" Zaha's designs are unnecessary architecture. They are different for the sake of being different and have no significance whatsoever. They will become just another footnote in
history, remembered, yet forgotten."
Offcourse I do disagree strongly with this statement but it got me wondering what impact has Zaha Hadid's work had on architecture? And the bigger issue where is this movement called deconstructivism going? Does it continue to evolve? Or does an even more radical architectural movement develop as a counter to it and puts an end to deconstructivism?
I think he's saying deconstructivism has been dead for a long time. I disagree, and tend to think its just evolved into a more baroque form, but Im in the minority on that I think.
The obvious problem is the obsession with an aesthetic that leaves very little room for anything else. She succeeds, theres no doubt her work is gorgeous, and there are some very legit spatial inovations, but in doing so she spends very little time investigating more serious ideas about social relationships and meaning and how we survive efficiently in the real world. Theyre beautiful, but theyre expensive luxuries.
I imagine as time goes by this whole formal movement will be remembered like art nouveau, an attractive style that ultimately proved uneconomical and never meant enough to have a long term impact on the way people think about design.
That said, I think minimalism has been the reaction to it. I think somewhere in its conception theres an attempt to adress efficiency, and to think about sensory reactions to space and materials, but anyone who's actually worked on a minimalist building knows they always seem to end up being every bit as expensive as your average neo-19th-century pile of crap.
"What comes next" will be argued over and somehow "decided on" by art and architectural critics and theorists as much as by practicing architects and paying clients.
While pracititioners design and build, critics and theorists think, opine, write, and publish. (I know, I know, a few folks do both.) Graves, Eisenman, Gehry, Libeskind, Hadid, et al, have all done creative work. But they on that "cutting edge" have relied on the likes of Jencks, Frampton, Vidler, Betsky, Goldberger, and others to write about, explain, promote, and argue for this theory or project and against that one. All of this --books, journals, newspapers, lectures, websites, blogs-- is for consumption and digestion by practitioners, yes, but more significantly (I would argue) for that most important contituency: students.
Cultural form is not only about production, but also discourse. "What's next" in film-making is not just up to James Cameron and Quentin Tarentino and their ilk (let's hope). Roger Ebert, Peter Travers, and other film critics shape that industry as well.
So don't just look at the architects; read the critics, too... as mind-numbing as that can be sometimes.
Minimalism is largely a formal pursuit in its own right. There does seem to be a larger number of modern (not all minimal) since decon, but I'd put that on Dwell and prefab curiosities more than a reaction or "next" movement, mostly because it is largely restricted to single family homes.
Lastly, Hadid was, and is, not decon. I also don't see how she is any less, or any more, interested in "social" than any other person/firm out there.
Large, expensive, shiny objects are what people have always liked and will always like. Luxury never goes out of style. It changes, but never leaves us.
AdamMayer wrote: Schumacher never explains why ‘pragmatic modernism with a slightly enriched palette’ is inferior to parametricism. He assumes that it is inferior because it builds upon lessons of the past and is not totally new and flamboyant. But in fact some of the finest architecture being built today is by architects whose work could be described as minimalist. Architects like Peter Zumthor, Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, and David Chipperfield design buildings that are formally understated, yet rich in materiality and spatial experience. They rely on classic design principles and a modern vocabulary to create buildings that appropriately respond to context while at the same time remain dignified and novel without resorting to gimmicks.
by definition and not some architects personal opinion archispeak on "parametricism", everything the others do is parametric, its just a computer defining the parameters mathematically isn't always used for every decision. architects have been mastering parametrics for centuries...
given the schizophrenic duality of the architect and the fact that science always has more creedence in academia and the profession, architects always put more faith in the engineering/logical/technical explanation than the artistic and 'spiritual' , when in fact the engineering/logical/technical are just clear explanations of what talented people do without thinking...
to deconstruct parametricism, etc.. would be know different than decontructing modernism and any other ism....
to even give the act of 'deconstructing' a title is very much structural in thinking....which most people are, espeically architects...Tschumi's Parc de la Villette is one big folly in that regard.
