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The Ideal City Redux
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Category Archives: Non-Monument
Non-Monument #4
Non-Monument #3
More a non-building than a non-monument that repeats the rational grid of many modern constructions, then separates the implied building into discrete parts. It is laid out on a 5 x 5 x 3 grid, positing a cube with sections missing.
The Cartesian coordinate system is recalled, with all that might project, a way to map all space, thus the universe, or only a system of spacial points that refers only to itself and the math that defines it, thus encloses nothing.
Non-Monument #2
A modern call to the classical form of monument the tetrapylon—Greek for four gates.
Compare with the Roman construction at Palmyra, in Syria.
Non-Monument #1
My first non-monument is loosely based on the type basilica. In Rome the basilica was a public building used to hold courts as well as serve other civic functions. It was located in the center, and every Roman town had one.
Basilica of Pompeii, 120 BCE. Later the basilica defined the construction of many early churches. The structure of secular administration passed on to sacred.
Fresco showing cross section of Constantine’s St. Peter’s Basilica, 4th century. I selected the type as a starting point for my first excursion because it is simple, basic, and structurally expressive. Also it has a past, and as such it figures historical precedence. It might encourage some public use, or at least promote the idea of such use and the notion of a public that has common interest. Or it might serve no purpose whatsoever and stand stranded at its site, in the present, in the course of history. Still, every built structure is an assertion of some sort, and, if it endures, serves as a reminder of time, of change, of memory. Most, it provides an alternative construction to the structures that now dominate our lives, overwhelmingly commercial and residential. We need ways, and expressions of those ways, to remind ourselves we live together, that something might exist beyond our daily functions, our individual interests, desires that are merely personal.