Just because (technology vs potential)

Architecture is constantly affected by styles.

Ones who lack inspiration, look to styles.

Ones who cant translate, look to styles.

This is a current problem stated by many large architects.

We get that.

However, I can't help but imagine there's another problem with the thwarting of good design, potential suppressed and exploitation of technology. These three points put together design which heads nowhere but a halt in development - buildings are built on the fact that they are designed in such a way just because technology allows them to. Just Because.

• Ones who cant get their hands on softwares and building technology resort to the next best option with what they have. That's just what you have to do. But its not justice.
• Ones who have the ideas, concepts n drawings but cannot get it done due to technological impossibilities doesn't make them over ambitious.
• Ones who HAVE the technology however, may be the instrument to build a better world; yet those unaware and inattentive chose to take the easy way out, build within the scope of what the technology may do or does easily, thus reducing the innovation in minds.

People may always argue, deal with what you have - calling it, Life. True, I agree that limitations force innovation; last resorts bringing out the true potential. What about forcing the best out of all that's given, all the time. Just because technology out grows you doesn't mean u let it. 10 years of future technology ahead awaits to be released only based on marketing demand - what makes you think you can slow down, even a little, with innovative minds, maximizing the current technology?

That thought may work in a world of an individual but not this world we all live in. Its a collective world we live in, so collective ideas and effort should be the correct output. It is our job as architects to be innovative. It is our job to sought for the best. But we cannot do it alone - we need the right resources provided by the country to save us time from searching, while we could really be putting in the time for better use. The pushing of technology should be a helping hand to better life and not be an advantage for increasing added value.

This goes out to students, architects and builders all over the world. The life we live in may not be lived to its best with the technology and resources available. The comfort zone is only a position - not a direction.

Thus the achievement we have conquered has never permitted us to say, "Just. Because."

Let's work harder for the ones around us, shall we not?

Of this cruel world, fairness should exist - only question is, where?

What's so great about Corbu?

This also has to be attended to when given the time =)

Genius Loci vs. Zeitgeist

will have to attend to this when i have the time =D

Modernism (Extract)

This is a post I found on Modernism while researching for my not-so-important essay, a funny and interesting read in this sum-up of the Era of Modernism. The fella references in and out of architecture from time to time, quite informative I'd say.

This is just the extracted part where I liked =)

But modernism of the heroic period, from 1920 to 1939, is dead, and it died first in the blockhouses of Utah beach and the Siegfried line. Yet in its heyday between the wars, modernism was a vast utopian project, and perhaps the last utopian project we will ever see, now that we are well aware that all utopias have their dark side.

Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were two utopian projects that turned into the greatest dystopias the world has known. Modernism briefly survived them both, but lost its nerve in the 1960s when the municipal high-rise estates in St Louis, Missouri, were deemed social catastrophes and dynamited. However, I sometimes think that social catastrophe was what the dirt-poor residents secretly longed for.

Modernism's attempt to build a better world with the aid of science and technology now seems almost heroic. Bertolt Brecht, no fan of modernism, remarked that the mud, blood and carnage of the first world war trenches left its survivors longing for a future that resembled a white-tiled bathroom. Architects were in the vanguard of the new movement, led by Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus design school. The old models were thrown out. Function defined form, expressed in a pure geometry that the eye could easily grasp in its entirety. Above all, there should be no ornamentation. "Less is more," was the war cry, to which Robert Venturi, avatar of the tricksy postmodernism that gave us the Sainsbury wing of the National Gallery, retorted: "Less is a bore."

But the modernists maintained that ornamentation concealed rather than embellished. Classical columns, pediments and pilasters defined a hierarchical order. Power and authority were separated from the common street by huge flights of steps that we were forced to climb on our way to law courts, parliaments and town halls. Gothic ornament, with all its spikes and barbs, expressed pain, Christ's crown of thorns and agony on the cross. The Gothic expressed our guilt, pointing to a heaven we could never reach. The Baroque was a defensive fantasy, architecture as aristocratic playpen, a set of conjuring tricks to ward off the Age of Reason.

