GRGR(29) - The Grid, The Comb - more architectural stuff

[pporteous at worley.co.nz]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>So he accepted a "reality" which was inclusive of our fallen
Post-Modern
condition:  the decorated shed.  Now what really made this revolutionary was
that true moderns abhor decoration, preferring only the essential.  As one
of my truly-modernist teachers told me, "Wallpaper was for the past, when
there was no such thing as TV."  Decoration is what modernism had
overthrown.>>>>>>>>>>


It is important to realise that modernism had many contradictions inherent -
decoration was used, it was just a different type of decoration (not that the
modernists admitted this). I am thinking of Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Bldg in
New York, where he fixed steel I-beams to the outside of the building,
supposedly to "show" what the structure inside was, but this of course is
non-essential, and therefore decoration. The modernists also echoed the rules of
proportion, symmetry, etc which are the basic tennets of classicism from Greek
and then Roman times.


> >  _The Architecture of the Jumping Universe_ presents the idea behind
>complexity science and chaos theories and shows many examples of
>architecture based on this new language from the work of leading architects
>[SNIP] an architecture based on waves and twists.

>Sounds a little like Gaudi, too.

>>>>>How would you classify him?


Gaudi was responding to forms in nature, which is a probably what complexity
science and chaos theories are related to anyway.

Trying to define post-modernism is of course by its nature problematic - ie
hard! In terms of architecture, I think one characteristic of the (post-modern)
architectural climate has been the sheer diversity of architectural styles and
theories, from deconstruction (acute angles, hard surfaces, buildings ripped
apart, distorted, yes frequently unlivable, but exciting and provoking) to
post-modern classicism (use of doric, ionic, corinthian columns, etc and the
whole classical architectural language we all know from civic architecture early
this century, supposedly ironic but usually not, as far as I'm concerned), to a
re-embracing of traditional forms of building (ecologically sustainable
principles followed, materials used which don't harm the environment, recycling,
etc), to modernism re-interpreted and refined (maybe this is just a continuation
of modernism, but having learnt from some of the failings, and acknowledging
that architecture by itself cannot change the world), to Kenneth Frampton's
critical regionalism (which is sort of modernism, but instead of being
internationalism [looking the same wherever in the world it is], it responds to
its locale, ie uses local materials, reflects something of the local culture in
a perhaps abstracted way, and responds to local climates, ie flat roofs in a dry
climate but NOT in a wet one, etc) to paper architectural projects being taken
more seriously (ie unbuilt building designs that address specific issues, often
very theoretical) and lots more that I can't think of at present. To me, this
inclusive approach is what post-modernism is about (at least partly), and an
acceptance that mankind cannot exist without history, diversity, etc. Venturi's
Complexity and Contradiction is right on the mark - I don't like his buildings,
but like the ideas, and after all, dialogue is what makes us human, and dialogue
between buildings is important too!

peter