Word: utilitarian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Because, from a purely utilitarian perspective, that jackass whom you so thoroughly enjoyed mocking over lunch, coffee and cigarettes could easily end up being the guy with the sweet hook-up for you at The New Yorker or Warner Brothers. But even such pragmatism holds deeper meaning: Once the smoke clears from Tercentenary Theater and those of us with no outstanding library fines have gotten our sheepskins, there will still be 1,600 singing men and women of Harvard. Like it or not, once an alum, always an alum-Harvard will never let you go. (When it comes to tracking...
Ever since his student years at Manchester University in the 1950s (a working-class boy, he paid his way through school with a variety of jobs, including a stint as a nightclub bouncer), Foster loved utilitarian buildings: barns, factories, windmills. He did measured drawings of them when other students were drawing buildings they had never seen: Greek temples, Palladian villas. Foster would learn from those too, but his immersion in common language and use translates into a feeling of rightness, which works as completely in small structures as in large. A fine example of the former is the entrances...
...Beautiful, one thing is certain--direction is not the film's strong suit. Benigni keeps things moving ably enough, certainly. But there is a huge gap between competence and excellence in directing, a gap which is not bridged in this picture. Each scene is shot in a relatively utilitarian manner, and though this method worked well in context, it did not allow Benigni to establish enough of a distinctive style to wow the Academy into suspending their anti-foreign prejudices...
...MoMA architect structured his talk on the architectural notion that the aesthetic and the utilitarian inevitably intersect and praised the overall architecture of the building by claiming that it does what it has to do well and pleases by its presence. He illustrated this duality by pointing out that the decorative lacy Venetian crenellations in the Pallazzo historically doubled as defenses which could brutally impale potential attackers...
...returning to his aesthetic/utilitarian dualism. He provided contrasting examples of frames used to project paintings and those used to adorn and enhance them. He emphasized that upon close scrutiny it is evident that some frames are decorated by architectural motifs like columns pediments, and arches thereby aesthetically representing their utilitarian role; some like Vasari's "The Musicians," act as a window through which the protagonists lean...