MOST RECENT...
Building visited that made an impression:
I had never seen Aalto’s buildings and I had been ignorantly biased against them based on the stylistic Post-Modernist teachers I had in the 1980s who so adored him. I hadn’t realized what a master he was of the ship’s curve. Attached are some images from his studio. I was knocked out by this building and his early house.
Memorable journey:
The Newport to Ensenada boat race a few months ago. Being in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night, with no wind, on a giant piece of composite technology, racing similar boats in less than 3 knots of wind, surrounded by schools of dolphins making trails through phosphorescent plankton is great. When the sun rises, you see the entire fleet of 500 boats around you, the wind comes up and you get a third place it is a pretty perfect journey
Enjoyable Read:
I just got a copy of Luca Turin’s “Perfumes: The Guide” and like all of his reviews and writings it inspires me to write and smell. I also was rereading Paul West novels this year and while working on my own book I was rereading the contributions and was especially struck by J. G. Ballard’s “Vermillion Sands” a chapter that I read as a 17 year old because I was then living in Vermilion, Ohio and was intrigued by the title to then find out it was about a house that came to life.
enjoyable film
The Grand, directed by Zak Penn: A friend of mine was looking for architectural models that could stand-in for failed Las Vegas casinos for a film that had a low budget for its sets; they left with numerous models. In the end, they used none of the models but instead they built a plinth and placed the prototype for the Blobwall brick on top of it and Woody Harrelson as One–Eyed Jack Faro called it “Hector’s Frozen Cart”. While standing over it he said: “I like this one too. It’s called Hector’s Frozen Cart. Now I’m going to be forward with you and let you know that I don’t know what I was thinking when I came up with this particular design. But I was under the influence of cocaine and heroin and marijuana and LSD, mushrooms and some ecstasy, and you know how sometimes you get that cocktail just right and then it’s just boom!”
AND PLEASURABLE...
Personal encounter:
See attached photo by Monica Nouwens.
Time off:
I don’t really distinguish time on and time off these days honestly.
Meal:
I was with my wife, kids and in-laws in Belize walking through the rain forest looking for jaguars to make sure we saw them first. We walked by these spongy foamy things and the guide said matter of factly “Oh, these are slime molds”. Sylvia and I screamed, we wished Sanford was with us. Back in the 90s seeing a group of walking slime molds was big news. Of course my kids just shrugged, ‘yeah’ yeah we know all about slime molds.’ Next to them was a termite mound, another apex of self-organized forms resulting from animal community interaction. The guide then said, oh, these termites are delicious, they taste like carrots and mint, we Belizians eat them all the time when we get hungry walking in the rain forest. Coincidentally, I am allergic to carrots having been given a vegetable juicer and drinking 15 kilos of carrots a week for 3 months when my body decided I was being attacked by carrots and I developed an allergy that does not allow me to eat raw carrots as if I do my throat swells shut and I go into anaphylactic shock. So I said let’s try the termites. The guide then admitted that neither he nor anyone he knows had eaten them before. So we tried a few and in fact they are one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted. In the end we were eating them by the handful. Sweet like cooked carrots only with a mint aftertaste. I would place fresh conch on the deck of a boat in the Bahamas only slightly before and live octopus in South Korea slightly behind the live termites. There is nothing better than reaching into nature and eating something, it is even better than our ability in California to buy fresh organic produce at the local farmer’s market.
Current Profile
The Lives and Times of Greg Lynn
- Greg Lynn to the left (photo: Monica Nouwens)
Greg Lynn, arguable the most important architect over the last fifteen year with respect to the use of computers for architectural design, is still young. In the least, he is young in terms of architecture. In architecture, as Wolf Prix, chief architect of Coop Himmelb(l)au and Lynn's professor colleague at the Angewandte in Wien supposedly put it, life begins at forty. And despite being in his early forties, Lynn seems to have achieved much of what one could dream of in an architectural career. He is professor at three of the most prestigious universities in the world: UCLA (Los Angeles), Yale University (New Haven) and the University of Applied Arts ("Angewandte") in Wien. At the latter, he heads one of three studios; the others two being led by Zaha Hadid and Wolf Prix, respectively- which sort of makes the school a small Formula-One institution on the international scene. The designs of his firm, Greg Lynn Form, are coveted objects by collectors and museums, architectural connoisseurs and students alike; he has realized buildings and his writings figure as some of the most important in architectural theory over the last fifteen years. Anyone who has heard Lynn speak in a lecture or review, knows with what broad and deep knowledge he delivers his architectural insights. And, yet, this does not quite describe the intensity of his calm presence and weighty remarks.
Another Greg Lynn, when in Los Angeles, tries to be home before seven in the evening to see his two children before bedtime, children which he shares with his wife, renowned architectural theorist and UCLA professor, Sylvia Lavin. Yet another Greg Lynn is a passionate sailor- although "passionate" may not quite cover the intensity with which he engages in the sport off the Californian coast or wherever else he is. He grew up with sailing and engages with his passion on a self-owned, near 40-foot, French boat, recruiting his crew among friends from the all-innocent and often-inexperienced, international base of architects that teach in Los Angeles or wherever else Lynn might travel.
- Woody with model from Greg Lynn
- Greg on his boat
When Lynn tells stories about his playing with the children, one soon wonders who is the chief player and protagonist. The fun with the cat and the dog, the laser-gun game at a birthday party: it seems as it revolves as much about the father as it does about whoever else might be present. One begins to suspect that being around Greg Lynn is a unique experience in an energetic, playful explosion of a love for life.
A colleague of Lynn tells the story of completing a competition entry the day before hand-in, a time when most architects would tie themselves down in front of the computer and go into productive paranoia. Around ten that night Lynn calls upon everyone to go for a drink: "Afterwards," he says, "we'll work the night through!" Or take the time in 1996, in his early days, when he flew in to northern Europe from the US, worked a long day to complete a large installation in a museum, energetically and socially joined the bar-round that lasted till 2 or 3, thereafter watched American basket on television in his bedroom before "getting up" around 7 AM to go to a business meeting in Austria.
It turns out, Greg Lynn may be an intellectual and architectural force, one who has fundamentally contributed to the coming of "a new age" in architecture, but one cannot fully understand the impact and potential of his envisioned future without understanding his energy. The search for the "new", the intellectual rigor of his pursuits, the restfulness, the passions for so many varied things, the scope and invention of his visions, all boils down to a personality that has a more playful, human and humane frame of mind than most of us.
As for his architectural achievements, well that would be another story. But he is listed in a Spiegel Special Issue recently, together with amongst others, Marc Newson, Ron Arad, Ross Lovegrove and Philippe Starck, as one of the ten most renowned designers in the world. And in architectural terms, according to Wolf Prix, he is not even five years old.