In this way, large building projects of potentially major civic importance are delivered into the hands of competent but unimaginative firms. The assumption is: Anyone can do it. Just follow the guidelines.
This system is based upon the catastrophic misconception that architectural values can be objectively quantified. From this initial mistake, erroneous ideas accumulate: architecture is the production of images; discrimination among images is entirely a matter of taste; one person's taste is as good as another's; the most popular image (or as it usually works out, the least unpopular image) must be the best building.
But of course, architecture is not a matter of images. It is the relationship of visual and spatial perceptions to conceptual abstractions. Or as Frank Lloyd Wright once put it, ``Architecture is the scientific art of making structure express ideas.''
--``Don't Rebuild. Reimagine.'', The New York Times, September 8, 2002.
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Caress
(Zion)
Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicéan barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, That weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. -Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), To Helen |
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Voiceless Fountain
(Zion)
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, And feeds her grief with his rememberd lay; And will no more reply to winds or fountains, Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day; -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais |
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Blind with Tears
(Zion)
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,-- Came in slow pomp;--the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais |
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Starry Night
(Zion)
Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, Star-inwrought! Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day; Kiss her until she be wearied out, Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, Touching all with thine opiate wand-- Come, long-sought! -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), To Night |
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Elfland
(Hawai)
O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O, sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. -Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), The Splendor Falls |
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Happy Boughs
(Hawaii)
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode on a Grecian Urn |
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Dark Sails
(Hawaii)
The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given. The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully afar! Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais |
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Lost Angel
(Hawaii)
Lost angel of a ruined paradise! She knew not 'twas her own,--as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais |
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Longing
(Hawaii)
I long for scenes where man has never trod, A place where woman never smiled or wept-- There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie, The grass below--above the vaulted sky. -John Clare (1793-1864), I am, written while he was confined in the General Lunatic Asylum in Northampton, where he spent about the last third of his life. |
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Kindling the Universe
(Shenandoah)
That light whose smile kindles the universe, That beauty in which all things work and move, That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which, through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais |
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Yearnings in the Night
(Shenandoah)
I can give not what men call love, But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not,-- The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow? -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), To __ |
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Passion of the Night
(Shenandoah)
I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky; -Thomas Hood (1799-1845), I Remember, I Remember |
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Dancer
(Shenandoah)
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? -William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Among School Children, 1927 |
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Longing Heart
(Shenandoah)
And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair, And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were, I find my lost youth again. And the strange and beautiful song, The groves are repeating it still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), My Lost Youth |
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Trance
(New Orleans)
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: -John Keats (1795-1821), Ode on a Grecian Urn |
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Sound and Fury
(New York)
The knotty forestick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then, hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, Until the old, rude-furnished room Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; -John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 - 1892), Snow-Bound; A Winter Idyl |
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Glorious Phantom
(New York)
from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), England in 1819 |
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Dying Light
(New York)
"Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, As silent lightning leaves the starless night! Leave me not!" cried Urania. Her distress Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais |
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Soft Light
(Honolulu)
In its stream immersed, The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light; All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst, Diffuse themselves, and spend in love's delight The beauty and the joy of their renewèd might. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais |
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Gaze
(Honolulu)
So, purposing each moment to retire, She lingered still, Meantime, across the moors, Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire For Madeline. Beside the portal doors, Buttressed from moonlight, stands he, and implores All saints to give him sight of Madeline, But for one moment in the tedious hours, That he might gaze and worship all unseen; Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss--in sooth such things have been. -John Keats (1795-1821), The Eve of St. Agnes |
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Kiss in the Night
(New Orleans)
"Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again! Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live! And in my heartless breast and burning brain That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive, With food of saddest memory kept alive, Now though art dead, as if it were a part Of thee, my Adonais! I would give All that I am, to be as though now art:-- But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Adonais |
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