So modernism was a breath of fresh air and possibility. Housing schemes, factories and office blocks designed by modernist architects were clear-headed and geometric, suggesting clean and unembellished lives for the people inside them. Gone were suburban pretension, mock-Tudor beams and columned porticos disguising modest front doors.

Hitler and Stalin were intrigued by modernism, which seemed part of a new world of aviation, radio, public health and mass consciousness. But the dictators were nervous of clear-headed people who thought for themselves. The Nazis promptly closed the Bauhaus when they came to power and turned it into an SS training school.

Modernism saw off the dictators, and among its last flings were Brasilia, the Festival of Britain and Corbusier's state capital buildings at Chandigarh in India. But it was dying on its pilotis, those load-bearing pillars with which Corbusier lifted his buildings into the sky. Its slow death can be seen, not only in the Siegfried line and the Atlantic wall, but in the styling of Mercedes cars, at once paranoid and aggressive, like medieval German armour. We see its demise in 1960s kitchens and bathrooms, white-tiled laboratories that are above all clean and aseptic, as if human beings were some kind of disease. We see its death in motorways and autobahns, stone dreams that will never awake, and in the turbine hall at that middle-class disco, Tate Modern - a vast totalitarian space that Albert Speer would have admired, so authoritarian that it overwhelms any work of art inside it.

Modernism was never popular in Britain - a little too frank for its repressed natives, except at lidos and the seaside, where people take their clothes off. The few modernist houses and apartments look genuinely odd. Why?

I have always admired modernism and wish the whole of London could be rebuilt in the style of Michael Manser's brilliant Heathrow Hilton. But I know that most people, myself included, find it difficult to be clear-eyed at all times and rise to the demands of a pure and unadorned geometry. Architecture supplies us with camouflage, and I regret that no one could fall in love inside the Heathrow Hilton. By contrast, people are forever falling in love inside the Louvre and the National Gallery.

All of us have our dreams to reassure us. Architecture is a stage set where we need to be at ease in order to perform. Fearing ourselves, we need our illusions to protect us, even if the protection takes the form of finials and cartouches, corinthian columns and acanthus leaves. Modernism lacked mystery and emotion, was a little too frank about the limits of human nature and never prepared us for our eventual end.

JG Ballard

The actual link below if you want to read the rest of it :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/mar/20/architecture.communities

Timeless Architecture

Timelessness

I’ve been hit by the word “timeless” in architecture many a times and have completely no idea what is it specific to. The trend now seems to be “sustainability”; and some architects refer this is “timelessness” too since they can preserve long into the future, yet this should not be titled “timeless”, as the literal meaning to it states that the word attached to that of an object should make it everlasting or eternal. A second interpretation to timeless architecture styles however means that the “art” of architecture would still be appreciated over a very long period of time; but what does it even mean? Don’t we study history to appreciate these arts or architecture? And if the building should last until today, does it mean it was so great to fight the test of nature and time that it evokes the action of preservation, hence officially entitling it as a timeless?

I have taken this word into two different understandings, the physical and literal way as opposed to the more artsy way based on affinity we call ‘style’. Yet, in both ways I believe the word timelessness is still inappropriately used (because I’m so goddamned stubborn to take things literally in black and white). In the physical way, timelessness should rightfully been born millenniums ago with the whole stone age ‘architecture’ or just stones, which last until today, if not, the pyramids at least – funny to realize these architecture are inhabitable. So, where are the buildings that are habitable – haven’t they all turned into ‘preserved’ monuments of tourist attractions? Now I’m not arguing in the point of view of what architecture really means (because I can’t define it for myself) but if we were to take it as what most architecture does – inhabit humans; the whole timeless idea seems to have expired now hasn’t it? *Unless ofcourse, you state that the inhabitation of humans include the dead, but that’s cheating =P* If I had to think of buildings which still inhabit occupants built long ago, it could only be places of worship and religious significance. Does this mean it is the way to live? Perhaps I should have stated that the argument is based on homes or offices. So is there such a thing as timeless dwellings in the built architecture? Isn’t architecture built for sake of ourselves? To build for the use/appreciation of humans – to make life better. I believe that if the inevitable modernization and development were to halt, these buildings and lifestyles may be considered timeless. Then again, the only way to do that is to stop time itself, hence making EVERYTHING timeless. Isn’t it an inevitable course of human nature to progress and search for a healthier and better living? Creating all sorts of inventions, light, computers, internet, making life more efficient, to allow us to ‘do more’ in ‘less time’. So sticking closer to topic, can architecture last forever? The answer, theoretically, should be yes. It’s all about the nature of the materials used to make it last physically, forever. Whether or not the function or appreciation of which the building has been built for lasts just as long – is a different question. If construction stopped today, and all we did was maintain what has been built, only cracks and prevent leakage; everything would last – perhaps eternally. Sadly, this would also mean no progress in architecture. It is only in human nature to strive for the better, be innovative, to enrich identity. This leads to the second interpretation, appreciation of style.