anyway, deconstructivism, or the act of deconstructing, is something creative types do daily naturally....or it's a method for breaking out of whatever -ism you find your self in....so with that said deconstruction is still very active or at least should be.
well, if we're speaking strictly formal aesthetics - currently we've got this faux-hyper-rationalist stuff coming out OMA and it's tentacles, and the crystalline formalists (who over abuse parametric software) - zaha is a gestural formalist. her work these days still seems like the same old gestural folds we were all doing in school in the 90s - back when everyone was misinterpreting deleuze and looking at auto concept sketches.
I think there will always be the gesturalists, the tectonic and platonic formalists, and the rationalists - and it's just wherever the pendulum swings... a period of austerity seems to bring back more focus on rationalism and tectonics - however I'm sure once we see another gilded age we'll see exuberant baroque swoopy swoops from someone else.
"Architects like Peter Zumthor, Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, and David Chipperfield design buildings that are formally understated, yet rich in materiality and spatial experience."
actually, i think a better way to give description would be that their designs are pithy -not rich- in material and space. if by rich you mean they fully-some voluptuously- express their material self-abundance, then there is a sense of that. but it could also carry across to isuggesting an abundace in variety---which is not the case. but pithy carries the nuance of willful limitation- which is in line with the ethos of minimalism.
dear oe, i didn't factor in some other nuances. pithy always will be from pith, a lovely word..a spine of the essence. it even sounds lovely- pith/ pithy.
there is no intention of cynicism- and i would not desctibe a comment cynically, for instance, as being pithy. lovely umbilical sounding- complete and yet incomplete...but maybe pithy with an american news reporter stress on the -y can yield a sharpened end to poke someone painfully with rather than reach out to. i don't know.
i agree its difficult to define deconstructivism in order to define what succeeds it. to some extent, like in religion, a big role might be played by the extent of literalism in defining deconstructivism. perhaps we can identify , within architecture, a gnostic deconstructivism and a literalist deconstructivism. tricky- maybe ridiculous. gnostic = open to interpretation, coexisting with variants, . literalist= dogmatic, singular. eisenman's work seems driven by singularity of intent (which is sort of ironic- deconstructivism challenges constructs yet eisenman has to hold on to a very ubstantial construct - that architecture has to mean or intend something other than itself- in order to use architecture as a field of semiotic (or at least signifactory) challenge) . tschumi's less so. others perhaps even less so.
ok, following from that track of thought i think the most iconic architectures of the recent period have carried this unnecessary complex: that a spectre is haunting architecture, the spectre of "theory". and certain associations were made between "theory" and intractableness. and intractableness and leftism. then this gave many people a rash - so they sought the ointment of materialism, automaton productivity, etc...the very opposite of individualistic intractability and resistance. we accept and embrace commercialism- we wish to silence the echoes of franco-german evangelists. the devil comes in the shape of dutchmen/women. lucifer inflates this with his anti-sacrosanct breath into XXL proportions. american becomes the anti-christ and leads the world to war against its well being. we collapse.
The shape vocabulary is simple. The forms are generated by natural processes. And it is an ethical aesthetic based on nature, not private property, family or state.
Architects are still holding on to "blobs". Mostly, imho, is because software allows us to create these forms. Beyond that, though, there is little logic there and the general public doesn't like them (generally speaking, there's not much you can do with a curved wall).
Personally, I don't care what you call it or how it was created, a blob is a blob.
I think the next movements (if you can call them that) will continue to focus on environmentally friendly building/energy.
More importantly, I think we will see more sophisticated ways to create buildings. Money is everything to a building and the more efficient everything works, the more likely the investment (from energy to usage to design). Creating something formally attractive while creating value will continue to be of greater and greater value.
