Under God: Interview with Mark C. Taylor

Originally published in the Washington Post’s series Under God

This morning I was lucky enough to spend some time with Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University. I remember having some questions as I stepped into his office, maybe something about Obama or China, but those quickly evaporated. Taylor is one of those wild and brilliant thinkers whose conversations effortlessly cover time and space and everything in between. And once he gets going, it’s hard to keep up and impossible to stop him. The following is a little morsel of the awesome urgency he brought to religion, just enough to whet the appetite.

ME: How did religion get to be where it is today politically? It’s so prevalent in one sense, but it doesn’t seem any deeper than the word itself.

MT: As somebody who’s spent his life reading and thinking about all this stuff, it’s interesting that you have religion back as such a preoccupation in the minds of everybody and yet the understandings of religion are simplistic.

Drawing Concepts

We are working out some ideas for large scale drawings.

Under God: Interview with Peter Eisenman

Originally published in the Washington Post’s series Under God

I went to speak with Eisenman last week mostly because I wanted to hear from one of the brilliant architects of our time. But I also wanted to learn if and how he felt architecture could negotiate competing political, religious, and historical forces in a way that enriches our world rather than dividing us. Eisenman wrestled one of the great works of contemporary architecture from the Holocaust, so I assumed that perhaps he had ideas on how to transcend our current cultural and political dramas.

ME: How do you approach the Holocaust as something that can be in any way represented, or is that even something you were after? How do you tackle such a loaded topic via architecture?

PE: Well, it’s not an easy question because I had to tackle it architecturally. I think most attempts at architecture have not been, for me, successful. They tend to be nostalgic for this awful event. You cannot memorialize this action. And so the field of silence, basically, doesn’t say anything. It has no direction, it has no meaning, it has no, no nothing, it’s just a field of pillars that stands mute in the Berlin context.

I think when one considers the Holocaust, as far as I’m concerned, silence is more appropriate than speaking. And when architecture tries to speak it becomes mock-ish, sentimental, and banal.

Everybody says, well, what does this mean? It doesn’t mean anything; it is. And it is there to experience its being, and being of being there. But basically that is it.

Abacus At The Whitney Museum

We’re working with our friend Lars Jan to design and build a site-specific performance and installation piece at the Whitney Museum as part of the upcoming retrospective Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe. The above image is kind of a teaser, but also strongly related to design ideas we’re exploring for the project. The installation opens in September, so more to come very soon.

Ro Starr

Butterfly In The Hurricane (detail), 2003Installed at World Company Ltd. Headquarters, Roppongi, 2003acrylic, latex and aerosol on canvas15' x 50' — *Butterfly In The Hurricane* (detail), 2003
Installed at World Company Ltd. Headquarters, Roppongi, 2003
acrylic, latex and aerosol on canvas
15' x 50'

I ran into my friend Ro Starr the other night at an opening sponsored by Converse and as a nice surprise it turned out that his work was in the show. He’s got a strange touch that I’m fully in love with, and even more he’s a super cool guy.

Koala Randomization

This is a series of tests using our Koala MEL Script in conjunction with the new randomization selection tool in Maya.

Playing With Koala and Randomization

This perforations in this surface were made using our Koala MEL Script and Maya's randomization tool.

Variable Array Using Koala

We made these color + pattern + variation studies earlier today while testing Koala, a MEL Script we have been developing for some time.

Parabolic Solar Facade

I'm working on the design of a green facade comprised of landscape elements and parabolic solar panels that self orient towards the sun.

Exploding Plastic Inevitable Gallery

I’ve just finished uploading the final studio projects from the first year graduate studio I taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. You can see them here. There’s some really impressive work in there for first time architecture projects, way better than what I was doing when I started school.

Perforation Studies Using Wolford

Wolford is a MEL script I wrote that produces geometric primitives that contain a reciprocal relationship between form and perforation. The above renderings show a Wankel inspired torus with two slightly varied strategies. The left form has perforation with a bit of randomization whereas the right form is a consistent perforation based on the surface geometry.

Trillion Dollar Mile

Bureau V has just completed the design of our first project, a renovation of a commercial office space on Sylvan Avenue (aka Trillion Dollar Mile ) in Fort Lee, NJ. The project includes a complete redesign of the building facade and a gut renovation of the interior.

Trillion Dollar Mile Deliverables

Elevation and plan drawings of our Trillion Dollar Mile project.

Trillion Dollar Mile Day Light Studies

Strata Tower

Taschen has just published AE Architecture in the Emirates featuring the Strata Tower, a project I led the design for while working at Asymptote Architecture. The survey covers built work as well as projects under development and includes some phenomenal as well as phenomenally terrible projects. Also of note, my business partner (and friend) Stella Lee’s design for the Guggenheim Pavilions on Saddiyat Island are also included.

Architecture in the Emirates Strata Tower 3

Architecture in the Emirates Strata Tower 4

PROJECT CREDIT »
Asymptote Architecture: Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture

Trillion Dollar Mile Concept Image

Here’s one of the concept images for Trillion Dollar Mile. It is based loosely on the infinite projections of Super Studio's Continuous Monument series.