1. prophetic architects selling expensive absurd architecture as provocative intellectual content
2. 'visionary architect' selling complex form to make headlines for the client/developer
3. complex systems, biomemetics, morphogenesis, evolution, mutation... this building I'm in right now is seems pretty inert to me..
4. diagrams, mappings, concept collages and weird shit drawings that you won't do after you graduate
5. baby-zahas and zaha-wanna-bes
6. baby-rems and rem-wanna-bes
7. process, procedures, method, pedagogy... teachers! leave the kids alone!
8. clean-lines-minimalist-look sold as respectable-good-taste-modernism
9. architecture students trying to change the world that needs no changing by an architect above all people.
10. making this list now...
What's wrong with respectable good taste modernism? I mean if it's cheap developer crap being called "modern" to make up for lack of resolved detail that's one thing, but if it's actually clean-lined and *truly* minimalist that's not so bad, IMO.
Gee, I thought school was a place where we were SUPPOSED to experiment and play around. Say what you will about the state of architecture today, could you imagine how even more banal things would be if architects had never done the "useless" diagrams and collages they were "made" to do in school? We may never have a chance to do it again in normal practice (unfortunately), but at least we learned to look at the world from beyond the bounds of CAD plans and wall sections at some point; I would venture to say some vestiges of those lessons remain in most practitioners, so that even when determining another "least worst" bulkhead layout, they're thinking about experiences and relationships that go beyond the immediate task at hand. Again, it may not be too evident given our present environment, but it's some sort of start.
Besides, if you didn't want to make these sort of drawings you could have gone to college to become a technologist. :-)
#7 is a scam in architectural education. It is an efficient way for teachers to teach 'creative design and exploration and experimentation'. How creative it is then if you need to be taught via process/procedure? The most creative designers/architetc invented their own; they certainly followed no teachers... and thehoule, doing silly drawings is not the only way to experiment... its a myth propagated by architetural schools..
i'd challenge you to name some 'most creative designers' who did not learn from someone else at the start of their career and who do not have processes or disciplines through which they work.
are you just trying to provoke response? if you're serious about this, than you probably need to find a different vocation.
yes steve, even the most creative learns from someone... but to think that the processes that schools teaches today with such fanaticism and fervour as the only way to experiment is plain absurd... afterall the problems that architecture faces is not found in the classroom, it's out there.
1. Be honest about the limits of architecture, I quote H&dM, ‘a building is a building is a building’
2. Go easy on those crazy form… is it necessary? Or is it a symptom of decadence of rich nations?
3. For architecture to sound and look like science is plain absurdity, see #1
4. It’s time the academia come up with new ways of experimentation. These methods have run its course..
5. Stop copying from magazines, monographs and websites
6. Just be more brave
7. Refer #4
8. Just call it a style, it has nothing to do with Modernsim
9. There are more appropriate callings for this… architecture has severe limitations in changing the world. Remove the ego…
10. boredom is the launching pad for the next interesting/relevant thing I suppose…
i've had to cancel my subscriptions to magazines. and, i'm thinking i'll never go to grad school to get that stupid piece of paper just to get the other piece of paper. getting registered is just like taking the SAT - learn to take the test and look at study guides. viola - you're registered.
who works on "theory" in the real world, 30-50 achitects? they sure as hell ain't the other 99.9% of us. if i can put in a good day doing honest detailing and making a building work, so be it. i'm sure as hell finding horrible examples of work by "professional" architects coming across my desk. look at all my jobs coming in over budget on hours trying to fix messes...
ivy leaguers get pretty upset when you say that theory isn't important, eh?
there was a post on here somewhere lately to a website that ripped on famous archtects, and the author of the page told me he was getting a lot of hate mail. sheesh, it's just some dude you don't know that makes buildings that are too expensive. get over it.
I'm bored with people who climb onto soapboxes built of a misguided sense of superiority.
Spending your afternoon detailing a gutter does not make you more of an architect than the next guy. Nor does waxing poetic about complex adaptive systems, cellular aggregation, or emergence. The answer lies somewhere in between.
I guess this is where I stand: there's a gradient between thinking and doing. Those who think and don't do are wasting a gift. Those who do and don't think are wasting an opportunity.
1. h&dm are being disingenuous. they know as well as you do that chartres - or one of their buildings - can move you in a way that a 7eleven can't.
2. sometimes there is a call for crazy form, sometimes for quiet. a good architect learns the difference. you're right: some of the stars haven't learned it.
3. sure, these are fictions, metaphors. they are just as valid a way to start to develop a creative proposal as any other. many of us need something to respond to in order to move forward; sometimes it doesn't matter what it is if it can provoke a reaction.
4. develop your own methods. your instructors show you what they do, teaching by example, with the full expectation that you will figure out your own way of working. that said, absorb everything that's taught and get good at it. gropius had to be a good student of classicism in order to design the bauhaus.