[i]More importantly, I think we will see more sophisticated ways to create buildings. Money is everything to a building and the more efficient everything works, the more likely the investment (from energy to usage to design). Creating something formally attractive while creating value will continue to be of greater and greater value.[/i]
I largely agree. At the same time though, I dont think all this exploration into parametrics and complex curves has been fruitless, or couldnt be used in the future to create genuine value. There are seeds there that have huge potential, using scripts to optimise microclimates and workflow, using CNC manufacturing to improve tolerances and achieve potentially more efficient forms. Maybe it just isnt there yet. Some of that is just a result of technical hurdles with the software, fully integrating climate and physics modeling, some way of networking with manufacturers so scripts can optimize output costs, but other challenges seem harder to overcome. Manufacturing and assembling thousands of components with individually customized radii will always be more expensive than using strait members. I love 3-axis mills, but its just a fact of physics that for every dimension of complexity you add youre exponentially increasing mill time, and cost by extension. You can rapid-protype complex forms, but you still have to finish mill those components, and I just dont see yet any hope that those upfront costs have any hope of being recouped. Maybe with nano-self-assembly or something you could mitigate that, but not in the next 50 years.
Worse than that though, I just dont see that optimizing for efficiency is really on most of these architect's priority list. They have to consider it in the end, when the sticker shock comes, but the driving motivation from the outset seems in many cases to have more to do with fashion than it does with solving real-world problems.
Deconstructivism: What comes next?
My studio in-charge made the following statement
" Zaha's designs are unnecessary architecture. They are different for the sake of being different and have no significance whatsoever. They will become just another footnote in
history, remembered, yet forgotten."
Offcourse I do disagree strongly with this statement but it got me wondering what impact has Zaha Hadid's work had on architecture? And the bigger issue where is this movement called deconstructivism going? Does it continue to evolve? Or does an even more radical architectural movement develop as a counter to it and puts an end to deconstructivism?
You are a decade or two late to the party. Rest up for the holidays and come back and join us on the other side.
Care to bring me up to speed?
ja, you're from 1990!
after deconstructivism comes post-deconstructivism comes repost-deconstructivism comes repost-deconstructi[minimal]ivism comes blobs
that gets you to about 1997 ..
I think he's saying deconstructivism has been dead for a long time. I disagree, and tend to think its just evolved into a more baroque form, but Im in the minority on that I think.
The obvious problem is the obsession with an aesthetic that leaves very little room for anything else. She succeeds, theres no doubt her work is gorgeous, and there are some very legit spatial inovations, but in doing so she spends very little time investigating more serious ideas about social relationships and meaning and how we survive efficiently in the real world. Theyre beautiful, but theyre expensive luxuries.
I imagine as time goes by this whole formal movement will be remembered like art nouveau, an attractive style that ultimately proved uneconomical and never meant enough to have a long term impact on the way people think about design.
That said, I think minimalism has been the reaction to it. I think somewhere in its conception theres an attempt to adress efficiency, and to think about sensory reactions to space and materials, but anyone who's actually worked on a minimalist building knows they always seem to end up being every bit as expensive as your average neo-19th-century pile of crap.
"I think he's saying..."
Or she? god. That was a sexist assumption haha
regeneration...
i don't think minimalism is a reaction or came after decon. thats more a moral than an aesthetic assumption
"What comes next" will be argued over and somehow "decided on" by art and architectural critics and theorists as much as by practicing architects and paying clients.
While pracititioners design and build, critics and theorists think, opine, write, and publish. (I know, I know, a few folks do both.) Graves, Eisenman, Gehry, Libeskind, Hadid, et al, have all done creative work. But they on that "cutting edge" have relied on the likes of Jencks, Frampton, Vidler, Betsky, Goldberger, and others to write about, explain, promote, and argue for this theory or project and against that one. All of this --books, journals, newspapers, lectures, websites, blogs-- is for consumption and digestion by practitioners, yes, but more significantly (I would argue) for that most important contituency: students.
Cultural form is not only about production, but also discourse. "What's next" in film-making is not just up to James Cameron and Quentin Tarentino and their ilk (let's hope). Roger Ebert, Peter Travers, and other film critics shape that industry as well.
