Skyscrapers and Surrealism

This drawing by Madelon Vriesendorp, artist and co-founder of OMA, is trying to catch different associations with Norman Foster's Gherkin. It has been published lately in Charles Jencks's book The Story of Post-Modernism.

Madelon Vriesendorp's great animated film, Caught in the Act (Flagrant Délit) from 1979, presents a surrealistic vision of the life of skyscrapers, showing Chrysler and Empire State Building having sex, the naked Statue of Liberty and more great scences. Madelon Vriesendorp is famous for her paintings that have been used as illustrations for Rem Koolhaas's book Delirious New York. For more information about her work, read this interview.

Žižek on Ideology of Form

Slavoj Žižek, enfant terrible of contemporary philosophy, speaks about hidden ideodology in architecture, especially in functional forms and objects. Therefore he compares the mechanics of three different bowl shapes of flush toilets in a very entertainig way.

  

Watch the full lecture held at the Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad, Madrid, June 10, 2010, here. The essay Architectural Parallax by Žižek deals with similar topics.