V&A opens Architectural Gallery

The V &A has opened a new Architectural Gallery in the Museum. For now its exhibits come across as a collage of different things with no apparent narrative. 

As much as it looks rather accidental, to see a model of Bramante's Tempietto, next to Grimshaw's Eden Garden Dome design, that is next to Arup's Structural analysis model, one wonders if the V&A curators ambitiously desired to map the 'progress' of architecture or did they desire to come up with some kind of explanation for our current state of confusion. 

But given the richness of every individual exhibit, the gallery is worth a visit as long as the visitor takes a deep breathe and a conscious 10 second break between seeing an exquisitely detailed hand drawn axonometric of St Paul's and laser cut 20 option-models of Foster's Gherkin.

(all photos in the post, photo courtesy of Nora)

Voynich Manuscript

I have written before small, odd, confused articles on language (1, 2, 3, 4) and other speculations associated, one of which being erasure of language. To speculate on possibility of losing the memory of sounds and symbols that make up words and how to arrange these together. Being able to imagine an alternative history where Rosetta stone was never discovered and we are left with only encoded unrecognisable vast archives that look exquisitely rich in their meaning but undecipherable,quite similar to the symbol of human infertility, where Zizek talks about Art in the absence of its context in Children of Men.
I can only imagine the feeling cryptographers, ciphers, linguists and historians get when they study The Beinecke MS 408 or also popularly known as the Voynich manuscripts presently housed in Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library building (designed by SOM). A treasure trove of history, symbols and science locked up meaningless without its codec. Some images below for visual intrigue and pleasure.

(All images for this post have been borrowed from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript online Archive, Yale University.)

Portrait of my Mother, Gioconda's Smile

On the last evening of the Millennium, 31 December 1999 the Orchestra of Colours played Portrait of my Mother from Gioconda's Smile composed by Manos Hatzidakis to the setting sun of Santorini. It is late to be talking about it, but beautiful none the less.