WILD LOVE
ROGUE KNOWLEDGE
HANDCRAFTED
I kind of liked it, but this is nonsensical, isn’t it? To put a fake Ionic column in the middle of the room, come on! Well, is there any reason behind a design decision that is not nonsensical?
The language of Architecture is circumscribed by the classical orders. If one fails to understand it, one has only to take a closer look at the sketches of the Alvorada Palace in Brasília by Niemeyer, or the logo of the FAU USP just above the once dreamed all gilded columns by Artigas that are, to some critics, a re-imagined Taliesin Pantheon suspended in the thin air. Architects cannot escape the nature of the dancing columns of the classical order. So, no big deal if one is more or less fond of classical orders. Even Mr. Mies kept being haunted by Caryatids. On the other side of Architecture with a capital "A", lies what minor fans named interior design (is there any architecture made out of only exteriors? We always thought this was named sculpture!); a sub-chapter of big time Architecture responsible for things named non-structural.
These images come from not so old times. Archeological interior designers like Mr. Evans who himself singlehanded invented Knossos 2.0, while other like him invented Parthenon all single RGB or CMYK pure marble. Ornament or crime? The crime is to be found in Nashville, Tennessee, where true believers of the deep South re-built the thing as it really was, as they keep claiming. Tupi was invited to interior design (is this a possible verb?) a perfumery and went all the way down the road pure classic. Orders ordered for the case here to use the categorical Ionic. Its niches (like the brand naming of the shop) were suitable to house the glasses. Its niches could cast just the correct shades over the liquid gold. The circumference of its geometrical rigor: just the perfect shaft for the odors to dynamically flow. Ah, perfumes… these Ionic profanations could extend themselves like the column reverie installation at the Palais Royal in Paris. Why not? Now they say that once the brand presents itself boldly claiming that the name Neeche is to be taken after the idea of niche in a certain marketspace; after this and that specialty, or this or that product, nobody believes them. Instead, they do believe that the Neeche of the brand came after the niches of the columns.
Nonsense? Perhaps not. The perfumes are intoxicating, aren’t they? Reasoning goes full circle. Architecture cannot surrender to linear explanations. Cause and effect cannot get a single bit of reasoning for things that are architectural. What could explain all these glass houses? If one would pursue an infantile and naïve narrative to describe these houses like perfume vessels, it would not be that far off grid. To design a perfume shop after theater stage like allegories of ionic memorabilia and fake-arguments like this one here have to be read as the most genuine of the architectural designs. Postmodernism is no more. There is no statement implicit here in between the lines. Just fun. Just joy. Just follies (the most beautiful Baroque invention). This design is like an allegorical variation of a very serious musical piece. A study of how thin one could stretch a certain motif. Up until a certain metaphor can be pushed and still hold together the argument? Some architectural fancies have been living very well so far even being obvious cases of having had broken the sacred barrier of the orders. This work here is something very close to that. Someone called and asked who had made those concrete columns when they actually are all made out of the poorest of the gypsum offered on high street shops.