make it whole.

The next section was 0.3, Walking Out of Cubism. Here, Allen discussed how minimalism began as a popular design tactic around the time of the 60s. He describes that minimalism began from a place of exhaustion. This surprised me, because I feel as though often times art work and architecture that are a minimalist design are often viewed to have some of the most development and creativity behind them. I always looked at minimalist art as the designer putting tremendous thought into the planning of the design instead of the shorter amount of time it took them to create.

The next section 0.4 is about Moires and Mats. Allen describes that moires are often used to “hide hidden stresses in continuous field”. He also describes that most cities are three dimensional surfaces. This was interesting to me because I often don’t picture cities and spaced with lots of buildings as anything other than its height. This taught me to view spaces from all angles and to better understand the fundamentals of a space.

The last idea was 0.5 Flocks, Schools, Swarms, and Crowds. In this section, Allen describes the way birds fly all together and how they form formations and follow rules. While I was reading this, I was comparing the way that birds interact with each other in a similar way that humans interact with each other in public. For example, the social norms and ways people act in public places are similar to the rules that birds appear to follow while they are flying. Additionally humans often gather in big open areas similar to how birds fly.