For the past three weeks, I've been adjusting to life in London. The most surreal thing about it is how comfortable and familiar it feels. Part of that is the city, part of that is the weather and the other part is returning to life as a full-time student. Let me tell you, it is ridiculously easy to get back into student life. While working, my day started promptly at 6:30 am, at which point I would check my email, inspect reports, escort contractors and review construction progress in addition to any lingering problems all before 9:00am.
This week however, I've been getting up at 11:00 and drinking coffee at the cafe below my building before strolling to campus to read. 6:30 am now sounds like a made up time for crazy people. Before I left, I had it in my head that I would get up at 5:45 (as I had done before) go running then start my day of intense philosophical and mental training. Instead this happens.
I know, deep in my heart that this is not to last. Full time classes start up on Wednesday, which means my sleeping bear will turn into a bear of unstoppable architectural ambition and theoretical debate. (This has yet to be proven)
So let's get warmed up by going over a few things that have struck me since going back to Grad School.
Right now there is an ongoing and furious debate regarding whether or not architecture is being discussed properly in the contemporary field. Let's start by looking at this historically. Several years ago, I posted a joke about the catch phrases of the architectural field throughout the years. It went a little something like this:
Gothic: God is above us
Renaissance: God is Man
Baroque: God is infinite
Rococo: God, we have so much money
and so on and so forth.
The original poster is floating somewhere around my old supply closet. I may update it one of these days with whatcha y'all call your fancy 'photomashop'. The point is, for years, centuries even, movements could be defined by a catch phrase based on the drive of an individual or a solidified group. A dogma, if you will. Now though, there are so many different agendas vying for supremacy it makes for a really interesting yet sometimes depthless view on the architectural agenda. What do I mean?
Let's look at what's popular:
Things like Arch Daily and WAN are awesome, eye grabbing websites. Sexy images, sharp focus and high resolution denizens of genius that scream 'look at me!'. White backgrounds in a hermetically sealed world can make almost anything look thoughtful. However, this presents a problem: in formats like this, all you have is the image.*
*and sometimes there is nothing wrong with that. Many sites like this are just a vessel, a 'front page' of information. Therefore the flaw lies not with the monitors but with the up loaders.
Now while I'm sure that there is a deep philosophical meaning for each and every building, table, lamp etc. on these sites (please please PLEASE have meaning!), I don't know what it is. And now I don't care. Why? Because the pictures are pretty and it's shiny and I'm too in love with the object to see anything else. Not to be crass, but its like dating someone just because they're good looking. Deep, deep, DEEP down in the ugly part of your brain, you know you don't respect them, you just want them around so people know that you could afford them. (No hate, we've all done it. If you haven't it's because you are incredibly attractive. Also, do you want to go out?) It's fun and harmless, for a while, but in the end it can't last.
This presents us with the following topics:
1) If there is no defining ethos, can we positively identify the strongest trend in architecture right now?
2) You can't touch an image, how do I know if this actually works?
Options are the following:
The first problem will solve itself. In one scenario, 70 years from now, people will look back at architecture of our time and say 'oh, that looks like it was built in 2012'
'Why?' a Betty-White-style version of Retly Corm will ask from her futuristic Rascal scooter having been kept alive entirely by spite.
'Because' the cyborg replied, 'it's clearly a reflection of the computer derived neo-Baroque championed by the New York 5 and their subset. An obvious evolution from the tools of the age.'
The now whithered Retly Corm won't remember this because she is senile and fights her grandchildren for power of attorney.
OR
This period in architecture will be almost universally hated because there are so many different architects vying for position at the top of the heap. There are no more rules, yet everything starts to look the same with the exception of the 'brand name buildings' trying to out shock one another. Without devotion to a movement, the architect maintains their own name, vision and purpose and by proxy, the money they can make. A generation of Han Solos. If viewed negatively, it's like a never ending spiral of miserable performance art pieces, that are either obvious of or devoid of meaning. A group of people putting all the pressure on the tools used to create the art, not the art itself. This leads a viewer to think that there is an end to innovation.
But we can't really blame the architects, there is just a lack of unity. Which, for some (if viewed positively) means that the field is actually way more interesting. Then why the debate?
I think the problem is not necessarily what is being created, rather how we record what is being created. Does every site, blogger, writer, architect etc. need a chock-a-block manifesto stating their beliefs when creating a building? I mean, come on.
My response is a resounding: It can't hurt.
I've heard the argument that the creation of architecture is now, more than ever before, getting closer to the creation of art in its processes. That would be true, except that art does not need to fight gravity. Usually. But more so, I think there is a stereotype in the architectural world that art is created as a pure catharsis of emotion and that no rhyme or reason enters into it and sometimes that feels true. However, I have yet to meet any artist that did not have a strong philosophical meaning for why their art looks and or feels they way it does. Jasper Johns has oft claimed that:
| "I don't think that you can talk about art and get
anywhere. I think you can only look at it." but what I think he meant was its transference of meaning and not necessarily in its creation. If we follow Tolstoy's definition of art as described in 'What is Art?' we find that good art is a creation of experienced emotion that is then felt and understood by the viewer and bad art is selfish. aaannnd here is the crux of our problem. While Tolstoy's examination of art is not (to use my favorite phrase)'exclusively awesome', it does tell us that purely vision based architecture is pretty to look at, but is shallow. The only way to prove its meaning is to experience it in person. Not in a self publishing, self aggrandizing way, but in a way where you go, stop staring and a screen for 5 minutes and just be. Just you and the architect. Figuring out what you mean to one another. This can be increasingly difficult as architectural communication is now world wide. I can't drop everything and visit Vietnam...or can I? *checks bank account* nope, definitely can't. THIS LEADS TO OUR SECOND POINT. Art as well as architecture is moving towards one thing. That is, the tactile experience. If you are as drenched in the Internet as we have all become (Which is an incredibly ethnocentric way of observing culture) it is automatically assumed that you can't believe what you see, even in person. Therefore seeing is no longer believing. Spending +6 hours of your day waiting for a rhino screen to load will make you doubt that even the sky has not been photo enhanced and why? Because you don't watch it from start to finish, who has time for that? However, what you can trust is what you can feel. It's the Doubting Thomas philosophy, even if it's standing right in front of you, you still need to experience it in an undeniable way (the only exception being that eyeball/peeled grapes gag). This leads to architecture in many ways, from the scale of an entrance, to the material choice used, the feel of a door handle, that's the moment you connect with the architect on a human level. Not on what they were able to contrast out in the post-shoot, not what they were able to bloom out of the picture, just a physical moment. There you are, having a wordless conversation with an architect via an object.  The best example I have ever seen of this is the East Gallery by I.M. Pei, specifically one corner which is so worn down that the sharp, unforgiving edge has bowed in from oiled touch. When Pei designed the work, it was to meant to match the specific rules of the street angle. This is a recognizable moment if you are standing at the site. It frames the area and to be part of that philosophy, you touch a corner. The connection is real. That's what we should record. Not a press junket binder, but a moment where you feel real. But maybe I'm wrong. Stay tuned for more on the London experience. |
