I enjoyed these readings more than most of the previous ones. Since they were primarily architectural in subject, they were easier to read through a one-to-one architectural lens, without the awkward translation required to convert artistic or literary ideas into an architectural framework. They also gave me a much clearer idea of what the Formalists were about.

In the discussion about El Lissitzky’s treatment of axonometry, the author described a preoccupation with uncertainty. His opinion on axonometry being the only true means of representing three dimensions, whether true or not, can be discarded, because architecture has never had a problem expression three-dimensionality. However, the concept of infinity, and the ideas of skewing perspective and creating ambiguity can be quite powerful. Nothing is quite so jarring as to see something that should not be and seems impossible, but is real, or at least appears so.

I was even more intrigued by discussion of the picturesque in the Eisenstein reading, and later in the discussion of the proposal for the Palace of Labor. I too rarely think about design in terms of movement throughout space. Instead, I tend to become absorbed in looking at a project in its totality, typically from the godlike perspective of looking down on a model or plan. No one would ever experience a building this way in reality, and the filmmaker’s technique of storyboarding a building seems in many ways the best method for truly understanding the experience of a real human in an architectural setting.

Finally, I was interested to read about how the Vesnin brothers deliberately altered their rationalist plan in order to create a picturesque scene, in defiance of the functionalist belief that form would take care of itself. This interested me, because I often waver in my own designs between doing something that seems intriguing and doing something that seems sensible. This article by no means decided me on what the correct approach might be or what mixture of intrigue and sense would be most appropriate, but it was entertaining to read about other designers with the same problem.