Archive for February 2012

Bullshit

Hi! I hope the "smart talk" in my recent posts is not too much for you. Today I will show you something worse which reminds me of the vocabulary of many arhchitects who try to sell their desing. They are called bullshit generators - just click and you'll get a pointless fancy phrase:


http://www.ruderal.com/bullshit/bullshit.htm
http://www.m3ntalcontraband.com/journal/archives/000844.html
http://www.empourdelo.com/ (in greek)


http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html
http://www.novasio.com/bs_generator.htm
http://www.rightmousebutton.com/bull.html


and so on..


Contrary to all those links there is this web site: http://www.francescocorni.com/disegni.php. You can see that the true language of the architect is that of a form.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012 by Hello
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Restoring architecture

Abandoned neighborhood by EVOL


Ok, this is my story:

          European medieval culture began to emerge at the time when man had already begun to forget the use of symbolic language of spatial relations and cosmic symbols. The Renaissance has preserved some of that previous knowledge however the emphasis in art fell on the beauty of proportion and grandeur but with further development of technology man became heavily dependent on machines, so architecture too became subjected to them. Today we count years from the twenties of the 20th century, we have completely forgot our tradition and we are proud of that. We are confined to use the logic of efficacy and mass production. The principles, skills and knowledge, craftmanship and elegancy of our ancestors seem to have completely disappeared. This shift in perspective is called evolution.

Nothing is absolute and without flaw. Historical periods were often cruel, dogmatic, undemocratic, and ruled by an aristocratic or intellectual minority, but even then they were capable of making beautiful places we enjoy today. The priviledged aristocratic minority lived in ornate houses and we all agree today that was morally disgusting. The modernist reaction was creating another extreme instead of taking the best of each period. The impoversihed idea of simplified geometry and urban zoning has done damage to virtually any city in the world, all at the price of progress. The totalitarian regimes are gone today, but those in art still exist. Every deviation from their idea is penalized and all those architecture professors and assitants, metropolitan experts, cultural analysis studios, theoreticians, international award wining offices and all that creme de la creme are ready shoot you with their logic. A parrot's talk:

You're uneducated, you slept through the entire 20th century. You are going against a whole generation of modernism hundred years old. You're going against the tide of time. You can't resurrect a dead man! How anachronistic of you. How retarded. That is so not working today. Where'd you get that? But, we are modern today. How dare you. How very dare you. It is plain kitsch, it is not even architecture. You must be out of your mind! What will the world say? We have evolved much beyond this. We must use new materials, we must build with the spirit of our time. Our thechnology is far more advanced today. That's pastiche! We must follow the trends. You are going the wrong way.

Why? What trends? Who's uneducated? What is the right way?

Abstraction

Modernism is also closely linked to the emergence of abstraction which is its main foundation. The use of abstraction as something very deliberate and elite (and all at the expense of aesthetics), blends perfectly with the mass production by creating a visual, physical and emotionally impoverished spaces.The concept of sincerity is introduced, which dogmatically rejects any solution that is not derived from the logic of the material. Aesthetics is always the result of a function or at least a happy combination of functionality and aesthetics. It should never be the result itself. This kind of disbalance in favour of function almost perfectly describes modernism.

The use of abstraction inevitably leads to Euclidean geometry, which is strange to a natural environment. Human have difficulties blending with such environments, they refuse it and find it alien. Such layered and orthogonal spaces create bad communities – but they are still being built - all in the name of progress. Fractal environments, such as nature itslef, makes one to relate to it and to recognize it, proportions and spatial relations are repeated at every scale down to details, which makes the space much more natural.
Yet no one can deny that the abstraction is ideal for expressing universal concepts and feelings. This is the main reason why it should be used, and not because of ideas like "honesty". It should also be said that there are many excellent achievements of modernism, but which still constitute a minority of our space. Because they rely on mass production and on the Euclidean geometry these spaces are very sensitive. They are easily destroyed by alterations, the grow old ugly, and they are beautiful only if they are new and clean. Since they are like machines they must be cleaned and serviced permanently otherwise they become ugly. Those euclidean designs can work excellently in small scale buildings and interiors, graphic design, product design and furniture but they become horror when they are scaled to whole areas. They are, of course, fashionable and very often built for a rich elite. High-tech infills of large windows or roof lofts with a lot of glass look chic just because they are inserted in the old architecture. Such buildings can't build the city itself. They lack the intuition of the fractal architecture. To confirm it we can have a look at our city blocks and cities of the 20th century and see that they failed miserably. They were all designed by the architectural elite mentioned earlier.

Ornament

Unnecessary embellishments and love for the high aesthetics and moody atmosphere of 19th century Europe produced a resistance to the ornament. The extensive use of ornament by morally corrupted people of the past resulted in banning it. An essay "Ornament and Crime" was written by Austrian architect Adolf Loos who claims that any decoration that is not the result of a production process or a material in its natural state is criminal and minded. Everything else is a true ornament. If you're a simpleton or a snob then you love decorating. Adolf Loos was certainly not aware of how much emotional and spiritual impoverishment of space around us will his idea cause, all in the name of progress. Suddenly, so called ethics began to import it's laws to visual arts, forgeting that they have their own laws.
Ornament is a crucial thing to any design. It adds coherence to the desgn, it enriches the human experience and it tells a story. Ornament serves as an analogy of any greater structure around as.
The sins of the past created among intellectual artists of the 20th century a new totalitarianism (don't forget that totalitarian political regimes were coined by intellectuals too), rather than to seek a balance that is always the key. Aesthetics and the man were disqualified once again to support a civilization of machines and all that is purely rational. Today, deep in the age of progressive materialization this dogma is still largely applied.

What does it mean to be modern? The reality is how we make it. We have a will to choose.

If you want to read better quality and more in depth text on this topic try reading Leon Krier, Christopher Alexander or Nikos Salingaros.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012 by Hello
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Beauty

Tame Flower Tree by Leif Podhajsky

Why is it important? Listening to a great piece of music or standing in front of a sublime temple certainly raises emotions. We feel awe, nobleness of every possible kind, great emotional depth, graciousness, joy, charm, happiness, absolute fascination, another level of existence. We feel the infinity of our being. The mere fact that we can feel it reminds us of who we are!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012 by Hello
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