So don't just look at the architects; read the critics, too... as mind-numbing as that can be sometimes.
Minimalism is largely a formal pursuit in its own right. There does seem to be a larger number of modern (not all minimal) since decon, but I'd put that on Dwell and prefab curiosities more than a reaction or "next" movement, mostly because it is largely restricted to single family homes.
Lastly, Hadid was, and is, not decon. I also don't see how she is any less, or any more, interested in "social" than any other person/firm out there.
Large, expensive, shiny objects are what people have always liked and will always like. Luxury never goes out of style. It changes, but never leaves us.
hadid was decon back in the day but when blobs bloomed she morphed into deconblobivism
NeoRevulsionism.
Last year I wrote an essay tackling this very topic, check it out: http://adamnathanielmayer.blogspot.com/2010/06/style-and-pretense-of-parametric.html
yeah, deconblobivism
AdamMayer wrote: Schumacher never explains why ‘pragmatic modernism with a slightly enriched palette’ is inferior to parametricism. He assumes that it is inferior because it builds upon lessons of the past and is not totally new and flamboyant. But in fact some of the finest architecture being built today is by architects whose work could be described as minimalist. Architects like Peter Zumthor, Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, and David Chipperfield design buildings that are formally understated, yet rich in materiality and spatial experience. They rely on classic design principles and a modern vocabulary to create buildings that appropriately respond to context while at the same time remain dignified and novel without resorting to gimmicks.
yes! (i'd throw pawson in there, too)
by definition and not some architects personal opinion archispeak on "parametricism", everything the others do is parametric, its just a computer defining the parameters mathematically isn't always used for every decision. architects have been mastering parametrics for centuries...
given the schizophrenic duality of the architect and the fact that science always has more creedence in academia and the profession, architects always put more faith in the engineering/logical/technical explanation than the artistic and 'spiritual' , when in fact the engineering/logical/technical are just clear explanations of what talented people do without thinking...
to deconstruct parametricism, etc.. would be know different than decontructing modernism and any other ism....
to even give the act of 'deconstructing' a title is very much structural in thinking....which most people are, espeically architects...Tschumi's Parc de la Villette is one big folly in that regard.
anyway, deconstructivism, or the act of deconstructing, is something creative types do daily naturally....or it's a method for breaking out of whatever -ism you find your self in....so with that said deconstruction is still very active or at least should be.
Live in your own -ism.
Arata Isozaki chose her. It is not more than it or the following, either.
So what is important is "Who is a next chooser?".
well, if we're speaking strictly formal aesthetics - currently we've got this faux-hyper-rationalist stuff coming out OMA and it's tentacles, and the crystalline formalists (who over abuse parametric software) - zaha is a gestural formalist. her work these days still seems like the same old gestural folds we were all doing in school in the 90s - back when everyone was misinterpreting deleuze and looking at auto concept sketches.
I think there will always be the gesturalists, the tectonic and platonic formalists, and the rationalists - and it's just wherever the pendulum swings... a period of austerity seems to bring back more focus on rationalism and tectonics - however I'm sure once we see another gilded age we'll see exuberant baroque swoopy swoops from someone else.
The next evolution for zaha is buildings that actually work as buildings, and not just pretty objects (which I don't think are very pretty)
"Architects like Peter Zumthor, Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, and David Chipperfield design buildings that are formally understated, yet rich in materiality and spatial experience."
actually, i think a better way to give description would be that their designs are pithy -not rich- in material and space. if by rich you mean they fully-some voluptuously- express their material self-abundance, then there is a sense of that. but it could also carry across to isuggesting an abundace in variety---which is not the case. but pithy carries the nuance of willful limitation- which is in line with the ethos of minimalism.
I tend to think of pithy having a too-cute-by-half connotation.
I like how even this thread deconstructed.
Empty parking lot, crumbling building, otherwise known as Erosionism or Deconstructivism 2.0.
decon 2.0 before decon 1.0?
someone somewhere said deconstructivism was neo-constructivism.
