about this article deserves its own thread, I think.
Lots to build on, some choice quotes:
Koolhaas:
"Unfortunately, we have not been able to provide any dignity to the profession due to our complete technical inability to conquer market pressures and our willingness to be totally manipulated"
...
"In addition, we of course work enthusiastically for clients we readily describe as tyrants and occupiers."
and from the article:
To counter these pressures, Koolhaas's firm is taking a radically different approach through its new Generics department, which he referred to as a somewhat utopian effort to distribute design projects without copyright or ego.
and Eisenman:
"I personally resent, for example, two billion dollars being spent on a subway station in New York City that looks like a bird. I have no idea why a subway station should either look like a bird or cost two billion dollars"
his project, to counter the iconic:
"Not necessarily icons, and not full figuration, but partial figures. Figures that can be mistaken for aspects of ground or aspects of other figures, but that do not lead to necessarily whole objects."
On the one hand it sounds like a typical academic panel, each presenting their own work without much regard to a real dialogue or discussion, but on the other hand, this could be the start of an interesting conversation between two well developed positions: genericness vs. difficulty. You gotta wonder whether there was any real back-and-forth at the actual panel.
In any case, it's great to hear these problems being acknowledged by these two in public, and the beginnings of some reasonably articulated responses.
I found it interesting that Eisenman considered our current moment as still a 'wave' or 'iteration' of Modernism...its not that I disagree but it seems that the paradigm, or claim, goal, whatever of Modernism has at least been somewhat altered with the arrival of the several recent 'schools' of digitally-informed architecture
just a thought
Aug 4, 07 2:18 pm ·
·
About 180 more years of an architecture dominated by the combined assimilating and metabolic imaginations, and then roughly 500 years of an architecture dominated by a pure metabolic imagination. All the while the profane osmotic imagination remains in the background. So much for the physiology, morphologically a bi-polar structural cage will continue to branch and grow (till completion c. 3091).
--inside scoop from the ongoing embryonic development within.
ah, Lauf, you know, sometimes I really wish you'd just come out and say what you mean.
I'd usually agree with you on the questionable relevance of discussions like this one between Eisenman and Koolhaas. But in this case, and I tried especially to point this out in the topic, they seem to be talking about some interesting and highly relevant questions.
In particular, the profession's apparent impotence in the face of (1) well heeled foreign leaders with questionable political ideas, and (2) the blind idiot god of the global market.
And the traps that the various architectural responses to these forces seem to fall into: (1) generic banality, with or without tongue in cheek (2) cheesy one-liner iconic spectacles, and (3) the intentional inscrutability of overlapping, fluid, diagramatic academicism.
So here we have two academic starchitects addressing in clear terms (relatively), for, as far as I know, the first time, the very things that academic starchitects are consistently criticized for doing, on this board and elsewhere (paging Philip Nobel), and that's irrelevant?
What does a relevant architecture look and act like in a case like this? We know your favorites: Latrobe, Kahn, VSB, Piranesi (3 out of 4 Philly locals, right?) What would they do? Take a position! Or just keep babbling and posting Quondam links, by all means ...
of course koolhaas and others could choose to NOT work with people they readily describe as tyrants and occupiers, but i suppose starting an in-house generics department was more fun and achievable. does this mean that after the mock patents (in CONTENT, i believe) we can now totally steal generic OMA designs?
Aug 4, 07 4:09 pm ·
·
You know who my favorites are, now that's a laugh. Koolhaas and Eisenman are definitely among my favorite architects, but what exactly is the relevance of anything I write here?
I always say exactly what I mean whether it's understood correctly or not.
I'm now super-excited by the irrelavancy of it all.
[now back to the 5th century]
Wait, reading the architectureweek article together with this and this is a perfect way to see just how much fun the Irrelavancy style can be. Like I said, I haven't been so excited in a long time.
hint: irrelevancy is a good thing, actually the best thing in a long time.
Lauf, forgive me for assuming that you were using irrelevancy pejoratively. Maybe we should file it under sarcastic architecture?
And forgive me, too, for assuming that Kahn, et all were your faves ... you tend to bring those four up a lot, I'd be interested in hearing more about what you think of the work of the two protaganists above ...
[I'm looking forward to Spook Country as well, but I'm not seeing what that has to do with irrelevancy? You have to admit that your postings can be a bit ... opaque at times ... anyhow, carry on]
Aug 4, 07 4:52 pm ·
·
I thought the point was Archaeologies of the Future.
'Opaque' perhaps, but never without clues. The way I see it Koolhaas's architecture becomes him while Eisenman becomes his architecture. [Vanbrugh is at the top of the list if that helps.]
