Peter Eisenman: Max Reinhardt Haus Project, Berlin, Germany, Scale model 1:100
1992-93. Medium-density fiberboard (MDF) and Plexiglas, 82 1/2 x 60 x 60" (209.6 x 152.4 x 152.4 cm).

"In order to capture Reinhardt's legendary energy and vision, Eisenman devised a prismatic form that is a world unto itself but also reflects the constantly changing and multifaceted character of the city. In Eisenman's design (which was never built), the thirty-four-story building vertically folds on its core to create a structure that separates, transforms, and rejoins itself horizontally at the roof level."

In other words, the operation performed by this building form is metaphorical in a conceptual sense: the act of folding and rejoining upon oneself is a hopeful gesture signifying a future of reunification and reconciliation of a disjointed past. Diagrammatically, the building is a Möbius strip that has been fragmented into triangulated surfaces, disrupting the singular surface. On a representational level, this can be interpreted as the continuous flow of time (Möbius diagram), which is interpreted through our contemporary understanding of history as fragmented, incomplete, and imprecise (faceted figures).

As a building however, with the constraints of foundations in gravity, the building must meet the ground, which obfuscates the integrity of this continuous form where the building meets the ground. As a result, the conceptual completeness of the building as a complete Möbius strip only exists in model form shown here, where the ground is ghosted in clear plexiglas.

I believe this highlights a key issue for this project: As the translation from model to building would have disrupted the formal and metaphorical diagrams of this building, so as to reconcile a theory with reality. If the building represents the totality of collective history of humanity (Germanic or otherwise) as continuous, it also acknowledges that there is a portion of this history that is always buried. However, it is this buried portion that serves as foundation as well as the missing piece that is needed to complete the loop. Eisenman here is taking an optimistic and Freudian stance with regards to this cultural history: Let's not forget what lies beneath; acknowledging our suppressed underpinnings is the key to fulfilling our collective desires for unity.

"You're guilty of overproducing. Come up here. Tony and I have something beautiful to show you."

"Tony and Harry were down at the beach with their wives, probably enlarging on the scorpion, and I was in the shop tuning up a Khan-Arachnid orchid with the UV lamp. It was a difficult bloom, with a normal full range of twenty-four octaves, but unless it got a lot of exercise it tended to relapse into neurotic minor-key transposition which were the devil to break. And as the senior bloom in the shop in the mornings, it naturally affected the others. Invariably when I opened the shop in the mornings, it sounded like a madhouse, but as soon as I'd fed the Arachnid and straightened out one or two pH gradients the rest promptly took their cues from it and dimmed down quietly in their control tanks, two-time, three-four, the multi-tones, all in perfect harmony."

-- J. G. Ballard, "Bella Primadonna," 1956.

Perhaps inspired by J. G. Ballard's "Vermilion Sands" stories in which the fictional inhabitants of that Palm Beach-inspired seaside metropolis tickle their audile fancies with sonic flora, David Benque proposes a similar modification of greenery in his 2010 project "Acoustic Botany."

"Singing flower."

As Benque describes, these parasitic bulbous sacs fill with gas, which is released slowly to produce a kind of sound similar to air being let out of a balloon. Like a trumpet, the tension of the membrane and the velocity of the gas passing through the opening creates sounds with various frequencies and volumes.

"Desired traits such as volume, timbre, and harmony are acquired through selective breeding techniques."

Using grafting and selective breeding, Benque proposes a series of flowers, trees, and hybrids that can be arranged in such a way to create a symphonic garden. Unlike Ballard's future-kitschy Tchaikovsky-playing plants that were "popular with the tourists," the intention here is to create a recurring opera of "natural" music, largely dependent on the climate, soil composition, and the musical ambitions of the botanist. (Twelve-tone orchids, anyone?)

I imagine sometime in the future someone being a vintner cultivating melodious vines for aristocratic spectacle and entertainment. We already know there is a market for singing flowers. To get this going we just need the investment of probably millions of dollars for molecular biological research funding. Or the inspired involvement of this guy.

View the rest of Benque's project here.

connect-E-couté

http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound//Dali-Salvador/Dali-Salvador_Dali-Speaks_1960.mp3

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Kansas as barcode (800x800px reduction/enlargement)