On postmodernism

[csintexas]

I think this was well written:

http://www.fudco.com/chip/arch.screed.html

[SDR]

So do I. How about crediting the author and the source, including date ? Or did this appear online anonymously, like the Desiderata on the cathedral door ?

Thanks for the interesting read. SDR

[csintexas]

I don't know anything about it but what you see in the link.

I just happened to run across it doing a google search.

[lekizz]

Well, here's his resume, it wasn't too hard to find on the same URL

http://www.fudco.com/chip/resume.html

Seems our author is a self-confessed 'computer geek', obviously with a passing knowledge in other fields too

[solidred]

Well written it is and sane also. However, whilst reading it I got the impression that, again, rhetoric was being confused with practice. By choosing to focus on that small number of architects who's works (written and built) are widely publicised and then to apply their theoretical positions to the practical work of architects as a whole is leading to an argument that strays somewhat from the general truths of the matter. Put it this way: architects who publish, speak on the lecture circuit and head successful offices are, often as not, engaged in these activities rather than engaged in getting a window sill at exactly the right level for a known age-range of end-users, for example.
Having said this, I totally agree with his commentary on 'form follows function' and find his fresh critique exploring the machine analogy trenchant and amusing. I've personally always found the writing style of Le Corbusier to be both clunky and bombastic.

[mx2]

[SDR]

Your clearest thinking (and best writing) to date. Thanks for getting at the essence of these questions.

SDR

[mx2]

Grammar aside...thanks!

mx2.5

[mx2]

One more general thought about LeCorbu and the machine: he was right. We often forget the context in which he was writing. This was at the peak of the industrial revolution: ie, mass production and the engine. At the time, many things were done by hand and at a painstaking speed...which came with a certain quality. However, LeCorbu was predicting that we would all succumb to the machine and live by the machine. Who here does not drive a car? Who has a cell phone? Microwave? Television? Lawn mower?...who here actually walks to work or rides a horse? The few urban renewal ideoogies that spawned some Neo-Urbanist movement was probably the most anti-modern event since Modernism flourished, however, even in that, people still need their highways. And because of that, the power of the developers has usurped the value of the architects and built over most of our greenspaces...if you truly look at LeCorbu's crazy ideas, you'll see what he was trying to imagine as the future (the present) city would look like...or more importantly, how it should be. And this was at a time when the steam-driven locomotive was the number one method of transportation...

...fast foward to today and we see how much we've incorporated the machine into our lives...into our designs. Is it coincidence that our cars and cell phones resemble one another? I personally don't think Ghery was a fluke...he's a product of our times. Except now we're speaking about the digital era...and THAT is another subject.

mx2.5

[solidred]

I'm sort of half eating my derogatory comments about Le Corbusier's writing style because I've only read him in translation. So to come to such an opinion as I did on this basis is, not on... so, ...oops (!)
Anyway, it's interesting to note your response to his original French text MX2. That you find it genuinely poetic in tone is especially interesting because, to my mind, this certainly does not come across in translation.
It's funny but, everytime I've slagged off dear old Corbu recently, whoever I've been talking with has rallied to his defence... it's just that I started reading a book focusing on his psychological characteristics that, so far, places him at the polar opposite of the sort of social ideals I hold myself. Hmm... I should a) finish that book b) get hold of some Corbu in French and... ach well, a fascinating and important guy still worth studying.

I'm still in revolutionary mood, though. The two workshops I've run recently have started to focus my mind on some alternative approaches...

[csintexas]

The author explained that aesthetics and other things beside our most basic understanding of "functional" are a part of function:

[solidred]

He's preaching to the converted there...
Funnily enough, this current view parallels developments in maths and science since Modernism was first established. I was watching a programme about some mathematicians and physicists the other night amongst whom was one named Godel. He proved that not all problems are proveable by means of rational systems. Turing (a computer pioneer amongst other things) took up this notion and could never quite decide whether human brains were simply brilliant rational machines or if, in fact, they had additional capacities. Both came to the tentative conclusion that people additionally had intuition. Since then, it's also been suggested that the way we think is directly conditioned by the way in which we experience reality via our bodies. All these things suggest that rationalistic functionality alone will not meet holistic human needs. It seems obvious to me that the likes of Le Corbusier understood this anyway...

[mx2]

The author is indeed preaching to the choir...

Keep in mind, solidred, revolutions are time specific...they are reactionary to the ideals of the moment and context. The parallel relationship LeCorbu had in breaking with the past (think Beaux-Arts) can be studied in trying to conceive a break with today's status quo...

...what that is exactly will be a difficult task since contemporary architecture (as lazily accepted as Postmodernism) is more of a hodgepodge of all the styles and ideologies of history. There is no underlying ideology anymore...in my humble opinion. Therefore, I would even suggest a revolution would occur if and when a new philosophy is adopted and popularized. I thought I saw a lot of potential in "blob" design but there's simply to much antithesis to these buildings...

mx2.5

[solidred]

Since you mention it MX2, I was thinking of something like this the other day:

If architecture is to be distinguished from building, this is usually in terms of its conscious articulation of expression to give the building some sort of 'meta' meaning. By the architect.
However, my argument would be that any old building can and often is invested with meaning by passers-by and inhabitants. The expressive articulation occurs as a perceptual, rather than as a physical, phenomenon.

Further, moves by the architect as urbanist are often based upon objective analysis of the city. However, roughly paraphrasing the psychiatrist R.D.Laing, how is one supposed to understand one's patients, in their full humanity, if one insists upon treating them as objects? The same might be said of the architect who envisages futures in terms of physical articulations when what might be more appropriate is a shift in perceptions of what's already there. Or a combination of both.

Then there are the male and female aspects of these perceiving psyches.
Where the male uses rational objectivity to balance out patterns in the overall picture, thus to extract generalised strategies, the female uses highly specific intuitions. The former wide and somewhat thin; the latter pin-point but deep. Both equivalent in the quantity of operating information and each addressing part of the whole.


Now, this isn't revolutionary. All of this has been stated and practiced before, either wittingly or unwittingly. But I still think it represents a subtle but significant shift in approach from current trends of Bigness, Global Economics and SuperScience, which are all highly male-dominated attitudes...

[csintexas]

Being a hodgepodge of all the styles is one of the best characteristics of postmodernism. Life is diverse why shouldn't architecture be diverse also.

That is ideology, no?