"Pejorativity" is an important chapter in The Irrelevancy Style of Architecture.
My tendencies are more coincidental than anything else.
koolhaas seems jaded and bitter after realizing he has been collected or added in dubai as just another starchitect.
eisenman's comments make total sense in the context of his previous writing. remember he has always argued modern architecture was never modern in the complete sense of the word [the end of the beginning..., postfunctionalism] and proposed his cardboard houses as an alternative that eventually pushed through into something else [krauss has a great essay about this but i've forgotten the title, it's the something something ghost i think]. anyways, for a while now he's been arguing for a different role to architecture [his 'b-movie' architects phrase is great in this context- you can see how he considers many architects to blame for the profession's irrelevancy].
i like eisenman's writing more than his architecture, and probably koolhaas's architecture more than his writing [just to clarify].
eisenman's role for architecture has always been a bit too idealistic and far-fetched i guess, and of course he's not innocent of taking money and being a starchitect either. i don't know if he has a building in dubai though.
" To counter these pressures, Koolhaas's firm is taking a radically different approach through its new Generics department, which he referred to as a somewhat utopian effort to distribute design projects without copyright or ego."
Now maybe there are a language barrier here, --- but I read this as ; "while we already stole it you are welcome to share it as your own, that way we can make a thives union".
the discussion between remmy and petey sounds like an archinect discussion. really the ideas and comments made by them are nothing new. we have all realized and questioned the state of things for quite some time. the real issue is that two of those who ARE influencing the current condition of the architectural world are admitting that what they are doing is having a negative effect on the profession.
Posters on this site have called out REMMY and others for their work in China and elsewhere on moral and ethical grounds. Posters on this site have questioned the legitmacy of hyperformalism/instant icon status of so many of these high profile projects since i joined this site. And REMMY'S comments about enthusiastically working for a tyrants rather than working within a standard of principle or ethics give him the air of an only partially guilt ridden adulterer.
The real dillema about architectural work in my view, however, doesn't lie with those making instant urbanism in dubai or shanghai, and not in those who are building strip malls. It is about those in between. The architects who are perfectly happy with anonymity and only seek to produce thoughtful and ethical buildings. These are the ones who are really undersiege, the design equivalent of the shrinking middle class.
The architects who are perfectly happy with anonymity and only seek to produce thoughtful and ethical buildings 'are' also in the shrinking middle class.
Aug 5, 07 11:23 am ·
·
Is the middle class really shrinking, or is it just becoming more colorful?
Unethical and thoughtless buildings sound like a lot more fun to me.
Steve, are you happy?
Yeah, I'm imperfectly happy.
And for those moral minority architects under siege, I suggest a nicely designed security alarm system...
and rent this movie...
Good luck!
Read this while the movie theater was getting packed last night:
"Individual will and actions count for nothing against Nature's insistence on reusing molecules as quickly as possible, for all that counts is the continuation of life and not how it is lived. Moreover, Nature's perpetual re-creations assume destruction since new forms cannot emerge until more matter becomes available. Far from underwriting conventional morality, Nature is supremely indifferent to anything which does not directly contribute to the renewal of the material universe. Murder, war, and violent death in all its forms serve Nature's ends since they accelerate the release of reusable matter. Mercy, charity, and anything that qualifies as 'goodness' are unnatural since helping the weak to survive beyond their time merely slows the process."
You know, if that's true, then the truth really does hurt.
i like the statement that it was nothing more than a glorified archinect thread. i think that's true.
what i did find interesting was that there was something almost repentant in what koolhaas was saying. "generics" is really a reaction to himself. i think it may be his greatest challenge yet to actually achieve and would we really want a "generic" koolhaas anyway? it's kinda like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
i don't think saying that it's a glorified archinect thread in any way lessens its importance. if more of the serious architecture 'state of things' conversations that we have here at archinect were to get the kind of recognition that the rem/eisenman conversations will get, the dialogue within the profession at large would be much more vital and engaging.
i find the notion of intentionally adopting irrelevancy into architecture incredibly tempting, and somewhat sexy...(architects being able to "masturbate" their creations merely for public enjoyment!) it could be incredibly successfull...i remember the recent discussion of starchitecture/libeskind/toronto and kitsch being king...i thought koolhass would embrace irrelevancy!
vado's comment on the happy anonymous architects seeking to produce thoughtful and ethical buildings is dead on. i remember when i decided my goal in architecture was no longer to change the world, but just to create good buildings ("good" includes thoughtful, ethical)
lastly, i've been struggling to come up with this sentence, and am glad rem did it for me:"Unfortunately, we have not been able to provide any dignity to the profession due to our complete technical inability to conquer market pressures and our willingness to be totally manipulated." though this sentence seems so hopeless to me...