5/6. you see something you like, something that makes you excited, you wanna try your hand at it. maybe it'll lead you somewhere new.
7. processes and methods - diagramming, precedent analysis, etc - are tools. you'll regret it later if you don't have a facility with all the tools with which you're presented now.
8. so do something different. (somewhat amazed that you would presume to redefine what is commonly considered modern, but...)
9. architects cannot change the world by themselves but everyone should be willing to try to make the world a better place in whatever capacity they can, no? as it happens, a lot of the world's resources are used in the construction industry; health, safety, and welfare are among the things with which we as a profession are charged with safeguarding as much as possible; and good, safe, healthful shelter is a basic human need that has not been universally met.
10. if you're bored, you're not challenging yourself enough. step up.
It sounds like underlying your rant is a critique of: *b.s. linked to style, that is about selling, and less about real innovation*?
#8. I assume by criticising modernism as a style, you're suggesting that the minimalist style in architecture has little to do with function or rationality, that its just a selling machine? Modernism capital M has to do with rational progress right? You're saying that alot of what we see in mags isn't about this.
I agree to some extent... there is alot of eyewash that is really about fashion, about selling style, can never be really honest... Is this taught in schools? Maybe. Sometimes... But my own experience is what is taught is critical thinking. Maybe its possible that some students don't actually *get* whats being taught and instead learn *eyewash* and b.s.? On the other hand, if you want to talk about what is practical, isn't using flashy magazines and taking ideas more or less reading the market and selling? Its knowing what is out there, what trends, technologies, ideas that are on the market, isn't that really sensible architecture? (what people want)
Don't you think people *want* something new and sharp?
But I think a good architectural education is critical because it gives people tools... Some things are process tools, some things are thinking and communicating tools, which are also important in practice, the ability to have an idea and sell it. Architectural education makes people see in new ways, puts things out there. The potential is there when they get out to figure their own process out for themselves, and at least they are informed about the discourse, ideas, where its been, what other people are doing... We're not isolated designers, and it's *not* all about the architect, its about broader knowledge...
Architectural practice is not just providing technical services, its also a business of ideas.
In a way, you sound like you are 1. trashing architects for not really doing something new, and 2. teaching old formulas, not real experimentation, 3. selling trademark form, and the architects ego, not real change...
Thats a pretty negative outlook...
And there seems to be a contradiction... You criticize the lack of real experimentation, and yet you also criticize architecture for oversetimating itself as a medium for change. Which are you for--- innovation? or service providing? Or are you just trashing everything saying there aint no good to come out of architecture? Are you arguing with yourself?
Well put, Steven and bRink. I think bRink's question is good too; if architecture has such limited potential to change, and yet it's stuck in the same old ideas, then.... WHAT IS IT???
You're not the only one wrestling with disillusionment, tyler. The world isn't perfect, but our only chance for happiness is if we do the best we can.
Ok - (word, by the way)
here is a philosophical question to relieve the boredom
slab cabinet doors are modern in appearance - but 5 panel doors are more 'modern' in their honesty of use of material (to my mind anyway).
So - - - now that nothing is made with real wood - is a fake 5-panel door more honest than a fake (fake anyway) slab door?
- I think the answer is still YES! At least it pretends to be something that it sort of is . . .
Architecture suffers from a profound lack of meaning because most of us, if called upon to do so, would be quite good at living without it altogether.
What the fuck is wrong with a hut that no one ever sees in a magazine? I find the idea rather appealing - in a perverted, rather uncivilized kind of way.
I felt like you do for a long time tyler. Dont worry my man, you'll find light somewhere.
At a certain point you realize that the consternation is self-imposed. We all think this sex of "new form" is liberating but end up just copying zaha and nox. Its always been that way. The truth is youre right, it is just style and the theory behind it isnt all that genuinely played out. Gehry doesnt have a theory. Hes just having fun. But theres absolutely no reason you yourself have to follow it. I actually ended up going back and reading the shit. Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Berman, Vidler, Merleau Ponty, Tschumi. I read poetry and studied minimalism, dug up some old precidents that no one pays much attention to anymore. You dont have to do all that. Just plow your own path and dont worry if youre not towing the party line. You'll probably find you get more positive feedback than you probably even want ha ha
I felt like you do for a long time tyler. Dont worry my man, you'll find light somewhere.
At a certain point you realize that the consternation is self-imposed. We all think this sex of "new form" is liberating but end up just copying zaha and nox. Its always been that way. The truth is youre right, it is just style and the theory behind it isnt all that genuinely played out. Gehry doesnt have a theory. Hes just having fun. But theres absolutely no reason you yourself have to follow it. I actually ended up going back and reading the shit. Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Berman, Vidler, Merleau Ponty, Tschumi. I read poetry and studied minimalism, dug up some old precidents that no one pays much attention to anymore. You dont have to do all that. Just plow your own path and dont worry if youre not towing the party line. You'll probably find you get more positive feedback than you probably even want ha ha
and to pick up on oe's point on gehry. have fun. we should all try to find a job that we enjoy. not always possible, but we are in a better position to make this happen than most.
