Everything has a story

Everything has a Story
ArchiFicture Episode II Revenge of the Post-

We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative—
whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives. It might be
said that each of us constructs and lives, a ‘narrative’,
and that this narrative is us, our identities… Each of
us is a singular narrative, which is constructed,
continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us—
through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts,
our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken
narrations…To be ourselves we must have ourselves
—possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We
must ‘recollect’ ourselves, recollect the inner drama,
the narrative, of ourselves. A man needs such a
narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his
identity, his self.
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, 1985

Christopher Nolan, Memento, 2001

Erik Desmazieres, Library of Babel

There are many ways to make sense of events beyond
our immediate control.The most convincing
explanations have a clear narrative arc. Applicable to
children’s stories as well as real world circumstances
ranging from policy debates to technological
projections.
Jeﬀrey Inaba, Storytelling, in “Volume” N. 20, 2009

Initial
Problem
Status Quo
Exposition
Complications
Crisis
Climax
Dénouement
Status Quo
Description of
new Status Quo

New
buildings
are boring
The city is a
work in
progress
In the past
buildings
came with
ornaments
Today buildings
have been reduced to
containers of space
I decided I
wanted to
change that
Bigamy
Architecture
can turn pure
fiction into
hard facts
Architecture
must become
Worldcraft
List of little
tweaks of the
Status Quo

In every field of industry, new problems have
presented themselves and new tools have been created
capable of resolving them. If this new fact be set
against the past, then you have revolution.
In building and construction, mass-production has
already been begun; in face of new economic needs,
mass-production units have been created both in mass
and detail; and definite results have been achieved
both in detail and in mass. If this fact be set against
the past, then you have revolution, both in the
method employed and in the large scale on which it
has been carried out.
Le Corbusier, Architecture or Revolution, in Towards a New Architecture, 1923

The history of Architecture unfolds itself slowly across
the centuries as a modification of structure and
ornament, but in the last fifty years steel and concrete
have brought new conquests, which are the index of a
greater capacity for construction, and of an
architecture in which the old codes have been
overturned. If we challenge the past, we shall learn
that “ styles ” no longer exist for us, that a style
belonging to our own period has come about; and
there has been a Revolution.
Our minds have consciously or unconsciously
apprehended these events and new needs have arisen,
consciously or unconsciously.

The machinery of Society, profoundly out of gear,
oscillates between an amelioration, of historical
importance, and a catastrophe.
The primordial instinct of every human being is to
assure himself of a shelter.The various classes of
workers in society today no longer have dwellings
adapted to their needs; neither the artisan nor the
intellectual.

It is a question of building which is at the root of the
social unrest of today: architecture or revolution.

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, 1972

Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, 1978

Aldo Rossi, A Scientific Autobiography, 1981

Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, 2011

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

The real craftsmanship in architecture is the crafting
of a good story, which depends on a prior story about
the way a certain kind of craftsmanship, a certain way
of assembling building materials, talks.
Mark Wigley, “Story-Time”, in “Assemblage” N. 27, 1995

The grossly inflated “theories” that we enthusiastically
support, earnestly reject, or artfully feign our
disinterest in are just part of the everyday transactions
of architectural discourse.They are actually small
stories that we exchange, a kind of intellectual,
academic, professional gossip. In this chatter, I would
include most of the work of both practicing architects
and writers.The chatter hides the big stories.

Small Stories Small Stories Small Stories Small Stories
Small Stories Small Stories
Big Stories

OMA, Jussieu - Two Libraries, 1992

Peter Eisenman, Rebstock Park Masterplan, 1993

If the ideas that drift into architectural discourse from
other fields are not disturbed by their impact on
architecture, then architecture is not disturbed by
them.

My sense is that the only thing that theorists can and
should do is to carefully open up certain already
existing cracks within the institutionalised discourse
of architecture… in order to identify specific
institutional forms of discrimination and leverage.

Zaha Hadid Architects, CityLife Milano, 2014

The Spiral New York: Corporate website

When an honest man speaks, he says only what he
believes to be true; and for the liar, it is
correspondingly indispensable that ne considers his
statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all
these bets are oﬀ: he is neither on the side of the true
nor on the side of the false… He does not care
whether the things he says describe reality correctly.
He just picks them out, or makes them up, so to suit
his purpose.
Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit, 2005

The mode of creativity upon which bullshit relies is
less analytical and less deliberative than that which is
mobilized in lying. It is more expansive and
independent, with more spacious opportunities for
improvisation, color, and imaginative play.This is less
a matter of craft than of art.
Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit, 2005

Spiral shapes appear in nature as the inevitable result of dynamic
forces applied to matter. That’s why we find spirals all over the
universe, from the construction of galaxies to the threads of human
DNA. But it’s the spiral’s immaculate geometry, and the suggestion of
the infinite, that has mesmerized us in all cultures, across time and
place.
In 1916, in New York, another force, the voice of the people, was
being applied to the growing city. Their demand for daylight at street
level, was requiring the buildings to step back as they reached towards
the sky, and so the New York skyscraper was born.
On Manhattan's West Side, we bring together the spiral form, and the
New York skyscraper, to create The Spiral: a new tower that stands
out among its neighbours, yet feels completely at home.
The Spiral will punctuate the Northern end of the Highline, the linear
park will appear to carry through into the spiral of the tower, forming
an ascending ribbon of lively green spaces, extending the Highline,
into the skyline.
A building designed for the people who occupy it, the spiral ensures
that every floor of the tower opens up to the outdoors creating hanging
gardens and cascading atria, that connect the open floor plate of the
ground floor to the summit into a single, uninterrupted work space.
And of course… these majestic views of the surrounding city!

March for science, Los Angeles, 22 April 2017

Oﬃce for Political Innovation, Cosmo, 2015

Rafael Viñoly, 432 Park Avenue, 2015

Everything has a story. Philosophy also tells stories.
Stories with concepts. Cinema tells stories with
blocks of movement / duration. Painting invents an
entirely diﬀerent type of block… Music invents
another type of blocks that are just as specific. And
alongside all of that, science is no less creative.
Gilles Deleuze, What is the Creative Act?, 1987

Everything has a story

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