http://futureofthebook.org/itinplace Fri, 30 Jan 2015 18:02:02 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.15 http://futureofthebook.org/itinplace/2013/08/23/arch/ Fri, 23 Aug 2013 19:03:25 +0000 http://www.futureofthebook.org/itinplace/?p=4414
I recall reading someone’s speculation on the orgin of arches in architecture. They seemed to think it arouse in a Kubrckian manner from a confrontation with death. Specifically, they thought it grew from men seeing ribs and jaw bones on the battlefield. While I suppose there is a certain poetic lovliness to this idea, it occurred to me that the same discovery could be more easily traced back to coming upon a fallen tree as much as a fallen man. Something tells me lean tos predate stone arches. I was thinking about arches because of the Geodesic dome IN UU’s collage… and also the arch of the girl’s back as she put her ass in the air. The other thing that sort of fell into my head was how Buckminster Fuller always went back to stacking as the origin of all his work. As if perhaps it all really came from an engineering question that came up when trying to move stacks of cans, or more likely ammunition in the most efficient manner. I thought a nice monument to him would be to stack a pile of geodisc domes under the arch of a tree…. but in real life it should be huge and maybe bucky balls not domes…. or microscopic nanocarbon would be fun too: visible only by scanning elctron microscope installed in the gallery.

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