i think that, in a way current architecture ( I mean FOA etc) are tending towards the Mass production ideas of Corb..

A lot of these theoretical investigations isolate themselves from society and a cultural context, as you suggest, and therefore determine, well before they are ever 'made' (although only a few make it past the drawing board) they have limited themselves to being just 'investigations' and aren't ever tested as a building (or architecture).
They look cool, the ideas are great (mass customization, etc.), but those ideas are everywhere. When we learn of Greg Lynn's ideas, it's great stuff (although extremely ugly and cannot possibly function as architecture, in many cases), but no one tell's us the ideas are actually being done elsewhere.
Nonetheless, it does provoke thought in the field (although one could argue that Dwell is doing more for mass customization than he ever did).

The era of the blob has passed, though, and we are entering an era concerned with cost, practicality, and environemntal issues. The theory will always be there, but it doesn't inspire the awe it once did.

There are many other architects (and indeed, an entire industry) that have been investigating mass customization (Corb's idea is dead, for the most part), it's a shame they are all overlooked in favor of Lynn and some of these other over-the-top 'thinkers'.

"does the art in architecture not matter anymore? should it all be science/maths? anyone care to share their thoughts?"

CAD/CAM are tools to express an idea, and should never be used as form generators/finders. Architects ARE the form generator.

I find the good old math used to determine proportions and such (golden spiral etc etc.) are my tool of choice for contemporary design. These would be heavily tied to context/program as a foundation. It's there if one looks for it, but just below the surface. Kind of like easter eggs on dvds...

perhaps one can call it a purposefully unreflexive modernism ..an adverse reaction to critical regionalism. Architects are(?) such a stubborn tribe.

Wasn't Herman Hertzberger complaining recently that his students at the Berlage didn't go on site visits anymore, instead they just sat down and analyzed local imaginary forces with their computers in the studio? Knowing the limited amount of time that can be spent on the conceptual part of a project, I would never imagine that any so-called "investigative" architectural diagram has any scientific value, but can only be starting points for the design. What is tiring is that they are somehow treated as pieces of valuable statistics while not containing more information (maybe even less) than an ordinary handsketch on a napkin. This is fine when it appears in one project, like UN Studio's Arnhem central station, but what is the point when an arbitrary method is copied by everybody?

As Colm says, the geometry is only a tool, BUT on the other hand it's good to know your tools. The difficult thing is more the sheer amount of time it takes to write code to generate a complex form, compared to just applying a golden section to some window layout. It leaves an unpleasant feeling of spending more time creating a tool than actually using it.

just a thought on Spiderdad's thoughts.

Thanks for noticing that modern as a rule is faceless............

I never could understand why architects are resigned to contemporary as a vision of engineering - small, simple and rectilinear as a whole. I would assume that you favor a continuity of our traditional architectural fabric - things that are curved and were based on the hammer as building technology.


I would like to offer an insider's view that when presented to almost anyone - client to engineer to architect:
Between WW1 & WW2 Henry Ford killed off all the blacksmiths
between 1950 - 1975 concrete pours killed off all the stone masons
and AutoCad killed off all the curves soon after that.

At first modern was a choice, now it is not because architects have taken the limitation of autonomously controlling the original intent of AutoCad ( to support the interface of CAD into CAM to make lots of small mass produced machine components to be assembled, warehoused, catalogued, specified, on and on...........). AutoCad was invented to create .dxf. Someone was sleeping and architecture continues to sleep.

If you can twirl a pencil and sketch a curve, why do architects chose to use a new tool without integrating the effectiveness of the new - ??

It is possible........... It takes time and dedication to a vision, but is that not the heart of architectural design. Vision is key. Art is what separates architecture from building if it is to endure. A building is not a box unless you want it to be one.

"does the art in architecture not matter anymore?" for sure, ART MATTERS

"should it all be science/maths? " THEY ARE PART OF THE VEHICLE OF CONTINUITY ITSELF. Computers can greatly assist in what has traditionally been handcraft labor - aka art, with about 90% less physical labor which makes it palatible to a client.

