Thursday, October 1, 2009

Gibe




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Cryptic Gibberish
By Barie Fez-Barringten
After completing both Earth Day one and two we created and built the loft housing Laboratories for Metaphoric Environments in Manhattan’s east sixty eight street just across form Avalon’s (the world famous fashion photographer) studios and in a building owned by Mr. Fernandez who ran a world class bakery on the ground floor. In Union Square I had met Adam Alexander who at time was special assistant to Mayor Lindsay. Adam lived on the West side and had several doctorates in mathematics. He somehow decided to collaborate with me to form LME and so from 1971 till 1973 when we left New York for Jackson Tennessee we had conversations which I documented with words and sketches.
What I later called word grams (after the DaDa movement) were my cognitive responses to reify these subjects through my fascination with geometry, graphics, and design, drafting, and isometrics extrapolations. Adam knew I was doing this and after looking at my work sheet often would interrupt and say: “yes, that’s right” and “is that what you think”?
The previous year I had spent with a graduate student from City College named Phil Winters who would document our conversations into his thesis based on a system he called: “TAG” (trust, authority and guidance). When Adam was not at the lab Henry Classon and I would like converse so that he could write the prospectus for LME.
It was only when I was writing and managing trainees and consultants for ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia did I then mount all 63 word grams on cardboard and then with dry mount film glazed each to the cardboard. In 1981 I thought these would eventually be exhibited as relics of the times.
Sadly, Adam disappeared, as had Phil and so many others from this very creative time. After packing all her Plexiglas sculptures, pen and ink sketches, paintings and our personal effects Christina joined me as I assumed directing the architecture department for an insurance company where I designed two Tennessee cities and one village in Belmopan. At that time a local gallery owner invited us to exhibit our art and even a gallery in Memphis exhibited and sold many of my Sheba pen and ink fantasy drawings. www.bariefez-barringten.com
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Precinct Police Station in Bedford Styvestant Brooklyn

Lieutenant Goodale of New York City's Police Headquarters spent his time to teach me about the policies and operations of precinct stations and then assigned me to spend a week at the precinct
where I observed the works of the stations and rode in patrol cars.

On day we rode to street where the was a gun fight from one side to the canyon-like streets six storied tenements to the other.

I was told to get down and call for backup on the car phone which they handed me as the two officers darted off to deal with the situation.

After I complied I slithered along the pavement to a close phone booth to call my wife to five her may parting farewells and inform her what was going on.

So was my indoctrination to this design.

The whole reason I selected this project was at the encouragement of my former teacher and mentor Forrest Wilson who had traced my life from my earliest years growing up on the streets of the Bronx.
These episodes were daily occurrences when we lived on th East Bronx Simpson Street. I have put these and other such stories into a manuscript called :"Bronx Stardust".

All approximate 50 drawings filled the Yale University jury area and complicate the jury consisting of Vincent Scully, Sir James Stirling, Paul Rudolf, Charles Moore, Peter Millard, King Lui Wuu and Phillip Johnson.

It was Dr. Johnson who championed my project calling the jury's attention to the complete, comprehensive and coordinated documentation of my thesis as well as the above-excellent drawing and draftsmanship.
Unlike any of the jury members before coming to Yale I had designed skyscrapers, public works, multi family housing and High -end commercial interiors in Manhattan's competitive real estate market.
I had already designed a university under Edward D. Stone, office building under Khan and Jacobs and holy shrines under Frederick Kiesler.


Other pointed to the way one drawing spoke to the other and confirmed my then emerging theory that architecture was the making of metaphors.

As much as educators spoke of conceptual metaphors they did little to teach about the technical metaphor.It was both the technical and conceptual metaphor I choose to bring together in this micro project.




From site selection, site planning to the knitting together of program input from the community planning boards and police the metaphor bridged, carried over and represented a new paradigm. None of this was lost to Phillip Johnson ,Vincent Scully and Paul Weiss.
The drawings are a study of the muti-dimensional chcharacteristics of a work of architecture leaving no view or aspect to chance but all made part of the metaphor. In this description I shall leave you to read the drawings and learn the metaphor and its workings.

I can only hope it to be as much an aesthetic experience for you as it was for me, Lieutenant Goodale, and the ry.
Keep in mind this was all before computer aided design was even an embryo and when draftsmanship was appreciated for the art it actually was.
In fact my works was so well appreciated that when he published his book on the work of his office, Morris Lapidus included several of my drawings as examples. www.bariefez-barringten.com,,,,,,,,patrol cars/technorati.com/tag/metaphor" ,rel="tag">metaphor,,,,,, href="http://technorati.com/tag/urban%20" rel="tag">urban