Dennis Hollingsworth

Blobolicious

Ray is an old acquaintance, once a former architecture student of mine at Woodbury University in Burbank, he went on to grad school at the famous SCIARC, in Los Angeles; now that he's all grown up and we've worn off the generational boundary, a friend. He writes recently to fill me in the haps in architecture:

On Jan 21, 2004, at 6:47 PM, raymond wrote:

Hi Dennis,

How are things? I've been checking out your web site as you have noticed. I like it but it only reminds me how much I miss visiting you in your studio but the virtural you is kind of cool. Check out this architect and tell me what you think. He teaches at sci-arc and is one of the hippest Digital guys at school. Thanks for responding to my comments on your web page and I hope to hear from you soon.

Ray

Ray:

I appreciate the link to the supercool hippest architect at SciArc. A blob for everyone, it seems. It makes me want to spend money on computer soft/hardware.

It also makes me want to rent that movie: "The Blob". Remember that one? Steve McQueen. He's one of the few actors who could be cool even in a B-movie like that one.

How does the humanities component of your thinking intersect with this?

Also, this aesthetic prompts thoughts about construction technology and the office, there must be bridges between the contractor's hammer and the software in the architect's office. Kinda like Gehry's Catia program and the automated fabrication of steel. This is where we will be able to build these blobs.

I google:
"It was computers that transformed Gehry's architecture. Using a complex program called Catia, made by the French company Dassault for designing aircraft, Gehry was able to achieve the results he sought. Computers mean that, however complex, the curves in his buildings can be accurately calculated and then fed directly to the cutting machines in steel foundries."

More than the bloboliciousness, there is a capacity of fit as we increasingly shape the environment to our needs, as the technology filters down to the public at large. Blobs are the least aspect of this phenomenon, or at least a metaphor for fit.

I can see something of this kind of software evolved over time and merged with gaming programs to simulate the environment so that we can customize, to fit the design to the micro particularities of life. Once we have the ability to field fabricate the components derived from the software design and simulation testing, then we could assemble them into a radicalized "form follows function", a do "more with less" environment. Here, I'm thinking of nanobots and scaling up from microfactories, and radicalized versions of desktop printers that can build houses that we imagine first in some hyperreal (will we call them computers then?)simulation.

Dreamy, huh?

-Dennis

ps: I think I'll post this in the blog...