From The Discovery of Piranesi's Final Project:
4 October 2023 Wednesday
I never imagined the production of a project as bountiful as this one. Straight away from its start, for example, the title itself--The Discovery of Piranesi's Final Project--heralds the naissance of two historical circumstances: Piranesi's final project (1778) and the discovery of Piranesi's final project (2022). The title also immediately manifests a very high degree of certainty and aplomb, which was solidified, moreover, within the first twelve hours of its existence by a brand new discovery of yet a third Piranesi plan existing in two, heretofore unnoticed, different printed versions. And the discoveries by no means ended there.
2023.10.04
zero nine four
2017.10.04
Material Witness #5: Cultural Gerrymandering
While O. was writing, I was driving home from a late night viewing of Gone Girl. It was lightly raining and I couldn't remember the last time I drove at night in the rain. Is Gone Girl the same neighborhood as American Beauty 15 years later?
And the night before I was watching August: Osage County--talk about your house with no closets, but lots of skeletons.
Last Monday afternoon, a good bit of a long phone conversation was about the 'obscure' architectural locations of Rome within The Great Beauty, like the apartment within one of the towers of S. Agnes in Agone (which I recognized from a mid-1980s issue of Casa Vogue) and inside the Capitoline Museum at night by candlelight. I forgot to mention the Scala Sancta (which I kind of think was a set rather than the real thing), and have since remembered the Tempietto and Borromini's forced perspective gallery at the Palazzo Spada.
A forced perspective gallery, imagine designing something like that for a palazzo now.
2014.10.04
things to do and see in MUNICH??
(not architectural, but one of those only-place-where-you-can-do-it things)
The royal treasury within the Residenz, supposedly the most valuable collection of state jewels (crowns, holy relics, etc.) in Europe. It's not often that one is in the presence of so many real gems.
FYI: the rolling hills adjacent the OlympicPark are the "soot hill"--the accumulated debris of Munich's WWII bombings.
2007.10.04
things to do and see in MUNICH??
The Amalienburg in Nymphenburg Park--a rare manifestation of ultimate Rococo.
The Glyptothek and its contents. Where Florence has David, Munich has the Barberini Faun. Talk about hung over.
2007.10.04
things to do and see in MUNICH??
If I was in Munich with a car I'd drive out to Altötting and then to Schloss Peising to finally meet the Baron von Ow and see the Chinese Room and then play a few rounds on his golf course.
Thanks to this thread, I and the von Ow family cook during WWII were just discussing when we might get some Weisswurst from the authentic German deli just down the road. I'm thinking next week.
2007.10.04
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