I think my plotter had a PRE_PROGRAMED ___FART!...DAMMN I HATE BIG BUSINESS.....WE BE DESIGNING OUR NEW $295.00 BASE.. "think this post belongs here...about being ******!
The whole Brad saga is the affirmation of architecture's obsession with fame. Diva = Zaha, Rock Star = Rem. All you need to do is to attend any of the lectures that Zaha, Rem or Peter gives and see how students react. At the sight of these starchitects, they all gasp and gawk, flick out their cameras and phones and go into a frenzy.
But little do these fame-whores, star-worshippers realise; that today you do not do architecture to be famous, you need to be famous to do architecture.
I'm so fucking bored of...
1. prophetic architects selling expensive absurd architecture as provocative intellectual content
2. 'visionary architect' selling complex form to make headlines for the client/developer
3. complex systems, biomemetics, morphogenesis, evolution, mutation... this building I'm in right now is seems pretty inert to me..
4. diagrams, mappings, concept collages and weird shit drawings that you won't do after you graduate
5. baby-zahas and zaha-wanna-bes
6. baby-rems and rem-wanna-bes
7. process, procedures, method, pedagogy... teachers! leave the kids alone!
8. clean-lines-minimalist-look sold as respectable-good-taste-modernism
9. architecture students trying to change the world that needs no changing by an architect above all people.
10. making this list now...
Hmmm.... Chill?
What's wrong with respectable good taste modernism? I mean if it's cheap developer crap being called "modern" to make up for lack of resolved detail that's one thing, but if it's actually clean-lined and *truly* minimalist that's not so bad, IMO.
If you like that sort of thing.
Gee, I thought school was a place where we were SUPPOSED to experiment and play around. Say what you will about the state of architecture today, could you imagine how even more banal things would be if architects had never done the "useless" diagrams and collages they were "made" to do in school? We may never have a chance to do it again in normal practice (unfortunately), but at least we learned to look at the world from beyond the bounds of CAD plans and wall sections at some point; I would venture to say some vestiges of those lessons remain in most practitioners, so that even when determining another "least worst" bulkhead layout, they're thinking about experiences and relationships that go beyond the immediate task at hand. Again, it may not be too evident given our present environment, but it's some sort of start.
Besides, if you didn't want to make these sort of drawings you could have gone to college to become a technologist. :-)
Could you elaborate on #7?
#7 is a scam in architectural education. It is an efficient way for teachers to teach 'creative design and exploration and experimentation'. How creative it is then if you need to be taught via process/procedure? The most creative designers/architetc invented their own; they certainly followed no teachers... and thehoule, doing silly drawings is not the only way to experiment... its a myth propagated by architetural schools..
smoke a spliff man, chill out!
someone has an attitude problem.
i'd challenge you to name some 'most creative designers' who did not learn from someone else at the start of their career and who do not have processes or disciplines through which they work.
are you just trying to provoke response? if you're serious about this, than you probably need to find a different vocation.
what are you FOR if you're against these things? that might help us understand what you're after with your rant.
yes steve, even the most creative learns from someone... but to think that the processes that schools teaches today with such fanaticism and fervour as the only way to experiment is plain absurd... afterall the problems that architecture faces is not found in the classroom, it's out there.
above all else... I'm just bored...
sorry to hear that tyler. i think steven is right. you need a new career. i'd also like to hear what you are for. care to share?
ya, that would be interesting, e...
this has been said before... but ...generalizations are always bad.
^except that one ;)
Ok fellas, if I have to spell it out..
1. Be honest about the limits of architecture, I quote H&dM, ‘a building is a building is a building’
2. Go easy on those crazy form… is it necessary? Or is it a symptom of decadence of rich nations?
3. For architecture to sound and look like science is plain absurdity, see #1
4. It’s time the academia come up with new ways of experimentation. These methods have run its course..
5. Stop copying from magazines, monographs and websites
6. Just be more brave
7. Refer #4
8. Just call it a style, it has nothing to do with Modernsim
9. There are more appropriate callings for this… architecture has severe limitations in changing the world. Remove the ego…
10. boredom is the launching pad for the next interesting/relevant thing I suppose…
Can't you just let us be consumers in peace? :P
THANK GOD SOMEONE ELSE HAS SAID THIS...
i've had to cancel my subscriptions to magazines. and, i'm thinking i'll never go to grad school to get that stupid piece of paper just to get the other piece of paper. getting registered is just like taking the SAT - learn to take the test and look at study guides. viola - you're registered.
who works on "theory" in the real world, 30-50 achitects? they sure as hell ain't the other 99.9% of us. if i can put in a good day doing honest detailing and making a building work, so be it. i'm sure as hell finding horrible examples of work by "professional" architects coming across my desk. look at all my jobs coming in over budget on hours trying to fix messes...
ivy leaguers get pretty upset when you say that theory isn't important, eh?
there was a post on here somewhere lately to a website that ripped on famous archtects, and the author of the page told me he was getting a lot of hate mail. sheesh, it's just some dude you don't know that makes buildings that are too expensive. get over it.