I believe it’s arguable and that timelessness in architectural style do exist – being appreciated just as much throughout time. This would mean referring to buildings which don’t necessarily have to be built for living, but may be monumental or religious or merely just as art itself. However, in this argument of habitable architecture lasting forever, we see again that it does not in fact exist in 99% of houses – unless you lived in a castle =) So, in my opinion now, it is absurd to intentionally create a timeless style as appreciation is a subjective manner to everyone – most if not all, enjoy diversity. Style is an intangible definition, it does not die as long as one still believes in it, and luckily for this case, history education preserves all that’s been created. It is therefore impossible to affect the world with one style and make it last forever as this subjective appreciation comes along with culture and also development – the common style however, will inevitably change through introduction of inventions or innovations.

There is however one catch I’ve come to realize – combining the intangible and tangible – making style synonymous with structural building systems. What Corbusier has done to make himself one of the most important man in architecture – creation of functional efficiency as the ‘new innovation’, what becomes inevitable to use out of ingenious physical development. I dare say though, even this style shall perish in the future – it only takes time for the unavoidable human nature and innovative minds to make a ‘better living’, destroying most of everything in its course.

Conclusion?

A building physically lasting while losing its initial motive does not suffice as timeless architecture. Dwellings should not be built to last. Style alone is too wide a range to dub timelessness. Mother Nature > ‘Man’ufacturing.

Why do they even bother trying to come up with timelessness anyway? Is it to truly solve the problem of problems? Or are these individuals just afraid of fading beyond memory?

Perhaps it’s a lesson to us, to be less narrow minded and zooming out for a wider understanding of this pattern of nature. Embrace the inevitable, allow for change, let time take its course, not fight it. Architecture has been built for humans anyway. Why make them last forever when we don’t? In my opinion, the only thing that lasts forever is, the course of nature itself. Do what we can now to preserve ourselves as we so love, educate the next generation well – it is not US as individuals who should live forever, its US as a human race that should strive for eternity, let ‘timelessness’ be not of a thing but the lesson learnt from it.

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After writing the post, I decided to question my lecturer if my understanding of what i wrote above meant anything, this is how it went...

endorphIAN says (10:21 PM): Timeless means "not subject to fashion"

endorphIAN says (10:22 PM): "has deep, lasting value"

endorphIAN says (10:25 PM): "fashionless is not a good translation it suggests "formlessness" jsopeh says (10:25 PM): formless?

endorphIAN says (10:25 PM): "not subject to fashion" is best

endorphIAN says (10:26 PM): formless= no shape or rhyme or reason, arbitrary

**An example of a timeless building given to be explained: Kandalama Hotel**

**20 mins later**

jsopeh says (10:46 PM): .................................... hmm.... as though everything happens for a reason, and only that reason alone

jsopeh says (10:49 PM): the materials chosen, and space designed, has been built only to serve what it has 'addressed' for .. hence in that simplest most direct & effective manner, no additional 'appearance' appeal or ornamentation is included. (Provided it stood the test of time ofcourse =P)

endorphIAN says (10:50 PM): that's more or less it

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Obviously I was very far away from what it actually meant =P

Disclaimer note

"Views and thoughts are purely biased and stubborn. It poses no offense of whatsoever, what I'm writing is just another random suggestion you'd ignore everyday. I write it so I don't forget what I've been through, so I don't rewrite the mistakes I so often do. Read at your own risk."

Time is money.

I wouldn't waste it here if I were you

=)