tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684548832214771005.post6723573138563202548..comments2023-07-17T07:53:09.715-04:00Comments on proper scale: Taliesin West BakersfieldEric Orozcohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00320742140050171881noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684548832214771005.post-13987882319770521482010-12-15T08:44:18.746-05:002010-12-15T08:44:18.746-05:00That's a great reference, Daniel... That tens...That's a great reference, Daniel... That tension must be at the crux of much of human-setted enterprise. Funny how it situates itself in streams and schools of thought within any singular field and endeavor. <br /><br />There are your flow people and your rational fixers - the synthetic re-organizers. How apt this is to categorize the foremost schools of urbanism today. The Dutch-freeformers/landscape-urbanists vs. the New Urbanists. <br /><br />In my view, Chistopher Alexander's "Pattern Language" approach is one of the closest attempts urban theorists have come to integrating the human art of city making into a balance between Haraclitus and Parmenides. In Alexander's human-centered frame of reference, urban design is an art initiated by humans adapting in time and space to their built environment. <br /><br />Alexander's cosmological pattern language is intensely synthetic, but, what is always striking about it when I come back to read pieces of it, is that you are always navigating "form" from the frame of reference of the human subject - the one who experiences and employs the pattern. The individual simply uses the "language" as a point of mediation to create with the eddies and currents of the world. <br /><br />Contrast with the attempt of the New Urbanist's to literally pin down the "language" of form with their new encyclopedic tome, The Language of Towns and Cities (boy, what values are literally screaming at you in the subtext of this title, bad landscape-urbanist!, bad landscape-urbanist!...). Setting the language aside really, to create your "visual dictionary", is a bit like examining the the beautiful patterns on the carapace of a turtle shell, while failing to remark on the living creature within. <br /><br />In my first degree, I observed the same divergent pull in my Second Temple Period Judaism studies. So your Heraclitus-Parmenides framing of this schism finds strong resonance with me. Broadly, the development of Jewish thought can be categorized in that time frame as a schism between those whose frame of reference to the Law was fundamentally a living conversation between the community and God. And there were those who simply insisted on reconstituting the entire Jewish frame of history wholesale, by narrowly defining the language and giving it apocalyptic clarity. This conflict does not tend to bode well for the language-stabilizing Parmenidians, I'm afraid. The river-minded Rabbis gave us modern Judaism, but the dancing desert Therapevtae and the Dead Sea Secessionists are, well, lost to the sands of history. <br /><br />Kevin Lynch warned us we must always question the values implicit our lexical codes for the city. Thanks Daniel for always being sensitive to the values crouched in the background of our statements.Eric Orozcohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00320742140050171881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684548832214771005.post-36913809243635398802010-12-14T21:30:05.457-05:002010-12-14T21:30:05.457-05:00Eric, how did I miss this until now? I like the wa...Eric, how did I miss this until now? I like the way you capture the American story of attempting to reconcile these two impulses (and needs). Maybe there will always be a struggle. Back to the ancient Greeks - pre-socrates even - Heraclitus saw reality as the flow a river, never the same thing twice. All process and flux, with not enough stability to notice patterns and rationally predict the future. I sense this as the current trend in design schools. Parmenides saw the world as a stable whole, with all things interconnected and fitting together in a way that is discoverable by humans (through reason, of course, these are philosophers after all, not chefs or dancers!) I don't think anyone has been able to fit these together in any coherent way. They've always been in tension.Daniel Nairnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com