mercoledì 11 marzo 2020

Pink Floyd Architecture

Pink Floyd performed at the Architectural Association - Student Christmas Carnival party, London, on 16th December 1966. Their first, debut album, would have been recorded in August 1967.


"They hired Pink Floyd to play all night for £150. The rooms and ceilings were covered with plastic sheet. It was hot and sweaty, but the music was great and the party went on all night."


Photos by Adam Ritchie

Syd Barrett @ the Architectural Association

Pink Floyd were an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining a following as a psychedelic rock group, they were distinguished for their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics and elaborate live shows. 
Pink Floyd were founded by students Syd BarrettNick MasonRoger Waters and Richard WrightDavid Gilmour joined in December 1967; Barrett left in April 1968 due to deteriorating mental health. 

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is the debut studio album by the Pink Floyd, released 4 August 1967. The only album made under founding member Syd Barrett's leadership, it takes its title from chapter seven of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, and was recorded at EMI Studios in London from February to May 1967
- from Wikipedia

Roger Waters @ the Architectural Association

The Pink Floyd @ the Architectural Association

The Pink Floyd @ the Architectural Association
"The Architectural Association became known as the hub of Archigram whose members became incredibly influential on the AA staff. The AA was revolutionised by the Archigram group … with its colour, audacity and cheerful disregard of history, tradition and English good manners. Students such as Nicholas Grimshaw and Piers Gough, who graduated in 1965 and 1966, respectively, constituting what Peter Cook has termed the ‘Electric Decade’ at the AA"
-from AA History 

Rem Koolhaas was studying at the Architectural Association from 1968 to 1972. His visionary final thesis would have been  "Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture", in which "Like in West Berlin at the time, the Wall becomes here a condition of freedom by self imprisonment. Voluntarily segregated, people find shelter within the walls of a prison of metropolitan scale".

The Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, would have released their visionary masterpiece "The Wall" in 1979. The Wall is a rock opera that explores abandonment and isolation, symbolized by a wall. The songs create an approximate storyline of events in the life of the protagonist, Pink, a character based on Syd Barrett as well as Roger Waters.

Roger Waters and Nick Mason as architecture students at Regent Street Polytechnic, London, 1963
Actually, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright met while studying architecture at the Polytechnic in London, now known as the University of Westminster, which served as the band’s first rehearsal space and performance venue in the early 1960s.

In 2012, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the Westminster University - Architecture faculty 



Nell'estate del 1969 Michelangelo Antonioni aveva terminato il suo capolavoro, Zabrinskie Point. Mancava la colonna sonora che fosse all'altezza del film. Contattò i Rolling Stones, che rifiutarono, e poi i Doors, ma non gli piacquero.
Alla fine gli portarono una copia di Ummagumma. Antonioni aveva già visto i Pink Flyd dal vivo tre anni prima, insieme a Monica Vitti. Si innamorò subito della traccia "Careful With That Axe, Eugene", tanto che chiese loro di comporre tutta la colonna sonora del film e di registrare una versione di quel brano per il finale del film, quello nel video qui sotto.


Michelangelo Antonioni
 

Per i Pink Floyd sarebbe stata una collaborazione estremamente frustrante. Antonioni continuava a non essere soddisfatto dei brani che gli venivano proposti e i tempi erano molto ristretti. Alla fine avrebbe selezionato solo tre brani degli 8 registrati dalla band, chiedendo nuovo materiale fino alla fine, fino a poco prima della première del film.

Con alcuni degli scarti, i Pink Floyd avrebbero prodotto The Dark Side of the Moon, nel 1973
Al minuto 7:00, l'embrione di Us and Them  

La protagonista del film era Daria Halprin, the daughter of the architect Lawrence Halprine and the dancer Anna Halprin.

Daria Halprin

Vaillancourt Fountain, San Francisco - Arch. Lawrence Halprine | Photo © Fabio Barilari
Vaillancourt Fountain, San Francisco - Arch. Lawrence Halprine | Photo © Fabio Barilari