"..we of course work enthusiastically for clients we readily describe as tyrants and occupiers"
kinda sorta disgusting to hide behind others as a way to justify taking money from hideous regimes. he tries to create a mythic consensus instead of taking responsibility for his own interest in accumulating money and a portfolio. these are the trappings of power as they are bestowed by clients. funny, there was a group of lectures/dialogs/ramblings about power at columbia not to long ago. there, rem did another woe-is-we architects are beholden to clients that do bad things...what can we do? exercising the power to say no seems to be too much power for him to realize.
"how, at this moment in time, without a new paradigm, can we understand our discipline and our culture in a different way"
eisenman's schtick is to develop argumentation that advertises his brilliant additions to the cultural landscape as brilliant, illuminating icons of our current cultural condition! thanks peter, always looking out for us. nothing is new, but wait! peter is! we cant understand culture, but wait! peter can! thanks again...reminds me of when he said all great buildings come from conservative regimes, and then went on to list his buildings (and terragni...the subject of his diagrammatic masterpiece) as the examples...again, thanks peter!
you can put sod on a roof, but a big-ass building is a big-ass building.
"In addition, we of course work enthusiastically for clients we readily describe as tyrants and occupiers."
means for me the trouble we get into once we start acting as moral authorities - giving off-handed and categorical definitions of possible clients. As architects we build real/imagined space -that's our job- when considering our position and the position of our projects in the ethical world we should be more sensitive to local realities than just outright judgemental/approving. I can't see the so-called "post-critical" PLOT-way (fast forward, opportunistic & cynical) of working as constructive, but being critical can't just result in a deadlock (the dog that's so angry it can't move...).
[Anyway, I think the most hypocritical voices have been the ones banning Rem (or other opportunistic architects) just on account of working for some regimes/institutions that have questionable morals. How can you draw the line with such a sure hand? How about building in the USA, the UK, Venezuela, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Norway, France, Finland, Russia, Cuba, Switzerland, ... - you could argue for some kind of boycott almost in the case of all countries - the bigger & more powerfull, the easier it is to find something to be insulted by.
It's a matter of degree and preference - weighing nazi sympatizers against free-market evangelists, left-wing authoritarians against nuclear-armed-chauvinists and so on. And when we have agreed on a "degree of evil" that describes a client, how should that affect us? Should we have a square meter amount allowed according to evilness. "really evil" - build only little for no-name clients / "just a bit evil" (and a long time ago) - build a lot and even for the government of the country....]
------
The Eisenman answer to the predicament of "icon" is pretty strange. It seems like he is talking about "complexity and contradiction" but just without mentioning where he got the idea...
------
The Koolhaas answer, developing generic architecture, seems like a possible way forward for a firm the size & importance of OMA - the problem of Icons and spectacular projects stem from powerfull name-architects and the global reach of designers & clients - nothing else than dumbing down of design and wilder & wilder grabs at the skyline can result from these developments. - doing a 180 turn is probably impossible but it will be interesting to see what they come up with - I don't have the faintest clue what to expect (it's quite plausible that this generic architecture deparment is interesting in name only, and will die very quickly.)
------
I also have the feeling that the "middle class" of architecture will never have this problem of icons: a certain scale (small enough) helps focussing on developing and refining what we have been calling architecture for the most of our history: creation of space, forms with meaning & materiality. And I think this is good news.
in a way it makes sense that the next move of the avant garde would be to tackle the strip mall and infill housing. it's kinda like bringing back the eighties. solid gold modernism.
Creating 'urgency' phenomena is a strategic move by the greedy to come back and capture whatever they have missed to grab in the first place.
Nice try. Now go back and finish that Dubai proposal behind the scenes.
'koolhaas' and 'generic' are a name and an adjective i can never accept fully accept together. it sounds like a gimmick to make his theories more widely accepted.
perhaps koolhaas is moving away from the traditional definition of iconic building (or that instantly recognizable form with a postcard view) into a post-urbanist aesthetic that is in fact remembered as a sum total of the experiences (see grady clay). koolhaas could be argued to be digging deeper into the classical notions of how one moves through a space as opposed to a singularly recognizable facade or form. if that is said than the attack on one of two remaining "signature" architects (calatrava or gehry) indeed holds water and becomes remarkably easy. they are the arguably the only celebrated ones left where one can go ANYWHERE in the world an instantly recognize a project. (richard meier's old baton).
the "geologic form-makers" (morphosis and eisenman) tend to argue that the site informs radical form and thus the project takes on a geologic relationship with the site, effectively departing from a modernist white box (or white bird, or white bones). it is arguable then that it is better for a building to be like a mountain as opposed to a bird.
koolhaas probably doesn't have an iconic presence because the public at large cannot identify immediately identify his buildings or masterplans, nor can summarize the aesthetic at all from one side to another. he is reaching for bigger territory than that, engaging the very way one uses a building or city. whether or not it works will be judged by time. if almere, netherlands, is a test case, however, then he has indeed failed and he will go into obscurity and resentment much as many brutalist projects have.