The truth is out there........... check out
ornamental-iron.com
Hopefully, it will eventually become part of mainstream architecture, instead of the futuristic fringe.

I too like Colm heavily rely on great math - ie the best of fibonacci - the golden mean as an underlying structure.

from another point of view...and in very broad terms,

formalism can be subdivided into 3 groups...one of those being an iconic or symbolic use of form, usually set aside in modernism. the other 2 would be

the 'apollonic' side of formalism...cold mathematics, the purity of geometry...eisenman

the 'dionysian' side of formalism... the empathy or sensuality of form...gehry


that, referencing spiderdad's comment of the lack of art in architecture...but as to social context, that would be outside formallism, more part of the realm of ethics.

wish i had more time to ponder...

i agree with the initial comment, i guess most of the current avantgauard (as in any avantguard) will never make it to the "doctrine" of architecture in broader terms.

I guess the profession will take what it needs and move on...look at foa, their projects are inflenced by form-finding, computer design and analysis of data, yet if you listen to the explanations thet give for the choices made in their project, they are extremely practical and functionalist...the ground zero scheme was designed considering the ammount fo space needed by the development divided by the average commercial lease in manhattan...the formfinding software came afterwards.

if architecture becomes concearned only with formal experimentation it will disappear (as it has been disappearing for the last 40 years), just as it will if it becomes concearned just with beauty and feeling...all these aspects are important, yet the most important has to be (imo) the function, the program, the performance.

gotta run, portfolio hand in 2 days!

a-f,

what u said about berlage institute is true somehow...
we have a studio on housing in a'dam but we only visited the site once during half year...and what we can do is trying to translate the masterplan file which is in dutch and imagine some promotional proposals...
and so many "scapes" nowadays r really make people dizzy...so many architects just simply convert the diagrams into architectural forms...

Rambling Thought: If it takes more time to learn a tool than it does to use a tool... then you're such a Tool!

Rambling Question: Would blobs be any better if they had a classical identification system pertaining to their attributes? ie) entablature, cornice, fluting

Anyone know where one could read some more about those force diagramms that a-f talked about? what software is used to generate these forces (besides max) and what tools are used. Tks for any input

Lynn used Maya many, many years ago (Alias/Power Animator) with the 'forces' that would shape the buildings. A bunch of people have tried this. In the end, it's just another subjective method at making form, just like tossing squars on a map (Tschumi).

Blobs would have been better is they were tested. Instead, the final form was an exercise in realizing the nurbs curves, not on practical, functional, or aesthetically pleasing space. This was their death - they avoided the experienctial quality of architecture and neglected to consider how space is truly what architecture is about.

While Gehry does crazy, blob like things, he knows what space and experience are. So it's not necessarily the over all form, but the attention to the space and experience. This is, after all, what people will feel and know in the building.

ahh yeas, the age-old question. how to deal with everything at one time...i think that if you look at the past 100 years of architecture, the general tendency of the avante-garde is to follow trends of thought, creating a pendulum swing of focus. not more than 10 years ago it would have been difficult to see an "avante-garde" project that wasn't inherently dealing with a cultural critique or an exploration of "poetics" of space or materiality...but most of these were just as divorced from the realities of construction (if not more so)...now with math and science in the forefront you might want to think of our latest period as somewhat like the hyper-rationalist architect as engineer era of the 50s and 60s. the time when structural and mechanical systems were being standardized and industrialized...now it is computation and manufacturing processes.
but the best practitioners find the poetics and cultural critque in the math and science, much as the best of 10 years ago found a rigour of materiality and structural attitude within their work. what i would do is think about the beauty of the processes that offices such as SHoP are creating. their ability to find conceptual rigour within economics as related to construction processes and the use of that to hedge experimentation in form is incredible....not an easy feat.