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Saturday, 19 May 2007
Temple of the Golden Spheres
 
Greetings Friends and Family,
I have been playing again....should be down on my hands and knees worshiping at the Temple of Home Improvement, but here I am, creating a Vision of the Temple of the Golden Spheres.....

Thanks for inspirations can be given to Louis I Kahn for his geometric purity.  I would say he was the best Minimalist ever, except that one can fall all the way into his details and they are every bit as fulfilling as the big form.  Minimalism forgets the details.  The Library at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter  NH was a pilgramage destination a couple of weeks ago for Louise and I. Recommended.  Thanks also go to Patty Harper for her encouragement to think on an architectural scale.  This piece was built at a scale of 1/4"=1'.  The biggest sphere is eight feet in diameter. And the specific inspiration came out of a dialogue with Louise.  I had made gold leaf spheres sitting on cubic pedestals to be a feature in the subterranian chambers of the Plaza of the Ruins of the House of Rage, and Louise said the next day "Those spheres are really cool.  You should do more with them.  A bunch of them"  Into the minds eye leaped the image of  a progression of spheres partly submerged in a depression, like an amphitheter.  A  sketch on my timesheet at work that day found the crude form, and the following weekend I spent all of Saturday at the drafting table working out the details to scale.  Found 1/8th inch baltic birch plywood online, which was perfect for the hieght of the rise of the steps at scale.

Each step is a piece of plywood trammel cut with a router.  All the pieces were keyed together with small holes at the corners of the whole stack and also at the center of the concentric progression. It seemed like the steps would be a nice place to sit, and there needed to be an overlook as well as the opportunity to descend and stroll around the configuration.

At one point, while thinking about the Temple of the SpaceHawk, I wondered if there should be a roof over the whole configuration, and when I looked at the drawing and asked myself the same question the spirit of Architectural Inspiration answered.  "Look! this IS the roof!"  Another underground chamber.....this time with with rampant vaulting.  I sketched it right over the drawing as I Iooked at it.  If the steps incorporated glass block this chamber could be a beautiful gallery for an Art Museum.  Natural diffused light.  Louis would love it.  Ah..... but should I do it that way as a  scale model?  Good idea.  A tremendous amount of work.  If there were any interest........or if the luxury of time were affordable with so many  personal construction projects in the works.  I built the origional thought.

Art Museum......If this were in a large emough plaza, it could be surrounded with a sculpture park.  It could hold its own with one of Richard Serra's big twisty pieces of stabilized rust........
Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..............
Huhuhuh
Hubris.
By the way there is a water feature ...a series of small cascades that run beneath the spheres.   I suppose I could indicate that with silicone, but my use of a caulk gun is dangerous enough that I should be forbidden to even pick one up.  Maybe those little squeeze tubes........But then again it has to look good in winter when the pipes freeze.....assuming we still have winter in the coming days
love to all BSB

Posted by Bennett at 4:36 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 24 May 2007 9:24 AM EDT
Architectural Amusement 2 (Temple of the SpaceHawk)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greetings Again Folks:

Okay, so the jury may still be out on this one, but I have been having fun, something that is allowed when one's reputation in the greater world is right up there with Anomymous. While working on the double golden rectangle proportions of the preceeding architectural fantasy.....what to call it? Archs and Oculus.....? Sure......anyway the SpaceHawk was lying in proximity and the notion of levitating this cherry carving as a roof to another structure presented itself as worthy of amused attention.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I started the base with a stair-like edge treatment (to hell with scale, its the idea that counts) leaving a cube in the corners....wondering if something ought to go there. There would be curved lines of square columns providing support, and something else would be going on, not sure what.

Enjoying the pleasures of roaming Northampton, Ma. this past Saturday evening, I found these blue irredescent marbles and bought a big one and medium sized one. By the end of dinner I knew I needed four for the corner cubes, and in wonderful Northampton, stores stay open till 9:00 pm on Saturday. Done.

The curved walls of columns proved too much, but the mortises were already cut, so I cut the middle ones back to stubs and colored the tops with a black Sharpie.

 

Ongoing studies of what makes sacred space suggested the big marble top a vertical structure as in bell tower or minaret, but given the roof being a spaceship it looks more to me like an airport control tower.

I think I got to use the word equivocation in my last update. It works here too.

Enough blather....I hope some of you are amused as well.....love BSB


Posted by Bennett at 4:12 PM EDT
Updated: Saturday, 19 May 2007 5:35 PM EDT
A Sense of Place (Archs and Oculus)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Dear Friends and Family

A part of the psyche of a sculptor longs for the object created to define a sense of place. Perhaps this is an overlap of the aspirations of the sculptor and the architect. The embrace of the sister arts.

The Ruins of the House of Rage has yielded another fragment that yearns for independent identity. Collaborative mosaic articulation by Louise and myself helped balance this extraction, which went from vertical to horisontal in its presentaation and developed in my mind a feeling of architectural structure. Louis Kahn said architecture begins with a room. Something was missing to complete a the sense of enclosure, and Louise helped me find the mystery rock that did the trick.

The plinth helped, and the equivocations of scale increased when the micro machines snuck up and parked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If Charles Moore can win the gold prize for whimsey, the rest of us ought be able to play too.

The quest for understanding sacred space encounters humor along the way 

Love to all, BSB


Posted by Bennett at 3:24 PM EDT
Updated: Saturday, 19 May 2007 5:40 PM EDT

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