WORKSHOP: THE TOP FUNNEL HOUSE

9 Steps to an Urbane Structuralism, by Roger Connah 

the gonzo studio – part 2
(Viernes 22/11/13, 10:30am - 14:30pm)

4 Hours_the rapid studio:
1 Read – 2 Re-read – 3 Refer – 4 Speculate – 5 Brief 
6 Invent – 7 Translate – 9 Animate – 10 Project 


In 4 hourse we will complete a project (an animation of both text and image)
as a model for an entry into a Rapid Competition called Top Funnel House.
We will invent everything, even new activites for architecture to prgram.
It is a rapid exercise in re-communicating architecture and there is no program for this. 


keywords (glossary) 

I  journey  I words and architecture matrix (drawings) conceptual transfer
I  transcriptions  I index box  I  mapping (clouds) forwards and backwards
(im)materials  (research -technology-novelty)  I narrative  I  manifesto I  idiolect


timing

- 30m intro - The Gonzo Theory (RC + discussion)
- 30m read-re-read-refer (RC – HA – JSM consultation 1)

1
2
3 - 60m Speculate – Brief (RC – HA JSM  consultation 2) 4 - 60m invent – translate – animate (the product)

5 6

- 15m project (exhibit)
- 45 review ( RC HA JSM & students) 

 

1 Read
THE TOP FUNNEL HOUSE 1 (Lograire)
But this dream also reaches out to London and other places in Europe. The focal points is around the gasometers of Elmhurst, the freight yards of Woodside, the crematory in Brooklyn, a Harlem nightclub, the boats in bayside bay, the tunnel under the East River leading into Manhattan. This mediation is surrealistic. “Top funnel house” is simply a sort of Hieronymous Bosch building which smokes and looks and is symbolic of death as a presence structured into society itself as guilt, police and undertakers. It is both police station, hospital and crematory which has devoured one by one the bodies of parents, grandparents etc. Then there is the theme of famous john as a sort of cloacal Mafia Id. And so on. The “South” canto is more self-evident. “East” and “West”, “Cargo” and “Ghost Dance”, play out in more universal and primitive myth- dream terms the same struggle of love and death, they enact the common participation of the living and the dead in the work of constructing a world and a viable culture. These poems incidentally are never explicitly theological or even metaphysical. The tactic is on the whole that ofanurbanestructuralism. ThomasMerton,Lograire(Author’sNote)NewDirections1968,p.2 



 

2 re-read
THE TOP FUNNEL HOUSE 2
36. Top the funnel charnel at the police’s corner. The panky wink. The redred. The walky talk. The phenomenon feeler. The top regarders. The bmp on the boss. The ozone of gasometers. Eyeshots and droplet pix. Cunning exposures of fun on the run. Nicked in the nakt. Dressing in the Cadillac. Found in the act. Seeming letters and postals of George in the milky sun. Millways. King of the postbus. Comes with a Gainsborough and puts a pillarbox under the tree. I have drops on my eyes and can’t see the pictures. Stunsun. Newmarket morning. I can’t see the starters because I am gated again. Gated in Bridge Street with a pillar of postals. Shared my letters and feed them to the birds. Stunsun Newmarket morning is wide wise all over. Bookies in the lane. Topfunner Newmocker news. Radios and signs. RAF gleamers. Cries of lonely Auden there in the heights. Lincoln fens are for the airmen. I sit alone under the mornings of Cambridge pylons and watch fliers. Icarus falls.
Thomas Merton No.236 Lograire, North op cit., p.56

3 refer
Hieronymous Bosch The Temptation of St Anthony (Triptych) 

The work was in the Escorial monastery, although it was not mentioned in inventories; later it was moved to the Prado. It is likely that the work was one of the Temptations sent to the monastery by Philip II of Spain in 1574. This painting has a more serene atmosphere than the triptych with the same theme now in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga of Lisbon. Like all Bosch's works, it cannot be dated with precision, although it is likely from his late production (1500-1525). (Wikipda)

4 speculate
5 brief - the incongruous pairing of activities – the re-mix
The Bull (reading from How Architecture got its Hump. Connah 2001)
The stand-up comedy joke
Things are so hard today, economic cutback and scarcity
We are putting hospitals and libraries together.
Result: you can’t get a kidney anymore but you can lend one for 3 weeks.
Eg shopping - mall & police (station?) + (citizen’s advice bureau) Eg prevention - fire (station) & hardware (store) + (walk-in lawyer) Eg well-being - health clinic & sports hall + (internet café)
Eg creativity -primary school & garage + (adult education )
Eg individualist - farmshop & dental clinic + (day care centre)