"the "geologic form-makers" (morphosis and eisenman) tend to argue that the site informs radical form and thus the project takes on a geologic relationship with the site, effectively departing from a modernist white box (or white bird, or white bones). it is arguable then that it is better for a building to be like a mountain as opposed to a bird."
The assumption here is not so much the seeking of form-ideas and seeds from a "geological" site, but the willfull ignoring of the built, often architecturally depressing, environment. A non-political, non-urban site is "geological" in the sense of dealing with inhuman time-spans and transformations.
------------
the idea of generic architecture sounds (we can't yet see any models or try-outs) like tacling especially this temporal built environment on it's own terms. something like updated lessons in architecture in the vein of "learning from..." - but redirected for new use. Looking forward to it.
"the idea of generic architecture sounds (we can't yet see any models or try-outs) like tackling especially this temporal built environment on it's own terms. something like updated lessons in architecture in the vein of "learning from..." - but redirected for new use. Looking forward to it."
helsinki, i hope you are right that this is the direction he intends to go. it sounds fresh.
archetype, while i think there's a lot to what you're saying, in some ways i think you're missing the point with koolhaas.
"the classical notions of how one moves through a space" - this sounds more like heiddegger or aalto than koolhaas. the haptic is usually something perverse and at most an after-thought in koolhaas's work. i think you are much closer to what koolhaas is driving at when you write, "he is reaching for bigger territory than that, engaging the very way one uses a building or city."
also,
"my question for greatness shouldn't be form or icon but if they can actually detail a building.
mies could. the saarinens could. holl can. can koolhaas? ......."
judging koolhaas by his details, especially in comparison to mies and saarinen, seems very odd to me. those architects built their careers around the detail. for the koolhaas the detail has always been incidental. it would be like comparing koolhaas and piano. what's the point?
if the concept is generics, then doesn't the big box fit the bill. "concepts" aside, the big box, the airplane hangar, the preengineered steel building, are all perfectly adaptable to a variety of uses. from discount retailer to museum to cathedral. guess i can punch out and go home.
it's part of an evolving body of work that oma's been generating and, while each project is possibly less interesting on its own, the ouevre of projects that might result are a commentary about iconic structures in major cities. not a positive commentary, necessarily, but a somewhat cynical one.
I think it's pretty clear that what Rem's saying here backs that up. It looks like a lot of their recent work is kind generic-with-a-twist, and by 'generic' here I mean work that fades into the background and it almost forgettable, but then that twist (New Jersey) or kink (Mexico City) or spin (literally, in Dubai) is what pulls it forward again ... some of the projects almost seem to ask 'What's the minimum
we can do here to keep this thing from totally disappearing? What's the simplest, yet weirdest, move we can make?'
that's totally what i'm excited about, vado, making the PEB architecturally exciting, relevent, etc. it's hard enough to get those guys to swap out a different size window from what they stock in their catalog.
how do you create architecture out of a big box store? is it possible in an industry where walmart shaves off every penny of extraneous overhead? it's a challenge i would be interested to see koolhaas's take on, if that is indeed what he intends to do.
Koolhaas & Eisenman Discuss “Urgency” at the CCA
about this article deserves its own thread, I think.
"Unfortunately, we have not been able to provide any dignity to the profession due to our complete technical inability to conquer market pressures and our willingness to be totally manipulated"Lots to build on, some choice quotes:
Koolhaas:
...
"In addition, we of course work enthusiastically for clients we readily describe as tyrants and occupiers."
and from the article:
To counter these pressures, Koolhaas's firm is taking a radically different approach through its new Generics department, which he referred to as a somewhat utopian effort to distribute design projects without copyright or ego.
and Eisenman:
"I personally resent, for example, two billion dollars being spent on a subway station in New York City that looks like a bird. I have no idea why a subway station should either look like a bird or cost two billion dollars"
his project, to counter the iconic:
"Not necessarily icons, and not full figuration, but partial figures. Figures that can be mistaken for aspects of ground or aspects of other figures, but that do not lead to necessarily whole objects."
On the one hand it sounds like a typical academic panel, each presenting their own work without much regard to a real dialogue or discussion, but on the other hand, this could be the start of an interesting conversation between two well developed positions: genericness vs. difficulty. You gotta wonder whether there was any real back-and-forth at the actual panel.
