Lebbeus Woods' Tomb

From the desk of Vitasta Raina

Time: Irrelevant 

Notes: Published in Emanations: Third Eye

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In Woods

PART ONE:

Some modernist considered our ambition,

A resultant of the chemical reaction

Between our temper and our dissociative

Personality, and yet, a force fundamentally

Detached from us.

Their interpretation, in the shape of two

Dimensional charcoal nudes with

Irregular undulations like camel humps

And baobab branches, was not only

Inaccurate, but also an infantile attempt

At perceiving visual sensation.

It was our singular ambition,

Our seething desire for precision,

That gave birth to a refined space,

An ordered war zone of chloride

In conflict with silica and reinforced

Cement concrete.

Ours is a universe of experiments,

And laboratory science, of sensual

And sacred architecture, a metrical,

Musical space that interplays

Energies and outlines existence.

Our incubatory space is a distort,

Limited in length and dimension,

Still, it holds the possibility of

An unrestrained expanse.

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PART TWO:

The Vitruvian man, in pen and ink,

The geometrical ideal for

Renaissance humanism, two

Figures in one, arms and legs

Apart, together, one over the other,

Drawn inside a circle, spliced by a square.

A representation of finality,

Of human anatomy and mathematics,

The precursor for anthropometry,

Essential symmetry and ergonomics

And the age of the industrial building.

The Modulor, a visual bridge

Between man and mechanical things,

Assembled to bring harmony in numbers,

And promote the production of automobiles.

A Fibonacci sequence,

Drawn to the scale of a Caucasian

Male with an open hand reaching

To reconcile with rhythms of

Organic inevitability, and to trace out

The golden section of a nautilus shell.

The Fractal, in self-replicating patterns,

An assembly line for new-age thoughts,

Microwave visions within visions,

A theoretical concept of infinitely fractured

Dimensions in architectural design.

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PART THREE:

In realm of the Brahmand, the universal

mandala of consciousness,

Trigonometry, like a tingling sensation

Of parethesia, flowed downstream

From The tiger’s mouth

With the blue waters of the Indus.

And Euclid derived the three dimensions

Of geometric space.

Within the integral calculus of the cosmos,

Beneath stone acanthus leaves

Standing beside a Corinthian column

Vitruvius wrote of strength, beauty, utility

The Triad for architectura aeternum.

And Leonardo da Vinci epitomized

The Human Scale.

Like a phoenix from the great Chicago Fire,

Armed with the words of Emerson, Bellamy, and Whitman,

Ebenezer Howard meticulously drew

The radial diagrams of the Garden City of To-morrow,

And Le Corbusier raised an entire generation

On reinforced concrete pilotis.

We stand in the gloomy shade

Of street side trees planted like

Totem poles to illustrate our legacy,

Or add relevance to grey.

Steel in winters, in summers

Ochre, dust is the colour

Of our neighbourhoods,

Road is the colour of our parks,

Cement the colour of our grass.

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 ~Bombay Love~