ObeyArchitecture

When Ozayr first started playing the Goldsworthy film i began to seriously contemplate his sanity. At first I had no clue as to what some nutcase British artist had to do with the study of Architecture. Goldsworthy worked with things from the earth and made what was seemingly pointless works of art. Afterall, what is the point of taking hours upon hours of time just to have it washed away by the sea or overgrown with grass? By the time of the next lecture, and the conclusion of the film, Ozayr's concept was still more hazy then a cloudy morning in San Fransisco. For some odd reason he thought that this guy had some great secret and that we as students of architecture needed to know it. Between the first quiz and this film it was pretty safe to say that no one had a clue what they were supposed to take out of all this. But, as i was daydreaming one class period it all of a sudden hit me. We aren't supposed to think of what Goldsworthy did in terms of architecture. In fact Goldsworthy had nothing to do with architecture. But he was as close as you could get to a phenomonologist and artist mixed together as one could ever hope to find. Ozayr's concept finally came clear. Goldsworthy's work was not distructive to the environment that he worked in. In fact, it was quite the opposite. His work was a complement to the environment that it was in. It took from the land but it didn't replace the land. It is the idea of conservation of energy in its most simple form. One shouldn't have to take away from the earth in order to give back to the people and most of all ones work shouldn't look out of place where it is set. If you put a New England style home in the middle of Arizona it would look a little out of place compared to the tan stucco houses all around it. There has to be some kind of flow in the plans otherwise it would seem like everything is haphazardly strewn about with no real rhyme or reason. But, if someone takes from the environment around their site there is almost no way it could not fit in with the natural surroundings. It all comes back to flow, a flow that needs to be present yet almost invisible. Without a sense of flow a city would feel uncomfortable to be in and it would be amazingly difficult to navigate. So now the challenge becomes how does an architect take natures energy and flow and put it into a building plan. I think that changes from person to person but the basic concept can still be adapted to everyone's individual styles. On top of that, I also realized Ozayr wasn't crazy and I would have to say that that was the biggest relief of all.