In any case, it's great to hear these problems being acknowledged by these two in public, and the beginnings of some reasonably articulated responses.
I thought urgency sounded familiar.
"I love Ro-co-co."
--Wolfhilde von Schlittenfahrt
[note to self:
Be the first to recognize the Irrelevancy style of architecture.]
The Koolhaas/Eisenman "discussion" at CAA should have been called Irrelevancy.
I found it interesting that Eisenman considered our current moment as still a 'wave' or 'iteration' of Modernism...its not that I disagree but it seems that the paradigm, or claim, goal, whatever of Modernism has at least been somewhat altered with the arrival of the several recent 'schools' of digitally-informed architecture
just a thought
About 180 more years of an architecture dominated by the combined assimilating and metabolic imaginations, and then roughly 500 years of an architecture dominated by a pure metabolic imagination. All the while the profane osmotic imagination remains in the background. So much for the physiology, morphologically a bi-polar structural cage will continue to branch and grow (till completion c. 3091).
--inside scoop from the ongoing embryonic development within.
ah, Lauf, you know, sometimes I really wish you'd just come out and say what you mean.
I'd usually agree with you on the questionable relevance of discussions like this one between Eisenman and Koolhaas. But in this case, and I tried especially to point this out in the topic, they seem to be talking about some interesting and highly relevant questions.
In particular, the profession's apparent impotence in the face of (1) well heeled foreign leaders with questionable political ideas, and (2) the blind idiot god of the global market.
And the traps that the various architectural responses to these forces seem to fall into: (1) generic banality, with or without tongue in cheek (2) cheesy one-liner iconic spectacles, and (3) the intentional inscrutability of overlapping, fluid, diagramatic academicism.
So here we have two academic starchitects addressing in clear terms (relatively), for, as far as I know, the first time, the very things that academic starchitects are consistently criticized for doing, on this board and elsewhere (paging Philip Nobel), and that's irrelevant?
What does a relevant architecture look and act like in a case like this? We know your favorites: Latrobe, Kahn, VSB, Piranesi (3 out of 4 Philly locals, right?) What would they do? Take a position! Or just keep babbling and posting Quondam links, by all means ...
of course koolhaas and others could choose to NOT work with people they readily describe as tyrants and occupiers, but i suppose starting an in-house generics department was more fun and achievable. does this mean that after the mock patents (in CONTENT, i believe) we can now totally steal generic OMA designs?
You know who my favorites are, now that's a laugh. Koolhaas and Eisenman are definitely among my favorite architects, but what exactly is the relevance of anything I write here?
I always say exactly what I mean whether it's understood correctly or not.
I'm now super-excited by the irrelavancy of it all.
[now back to the 5th century]
Wait, reading the architectureweek article together with this and this is a perfect way to see just how much fun the Irrelavancy style can be. Like I said, I haven't been so excited in a long time.
hint: irrelevancy is a good thing, actually the best thing in a long time.
Lauf, forgive me for assuming that you were using irrelevancy pejoratively. Maybe we should file it under sarcastic architecture?
And forgive me, too, for assuming that Kahn, et all were your faves ... you tend to bring those four up a lot, I'd be interested in hearing more about what you think of the work of the two protaganists above ...
[I'm looking forward to Spook Country as well, but I'm not seeing what that has to do with irrelevancy? You have to admit that your postings can be a bit ... opaque at times ... anyhow, carry on]
I thought the point was Archaeologies of the Future.
'Opaque' perhaps, but never without clues. The way I see it Koolhaas's architecture becomes him while Eisenman becomes his architecture. [Vanbrugh is at the top of the list if that helps.]
"Pejorativity" is an important chapter in The Irrelevancy Style of Architecture.
My tendencies are more coincidental than anything else.
765- thanks for the link.
koolhaas seems jaded and bitter after realizing he has been collected or added in dubai as just another starchitect.
eisenman's comments make total sense in the context of his previous writing. remember he has always argued modern architecture was never modern in the complete sense of the word [the end of the beginning..., postfunctionalism] and proposed his cardboard houses as an alternative that eventually pushed through into something else [krauss has a great essay about this but i've forgotten the title, it's the something something ghost i think]. anyways, for a while now he's been arguing for a different role to architecture [his 'b-movie' architects phrase is great in this context- you can see how he considers many architects to blame for the profession's irrelevancy].
i like eisenman's writing more than his architecture, and probably koolhaas's architecture more than his writing [just to clarify].
eisenman's role for architecture has always been a bit too idealistic and far-fetched i guess, and of course he's not innocent of taking money and being a starchitect either. i don't know if he has a building in dubai though.
I like Eisenman's observation that 'urgency' is the co-opted form of avant-gardeism.
