From among my many preserved complete design processes, these two volumes contain only six of them. To legitimize both the contents and the method, I found it important to (re)publish all six united, so they create a new process of they own. The gradual development of ideas, to reach the state of physical reality, begins with "hesitant decisions", a possible drawn existence out of the many options. All of the projects are large urban ensembles, symphonies in musical terms, where to find the melody, and the harmony of the parts, is the almost unresolvable, but most challenging task of an architect! (S)he plays a double role - the creator and the user/critic. In these cases, many people will be exposed to, enjoy or suffer from those decisions. As mentioned, the gradual thought-condensing process has to have several testing phases, by our sensory perceptions. From these, only the seeing and somewhat the touching aspects are revealed by the drawings, the others we have to substitute in our imagination. With hundreds of these control-substations, hopefully we could avoid offending individualistic solutions, especially, if - as this method allows it - the representatives of the users have the chance to express their opinions of the proposals under way. The public responds to these architectural explorations, and in one case, to the constructed result, speaks for their validity.
Pen Zen Diaries Volume 2
By PETER MAGYARTrafford Publishing
Copyright © 2018 Peter Magyar
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4907-9112-8Contents
FOREWORD, iv,
Chapter 1 ANGLES AND ORANGES, 1,
Chapter 2 HESITANT DECISIONS, 159,
Chapter 3 MULTIPLE HORIZONS, 293,
ARS POETICA, 446,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 447,
CHAPTER 1
ANGLES AND ORANGES
FINE ART BUILDING, ORANGE COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE, CA
INTRODUCTION
In case of a museum building, the question often comes up: should the container just be a reserved depository of art, or should it aspire to express more unabashedly its content. In designing an art school, the dilemma is very similar. Fortunately in the case of the Art School for the Orange County Community College, for which I served as design consultant to Steven Ehrlich Architects, this prejudice could play very little role. The given site, which contained a theater, designed by Richard Neutra, and where an existing workshop had to be reused, as the exhibition gallery for the school, provided enough restrictions, so this somewhat esoteric aspects did very little in evolving the concept of the design. Like in many other cases, the combined requirements of site, program, structure and in this case the need of natural light were sufficiently complex issues, integrated investigations of these eventually revealed the architectural solution.
Excerpted from Pen Zen Diaries Volume 2 by PETER MAGYAR. Copyright © 2018 Peter Magyar. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
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