Pen Zen Diaries

From among my many preserved complete design processes, these two volumes contain only six of them. To legitimize both the contents and the method, I found it important to (re)publish all six united so they create a new process of their own. The gradual development of ideas, to reach the state of physical reality, begins with "hesitant decisions," a possible drawn existence out of the many options.All the projects are large urban ensembles--symphonies, in musical terms. Where to find...
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From among my many preserved complete design processes, these two volumes contain only six of them. To legitimize both the contents and the method, I found it important to (re)publish all six united so they create a new process of their own. The gradual development of ideas, to reach the state of physical reality, begins with "hesitant decisions," a possible drawn existence out of the many options.All the projects are large urban ensembles--symphonies, in musical terms. Where to find the melody and the harmony of the parts is the almost unresolvable but most challenging task of an architect! (S)he plays a double role--the creator and the user/critic. In these cases, many people will be exposed to, enjoy, or suffer from those decisions. As mentioned, the gradual thought-condensing process has to have several testing phases by our sensory perceptions. From these, only the seeing and somewhat the touching aspects are revealed by the drawings; the others we have to substitute in our imagination. With hundreds of these control substations, hopefully we could avoid offending individualistic solutions, especially if--as this method allows it--the representatives of the users have the chance to express their opinions of the proposals underway. The public response to these architectural explorations--and in one case, to the constructed result--speaks for their validity.