What was your point about Archaeologies of the Future, Stephen? What did you think of it? I quite liked it.
" To counter these pressures, Koolhaas's firm is taking a radically different approach through its new Generics department, which he referred to as a somewhat utopian effort to distribute design projects without copyright or ego."
Now maybe there are a language barrier here, --- but I read this as ; "while we already stole it you are welcome to share it as your own, that way we can make a thives union".
Do I decifer this right ?
the discussion between remmy and petey sounds like an archinect discussion. really the ideas and comments made by them are nothing new. we have all realized and questioned the state of things for quite some time. the real issue is that two of those who ARE influencing the current condition of the architectural world are admitting that what they are doing is having a negative effect on the profession.
Posters on this site have called out REMMY and others for their work in China and elsewhere on moral and ethical grounds. Posters on this site have questioned the legitmacy of hyperformalism/instant icon status of so many of these high profile projects since i joined this site. And REMMY'S comments about enthusiastically working for a tyrants rather than working within a standard of principle or ethics give him the air of an only partially guilt ridden adulterer.
The real dillema about architectural work in my view, however, doesn't lie with those making instant urbanism in dubai or shanghai, and not in those who are building strip malls. It is about those in between. The architects who are perfectly happy with anonymity and only seek to produce thoughtful and ethical buildings. These are the ones who are really undersiege, the design equivalent of the shrinking middle class.
re: that last paragraph, vado: right on. Bravo.
And that's all I can say on this until I have some coffee.
The architects who are perfectly happy with anonymity and only seek to produce thoughtful and ethical buildings 'are' also in the shrinking middle class.
Is the middle class really shrinking, or is it just becoming more colorful?
Unethical and thoughtless buildings sound like a lot more fun to me.
Steve, are you happy?
Yeah, I'm imperfectly happy.
And for those moral minority architects under siege, I suggest a nicely designed security alarm system...
and rent this movie...
Good luck!
Read this while the movie theater was getting packed last night:
"Individual will and actions count for nothing against Nature's insistence on reusing molecules as quickly as possible, for all that counts is the continuation of life and not how it is lived. Moreover, Nature's perpetual re-creations assume destruction since new forms cannot emerge until more matter becomes available. Far from underwriting conventional morality, Nature is supremely indifferent to anything which does not directly contribute to the renewal of the material universe. Murder, war, and violent death in all its forms serve Nature's ends since they accelerate the release of reusable matter. Mercy, charity, and anything that qualifies as 'goodness' are unnatural since helping the weak to survive beyond their time merely slows the process."
You know, if that's true, then the truth really does hurt.
for me, it is not a moral issue but a street brawl. ethics are optional for all.
Who are you brawling with?
i am brawling against michael jackson's maneger.
brawl with? brawl against? i don't know it is like patoteo...
koolhaas has no business talking about market forces. Especially in a dynamic business climate such as the architecture and construction industry.
how does one 'CONQUER market pressures' anyway? must the architect feel that everything need to be conquered so that it falls under his/her umbrella?
these might help the dilemma...
there is no shortage of unethical or thoughtless buildings. so, you should be havin a grand funtime au naturale.
And rest assured I'm not the only one having fun (at the NMKY).
gregorius is SO gregarious!
an instant icon circa 1988 vado sketchbook...
Oh the excitment of it all.
"Use the rockets!
Did they discuss Flomax? It might help.
how does moral/ethical buildings look like??
i like the statement that it was nothing more than a glorified archinect thread. i think that's true.
what i did find interesting was that there was something almost repentant in what koolhaas was saying. "generics" is really a reaction to himself. i think it may be his greatest challenge yet to actually achieve and would we really want a "generic" koolhaas anyway? it's kinda like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
eisenman...same old babble.
i don't think saying that it's a glorified archinect thread in any way lessens its importance. if more of the serious architecture 'state of things' conversations that we have here at archinect were to get the kind of recognition that the rem/eisenman conversations will get, the dialogue within the profession at large would be much more vital and engaging.
i find the notion of intentionally adopting irrelevancy into architecture incredibly tempting, and somewhat sexy...(architects being able to "masturbate" their creations merely for public enjoyment!) it could be incredibly successfull...i remember the recent discussion of starchitecture/libeskind/toronto and kitsch being king...i thought koolhass would embrace irrelevancy!
vado's comment on the happy anonymous architects seeking to produce thoughtful and ethical buildings is dead on. i remember when i decided my goal in architecture was no longer to change the world, but just to create good buildings ("good" includes thoughtful, ethical)
lastly, i've been struggling to come up with this sentence, and am glad rem did it for me:"Unfortunately, we have not been able to provide any dignity to the profession due to our complete technical inability to conquer market pressures and our willingness to be totally manipulated." though this sentence seems so hopeless to me...
