29/10/2010 13:10

archdaily.com

Acido Dorado / Robert Stone

silently serves, the very stuff that many of us resist in

our daily lives. I began to admit the negative conno-
tations of architecture first. Then I eventually found
positve ones as well and things got a lot more interes-
ting to me. . .so I followed that path wherever it led.
In my case it led through art and design theory and
practice, then eventually back to architecture with
a very different set of issues, terms and aesthetics.
What I discovered was an alternative theoretical
basis for architecture that doesn’t overlay meaning
on abstract shapes, but instead wrests it from the
unstable intersection between the subject, object
and real cultural context. I don’t claim to have ori-
© Brad Lansill
ginated this idea (it underlies virtually all current
art practice), and it has none of the hallmarks of the

D
uring February we presented you Rosa Muer-
ta, a project designed by LA based architect
Robert Stone. A personal work, built by him-
self in the desert, to rent to his friends (check the
original article for more on his background).
kind of »movement« that architects seem to always
want to follow or lead, but it is another serious way
of thinking about architecture and I’ll fight for the
small space it occupies.

It generated a powerful debate between the readers,

and Robert himself.
Click here to send your feedback

For Acido Dorado, another one of his rental projects

under Pretty Vacant Properties, Robert decided to
write a text specially for ArchDaily readers, a kicks-
tart for the debate:

In appreciation of the immediacy of ArchDaily as a

medium- no press release this time. Just some notes
to try and share what I am doing with this work.
© Brad Lansill
joliprint

Somewhere along the way I became interested in

meaning, as well as form, in architecture. A reduced People create meaning through use of a building
abstract approach can be a valuable exercise in pur- and by considering it within a context outside itself
suit of novel form, and there has been some really . . be it a phoney projected futurism, fictional form-
Printed with

exciting work generated by that approach in past generating “forces” (erosion?), some narrative of
decades. But honestly, I began to see its muteness ecological responsibility, or simple stylistic trends.
as an expresion of the conservative power that it My goal is to make work that admits its connotations

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 29/10/2010 13:10
archdaily.com

Acido Dorado / Robert Stone

and associations to something more substantial and

complex- the real beautiful and messed-up cultural
context here where I live (and my beautiful and
messed-up friends that live here). My position is that
the real cultural context is much more interesting
than any invented and simplified one, you just have
to be willing to get down with it. You may win and
you may lose, but at least it’s a real fight.

© Brad Lansill

From the perspective of mainstream architecture

© Brad Lansill
By definition, this architecture’s ability to connect
may be limited to those that have a deep familiarity
(or at least an affinity) with the cultural context here
in Southern California. This work wasn’t designed
to speak magazine esperanto, but instead, to make
Click here to send your feedback
you could easily assume that I am just a punk who
actually had no idea that putting a big heart figure on
my building might turn some people off, and let that
be the end of it. Fine. But if you want more out of it,
it’s there. I accept, and experience both it’s positive
and negative associations. And that the continous
movement between them, and making self-concious
the cynicsm that we all bring to new things is part
of what makes it interesting to me. The dischord of
familiar objects behaving strangely, the sick beauty
of written-off aesthetics, along with surprising and
careful new details and elegant spatial composition

some new poetry out of the native toungue. It really can all be the building blocks of meaningful new
helps if you live in a town where all of the streets are architectural experience. I am just saying. . . it isn’t
named in non-sense guero-spanish. It really helps all about making something you or I already like
if you are faced with the surveilant stare of me- or know what to think about. It’s about making so-
tallic tinted glass corporate offices out your barrio mething that’s worth thinking about.
window. It really helps if you’ve skated a pool of an
abandoned modern icon, built a road-side death
shrine out of flowers and mercedes-benz parts, or
shoplifted from the Gucci boutique. However, the
trade-off of this limitation is that it becomes pos-
joliprint

sible to make architecture that feels visceral and is

relevant to it’s own time and place. Much of it comes
from personal experiences and local culture simply
because that is where I started. . with the things I
Printed with

know,love, hate and fear. . and honestly grappling

with what I find compelling in it all to somehow
make new architecture.

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 29/10/2010 13:10
archdaily.com

Acido Dorado / Robert Stone

to create an odd haiku where all of the elements

modify each other for reconsideration moment by
moment. I want to drop a new architecture into the
crushing flow of cultural meaning and everyday use,
let it get battered, polished and transformed, and in
turn have it subtly modify the meaning of everything
around it. Why? Because that is something I do have
a stake in. It’s the real culture I live in, it’s not high
or low, it’s just whatever I find around me that can
carry new meaning and ideas into the world.

- Robert Stone

© Brad Lansill

I can’t deny that this approach to architecture poses

an implicit critique of some aspects of the current
state-of-the-art, and the mostly unquestioned as-
sumption that the content of architecture resides
wholely within its abstract form. But I have no stake
in that critique beyond my own work. I am on my
own desparate search for a way to make architec-
ture that matters. There will always be corporate
pop music and worldwide abstract architecture- I
am not out to critique it, I just don’t care about it.
© Brad Lansill
Click here to send your feedback
joliprint

© Brad Lansill

For me, the most destabilizing, and therefore po-

tent, aesthetics are those that mess with the known
Printed with

and the unknown. So I work with both, the space

inbetween, and the intersections. I like to build from
things that I think I know, and use that familiarty

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