Jaffe is just babbling as usual, like an old man waving his cane at skateboarders
dear oe, i didn't factor in some other nuances. pithy always will be from pith, a lovely word..a spine of the essence. it even sounds lovely- pith/ pithy.
there is no intention of cynicism- and i would not desctibe a comment cynically, for instance, as being pithy. lovely umbilical sounding- complete and yet incomplete...but maybe pithy with an american news reporter stress on the -y can yield a sharpened end to poke someone painfully with rather than reach out to. i don't know.
i agree its difficult to define deconstructivism in order to define what succeeds it. to some extent, like in religion, a big role might be played by the extent of literalism in defining deconstructivism. perhaps we can identify , within architecture, a gnostic deconstructivism and a literalist deconstructivism. tricky- maybe ridiculous. gnostic = open to interpretation, coexisting with variants, . literalist= dogmatic, singular. eisenman's work seems driven by singularity of intent (which is sort of ironic- deconstructivism challenges constructs yet eisenman has to hold on to a very ubstantial construct - that architecture has to mean or intend something other than itself- in order to use architecture as a field of semiotic (or at least signifactory) challenge) . tschumi's less so. others perhaps even less so.
ok, following from that track of thought i think the most iconic architectures of the recent period have carried this unnecessary complex: that a spectre is haunting architecture, the spectre of "theory". and certain associations were made between "theory" and intractableness. and intractableness and leftism. then this gave many people a rash - so they sought the ointment of materialism, automaton productivity, etc...the very opposite of individualistic intractability and resistance. we accept and embrace commercialism- we wish to silence the echoes of franco-german evangelists. the devil comes in the shape of dutchmen/women. lucifer inflates this with his anti-sacrosanct breath into XXL proportions. american becomes the anti-christ and leads the world to war against its well being. we collapse.
I like Glen Small bio-morphism.
http://www.smallatlarge.com/
The shape vocabulary is simple. The forms are generated by natural processes. And it is an ethical aesthetic based on nature, not private property, family or state.
eric chavkin
Architects are still holding on to "blobs". Mostly, imho, is because software allows us to create these forms. Beyond that, though, there is little logic there and the general public doesn't like them (generally speaking, there's not much you can do with a curved wall).
Personally, I don't care what you call it or how it was created, a blob is a blob.
I think the next movements (if you can call them that) will continue to focus on environmentally friendly building/energy.
More importantly, I think we will see more sophisticated ways to create buildings. Money is everything to a building and the more efficient everything works, the more likely the investment (from energy to usage to design). Creating something formally attractive while creating value will continue to be of greater and greater value.
[i]More importantly, I think we will see more sophisticated ways to create buildings. Money is everything to a building and the more efficient everything works, the more likely the investment (from energy to usage to design). Creating something formally attractive while creating value will continue to be of greater and greater value.[/i]
I largely agree. At the same time though, I dont think all this exploration into parametrics and complex curves has been fruitless, or couldnt be used in the future to create genuine value. There are seeds there that have huge potential, using scripts to optimise microclimates and workflow, using CNC manufacturing to improve tolerances and achieve potentially more efficient forms. Maybe it just isnt there yet. Some of that is just a result of technical hurdles with the software, fully integrating climate and physics modeling, some way of networking with manufacturers so scripts can optimize output costs, but other challenges seem harder to overcome. Manufacturing and assembling thousands of components with individually customized radii will always be more expensive than using strait members. I love 3-axis mills, but its just a fact of physics that for every dimension of complexity you add youre exponentially increasing mill time, and cost by extension. You can rapid-protype complex forms, but you still have to finish mill those components, and I just dont see yet any hope that those upfront costs have any hope of being recouped. Maybe with nano-self-assembly or something you could mitigate that, but not in the next 50 years.
Worse than that though, I just dont see that optimizing for efficiency is really on most of these architect's priority list. They have to consider it in the end, when the sticker shock comes, but the driving motivation from the outset seems in many cases to have more to do with fashion than it does with solving real-world problems.
lasers, dude
high mdler!
ism
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.