"..we of course work enthusiastically for clients we readily describe as tyrants and occupiers"
kinda sorta disgusting to hide behind others as a way to justify taking money from hideous regimes. he tries to create a mythic consensus instead of taking responsibility for his own interest in accumulating money and a portfolio. these are the trappings of power as they are bestowed by clients. funny, there was a group of lectures/dialogs/ramblings about power at columbia not to long ago. there, rem did another woe-is-we architects are beholden to clients that do bad things...what can we do? exercising the power to say no seems to be too much power for him to realize.
"how, at this moment in time, without a new paradigm, can we understand our discipline and our culture in a different way"
eisenman's schtick is to develop argumentation that advertises his brilliant additions to the cultural landscape as brilliant, illuminating icons of our current cultural condition! thanks peter, always looking out for us. nothing is new, but wait! peter is! we cant understand culture, but wait! peter can! thanks again...reminds me of when he said all great buildings come from conservative regimes, and then went on to list his buildings (and terragni...the subject of his diagrammatic masterpiece) as the examples...again, thanks peter!
you can put sod on a roof, but a big-ass building is a big-ass building.
i wonder how many starchitect's instant icons will be spared in the war between the u.s. and china that will happen in approximately 2033 a.d.?
it may have already been said, but these guys are both full of shit...
REM wanting egoless architecture???? WTF??? The guy is an ego maniac
Eisenman bitching about $$$ being spent on form???? WTF??? This guy blows the whole budget of his projects on form
I just read the article....these guys are still full of shit
it's the end of the world as we know it
Urgent!
I went back to one of chearleader Petes old writings.
"The most important thing for me is to cull my detractors."
I don't know diddley about Koolhouse and I don't feel a sense of urgency, eye-ther.
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Rem's remark -
"In addition, we of course work enthusiastically for clients we readily describe as tyrants and occupiers."
means for me the trouble we get into once we start acting as moral authorities - giving off-handed and categorical definitions of possible clients. As architects we build real/imagined space -that's our job- when considering our position and the position of our projects in the ethical world we should be more sensitive to local realities than just outright judgemental/approving. I can't see the so-called "post-critical" PLOT-way (fast forward, opportunistic & cynical) of working as constructive, but being critical can't just result in a deadlock (the dog that's so angry it can't move...).
[Anyway, I think the most hypocritical voices have been the ones banning Rem (or other opportunistic architects) just on account of working for some regimes/institutions that have questionable morals. How can you draw the line with such a sure hand? How about building in the USA, the UK, Venezuela, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Norway, France, Finland, Russia, Cuba, Switzerland, ... - you could argue for some kind of boycott almost in the case of all countries - the bigger & more powerfull, the easier it is to find something to be insulted by.
It's a matter of degree and preference - weighing nazi sympatizers against free-market evangelists, left-wing authoritarians against nuclear-armed-chauvinists and so on. And when we have agreed on a "degree of evil" that describes a client, how should that affect us? Should we have a square meter amount allowed according to evilness. "really evil" - build only little for no-name clients / "just a bit evil" (and a long time ago) - build a lot and even for the government of the country....]
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The Eisenman answer to the predicament of "icon" is pretty strange. It seems like he is talking about "complexity and contradiction" but just without mentioning where he got the idea...
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The Koolhaas answer, developing generic architecture, seems like a possible way forward for a firm the size & importance of OMA - the problem of Icons and spectacular projects stem from powerfull name-architects and the global reach of designers & clients - nothing else than dumbing down of design and wilder & wilder grabs at the skyline can result from these developments. - doing a 180 turn is probably impossible but it will be interesting to see what they come up with - I don't have the faintest clue what to expect (it's quite plausible that this generic architecture deparment is interesting in name only, and will die very quickly.)
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I also have the feeling that the "middle class" of architecture will never have this problem of icons: a certain scale (small enough) helps focussing on developing and refining what we have been calling architecture for the most of our history: creation of space, forms with meaning & materiality. And I think this is good news.
these guys still suck
in a way it makes sense that the next move of the avant garde would be to tackle the strip mall and infill housing. it's kinda like bringing back the eighties. solid gold modernism.
Creating 'urgency' phenomena is a strategic move by the greedy to come back and capture whatever they have missed to grab in the first place.
Nice try. Now go back and finish that Dubai proposal behind the scenes.
