GUILLERMO ARANDA-MENA

few recent notes and sketches... Guillermissimo! The other day after the office I went to a tour/talk organized by the city office of preservation of historic (or for some reason remarkable) buildings. We visited one of the first and very few high-rise buildings in ZH. It's called Lochergut and one sees it far away also from my kitchen windows. It is formed by seven high buildings plus three lower ones. At night, when one sees only its lights one may think of a huge whale which got lost in the middle of the city. Since the complex is so big (for CH scale) and as part of the apartments are susidized, the whole complex had a bit of a bad reputation in the past but most recently it has become cool again to live there, especially among bohemians as rents are quite cheap considering the central position and the breathtaking view you have from the upper floors. I like the june post on your blog a lot. My favourite drawing...

'What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others' ' Pericles' Pericles might be right but architecture is defined by its materiality , starting from ideas, briefing documents into sketches and drawings, contractor, specialist consultants come on board and the list carries on endlessly. No architect achieves fulfillment until all his/her efforts eventuate into  engraved  stone monuments!  There are no short cuts, there is no way around... the thought of 'to build or not to build'  often troubles my mind.  In an attempt to reconcile my teaching practice with the making  of buildings I need to accept a degree of separation, the proximity between me and those creators of   stone monuments such as students, friends and colleagues is very close indeed. In my view such degree of separation seems like an abysmal divide ...   a bridge is to unfold though. GAM - 1st May 2011 ...

"The building -  the void: an interesting city interplay" Guillermo Aranda-Mena CARVE   Verb: (often to be carved) cut (a hard material) in order to produce and aesthetically pleasant object or design. Carve out: take something from a large whole, esp. with difficulty.  Establish or create something through painstaking effort.  MONOLITH   Noun: French  monolithe.  Greek monos ( single ) + lithos ( stone ). 1. A large single upright block of stone, esp. one shaped into or serving as pillar or monument. A very large characterless building:  the 72 story monolithic building overlooking the waterfront A very large block of concrete sunk in water, e.g. in the building of a dock. 2. a large and impersonal political, corporate or social structure regarded as intractibly, indivisible and uniform. From top to bottom: Delft Square, NL Federation Square, Melbourne The Botanical Gardens, Melbourne Hoi An Market, Vietnam Lugan...

"Publicato nel 1972, Le cittá invisibili é un romanzo in cui l'autore ricorre ala tecnica della letteratura combinatoria. Protagonista é Marco Polo che, alla corte di Kublai Khan, fornisce attraveso i suoi dispacci al Sovrano, le descrizioni delle cittá che vengono toccate dai suoi viaggi all'interno dello sterminato Impero: in queste narrazioni parla degli uomini che le hanno costruite, della forma delle cittá stesse. Queste cittá peró esistono solo nella mente del viaggiatore veneziano: Marco Polo infatti le descrive ora nei piú minuziosi dettagli, ora valutando l'insieme, ma sempreguardando dove tutti gli altri non guardano, verso dettagli che ad altri paiono invisibili. Le cittá di cui Marco Polo racconta sono intense come mondi conchiusi: le cittá invisibili infatti non entrano in relazione tra loro. Grazie al racconto é Marco Polo stesso che 'crea' mentre le racconta, cosí come per Calvino lo scrittore 'crea' i mondi di cui tratta. Le cittá invis...