Introduction to Elementary Biotopology

Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:15:32 -0600

A Bit of a Contest. You are listening to Catherine Fitzmaurice and Madeline Gins reading the first few pages of An Introduction to Elementary Biotoplogy.

“What is to Be Done” - Communal Reversible Destiny

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:34:57 -0500

In this audioblog Madeline and I (Alex Duensing) talk to Bobby and June George. Here is an edited version of the interview. Bobby and June are forming The Baan Dek Montessori school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota with the assistance of the Architectural Body Research Foundation.

In this audioblog, the four of us start to form connections between Montessori and Reversible Destiny and discuss how the two concepts can be blended to form the Baan Dek School (which the Architectural Research Foundation will be providing the structural designs for). Note: Before speaking to Bobby and June, Arakawa and Madeline decided to focus on a question that Bobby and June sent:

Q: Maria Montessori proposes, in The Secret of Childhood, that the ‘creative urge of life’ is, essentially, love. She has a peculiar phrase for this particular articulation: she names it an “intelligence of love”. Later, in The Absorbent Mind, Montessori posits that, “The child is a well-spring of love. Whenever we touch the child, we touch love. It is a difficult love to define; we all feel it, but no one can describe its roots or evaluate the immense consequences which flow from it, or gather up its potency…” For us, it must be said, there is a logic of life that exists beyond the logic of yes and no and that is the logic of love. We see, in your work, this logic continually being put to work. For instance: your adamant love for life, at all costs. How would you make our classrooms, classrooms of love blossoming? If nothing else, this work must be precise and rigorously determined, but how do you construct a rigorous love? How intelligent, or sentient must it be? Can the architectural surround touch the love of the children?

ARAKAWA AND GINS PODCASTS

Introduction to Elementary Biotopology

“What is to Be Done” - Communal Reversible Destiny

Biotopological Report 1B

Biotopological Report 1A