'koolhaas' and 'generic' are a name and an adjective i can never accept fully accept together. it sounds like a gimmick to make his theories more widely accepted.
perhaps koolhaas is moving away from the traditional definition of iconic building (or that instantly recognizable form with a postcard view) into a post-urbanist aesthetic that is in fact remembered as a sum total of the experiences (see grady clay). koolhaas could be argued to be digging deeper into the classical notions of how one moves through a space as opposed to a singularly recognizable facade or form. if that is said than the attack on one of two remaining "signature" architects (calatrava or gehry) indeed holds water and becomes remarkably easy. they are the arguably the only celebrated ones left where one can go ANYWHERE in the world an instantly recognize a project. (richard meier's old baton).
the "geologic form-makers" (morphosis and eisenman) tend to argue that the site informs radical form and thus the project takes on a geologic relationship with the site, effectively departing from a modernist white box (or white bird, or white bones). it is arguable then that it is better for a building to be like a mountain as opposed to a bird.
koolhaas probably doesn't have an iconic presence because the public at large cannot identify immediately identify his buildings or masterplans, nor can summarize the aesthetic at all from one side to another. he is reaching for bigger territory than that, engaging the very way one uses a building or city. whether or not it works will be judged by time. if almere, netherlands, is a test case, however, then he has indeed failed and he will go into obscurity and resentment much as many brutalist projects have.
http://www.pbase.com/archetype/almere
yet i am willing to forget all that. my question for greatness shouldn't be form or icon but if they can actually detail a building.
mies could. the saarinens could. holl can. can koolhaas? .......
Geologic / generic
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"the "geologic form-makers" (morphosis and eisenman) tend to argue that the site informs radical form and thus the project takes on a geologic relationship with the site, effectively departing from a modernist white box (or white bird, or white bones). it is arguable then that it is better for a building to be like a mountain as opposed to a bird."
The assumption here is not so much the seeking of form-ideas and seeds from a "geological" site, but the willfull ignoring of the built, often architecturally depressing, environment. A non-political, non-urban site is "geological" in the sense of dealing with inhuman time-spans and transformations.
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the idea of generic architecture sounds (we can't yet see any models or try-outs) like tacling especially this temporal built environment on it's own terms. something like updated lessons in architecture in the vein of "learning from..." - but redirected for new use. Looking forward to it.
"the idea of generic architecture sounds (we can't yet see any models or try-outs) like tackling especially this temporal built environment on it's own terms. something like updated lessons in architecture in the vein of "learning from..." - but redirected for new use. Looking forward to it."
helsinki, i hope you are right that this is the direction he intends to go. it sounds fresh.
archetype, while i think there's a lot to what you're saying, in some ways i think you're missing the point with koolhaas.
"the classical notions of how one moves through a space" - this sounds more like heiddegger or aalto than koolhaas. the haptic is usually something perverse and at most an after-thought in koolhaas's work. i think you are much closer to what koolhaas is driving at when you write, "he is reaching for bigger territory than that, engaging the very way one uses a building or city."
also,
"my question for greatness shouldn't be form or icon but if they can actually detail a building.
mies could. the saarinens could. holl can. can koolhaas? ......."
judging koolhaas by his details, especially in comparison to mies and saarinen, seems very odd to me. those architects built their careers around the detail. for the koolhaas the detail has always been incidental. it would be like comparing koolhaas and piano. what's the point?
koolhaas famously proclaimed "fuck the detail, i get paid for concepts...not detailing"
i think that's your answer....
if the concept is generics, then doesn't the big box fit the bill. "concepts" aside, the big box, the airplane hangar, the preengineered steel building, are all perfectly adaptable to a variety of uses. from discount retailer to museum to cathedral. guess i can punch out and go home.
I know the dictionary definition,
define "Architecturally Generic".
Quoting Steven Ward, from another thread:
it's part of an evolving body of work that oma's been generating and, while each project is possibly less interesting on its own, the ouevre of projects that might result are a commentary about iconic structures in major cities. not a positive commentary, necessarily, but a somewhat cynical one.I think it's pretty clear that what Rem's saying here backs that up. It looks like a lot of their recent work is kind generic-with-a-twist, and by 'generic' here I mean work that fades into the background and it almost forgettable, but then that twist (New Jersey) or kink (Mexico City) or spin (literally, in Dubai) is what pulls it forward again ... some of the projects almost seem to ask 'What's the minimum we can do here to keep this thing from totally disappearing? What's the simplest, yet weirdest, move we can make?'
that's totally what i'm excited about, vado, making the PEB architecturally exciting, relevent, etc. it's hard enough to get those guys to swap out a different size window from what they stock in their catalog.
how do you create architecture out of a big box store? is it possible in an industry where walmart shaves off every penny of extraneous overhead? it's a challenge i would be interested to see koolhaas's take on, if that is indeed what he intends to do.
Ther must be a better word, GENERIC is much too static for that concept.
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