February 2009 – mj neal architects

click on picture to go to a bigger size, then, click on the Magnifying glass symbol to read.

This has been out for a while. I’m just not sure on how to blog about it… Basically the nice people at Austin Monthly Home created a timeline for Austin Architecture since well, the beginning, pre 1840, to present-day, choosing MJ Neal as an example of the present; in what what they call “neomodern.”

Alofsin, an architect and profesor at UT seems to have coined the “neomodern” moniker and although I disagree with his take of “it” not having a idelogical base, who am I to argue.

I’ll say this, one day, we need to put a book out. We’ll do it in collaboration with Thomas and Powei, we’ll dig into our archives and bring out the emails we wrote in dialogue with the neighborhood and amongst ourselves, eh boys?

We are definitely not the only ones that should be mentioned in the timeline, but I guess there wasn’t much space.

so… WOW, have we come a long way since the neighbors were calling the news on us complaining that we were building Texaco stations on their street. Let’s celebrate! I’m ready to party! Oh wait. There’s a WILD recession going on and, right, soon, maybe.

Thanks Austin Monthly! and thanks to my now most favorite person of all times, Rhonda Lashley, the writer.

Posted by Viviane

PS: Unfortunately and for reasons beyond our control, we don’t live in the Ramp House anymore, not since 2005… me miss you, house!

“It is evident that “life-enhancing” architecture has to address all the senses simultaneously and fuse our image of self with our experience of the world. The essential mental task of architecture is accomodation and integration. Architecture articulates the experiences of being-in-the-world and strengthens our sense of reality and self; it does not make us inhabit worlds of mere fabrication and fantasy.

The sense of self, strengthened by art and architecture, allows us to engage fully in the mental dimensions of dream, imagination and desire. Buildings and cities provide the horizon for the understanding and confronting of the human existential condition. Instead of creating mere objects of visual seduction, architecture relates, mediates and projects meanings. The ultimate meaning of any building is beyond architecture; it directs our consiousness back to the world and towards our own sense of self and being. Significant architecture makes us experience ourselves as complete embodied and spiritual beings. In fact, this is the great function of all meaningful art.”

Juhani Pallasmaa

The Eyes of the Skin