I'm bored with people who climb onto soapboxes built of a misguided sense of superiority.
Spending your afternoon detailing a gutter does not make you more of an architect than the next guy. Nor does waxing poetic about complex adaptive systems, cellular aggregation, or emergence. The answer lies somewhere in between.
I guess this is where I stand: there's a gradient between thinking and doing. Those who think and don't do are wasting a gift. Those who do and don't think are wasting an opportunity.
.mm
1. h&dm are being disingenuous. they know as well as you do that chartres - or one of their buildings - can move you in a way that a 7eleven can't.
2. sometimes there is a call for crazy form, sometimes for quiet. a good architect learns the difference. you're right: some of the stars haven't learned it.
3. sure, these are fictions, metaphors. they are just as valid a way to start to develop a creative proposal as any other. many of us need something to respond to in order to move forward; sometimes it doesn't matter what it is if it can provoke a reaction.
4. develop your own methods. your instructors show you what they do, teaching by example, with the full expectation that you will figure out your own way of working. that said, absorb everything that's taught and get good at it. gropius had to be a good student of classicism in order to design the bauhaus.
5/6. you see something you like, something that makes you excited, you wanna try your hand at it. maybe it'll lead you somewhere new.
7. processes and methods - diagramming, precedent analysis, etc - are tools. you'll regret it later if you don't have a facility with all the tools with which you're presented now.
8. so do something different. (somewhat amazed that you would presume to redefine what is commonly considered modern, but...)
9. architects cannot change the world by themselves but everyone should be willing to try to make the world a better place in whatever capacity they can, no? as it happens, a lot of the world's resources are used in the construction industry; health, safety, and welfare are among the things with which we as a profession are charged with safeguarding as much as possible; and good, safe, healthful shelter is a basic human need that has not been universally met.
10. if you're bored, you're not challenging yourself enough. step up.
mmatt -
that's funny
i wish i had the time even be able to detail a gutter:
"prefinished metal gutter. color to match p-2"
"Nor does waxing poetic about complex adaptive systems....."
-MMatt
Wax on. Wax off.
I hate when my black shirts fades to a brown tint after a few washes; it's just as bad a white to pink shirt. Any suggestions how I can prevent this?
It sounds like underlying your rant is a critique of: *b.s. linked to style, that is about selling, and less about real innovation*?
#8. I assume by criticising modernism as a style, you're suggesting that the minimalist style in architecture has little to do with function or rationality, that its just a selling machine? Modernism capital M has to do with rational progress right? You're saying that alot of what we see in mags isn't about this.
I agree to some extent... there is alot of eyewash that is really about fashion, about selling style, can never be really honest... Is this taught in schools? Maybe. Sometimes... But my own experience is what is taught is critical thinking. Maybe its possible that some students don't actually *get* whats being taught and instead learn *eyewash* and b.s.? On the other hand, if you want to talk about what is practical, isn't using flashy magazines and taking ideas more or less reading the market and selling? Its knowing what is out there, what trends, technologies, ideas that are on the market, isn't that really sensible architecture? (what people want)
Don't you think people *want* something new and sharp?
But I think a good architectural education is critical because it gives people tools... Some things are process tools, some things are thinking and communicating tools, which are also important in practice, the ability to have an idea and sell it. Architectural education makes people see in new ways, puts things out there. The potential is there when they get out to figure their own process out for themselves, and at least they are informed about the discourse, ideas, where its been, what other people are doing... We're not isolated designers, and it's *not* all about the architect, its about broader knowledge...
Architectural practice is not just providing technical services, its also a business of ideas.
In a way, you sound like you are 1. trashing architects for not really doing something new, and 2. teaching old formulas, not real experimentation, 3. selling trademark form, and the architects ego, not real change...
Thats a pretty negative outlook...
And there seems to be a contradiction... You criticize the lack of real experimentation, and yet you also criticize architecture for oversetimating itself as a medium for change. Which are you for--- innovation? or service providing? Or are you just trashing everything saying there aint no good to come out of architecture? Are you arguing with yourself?
I'm critical of it all really, especially Superglue's problem.
Well put, Steven and bRink. I think bRink's question is good too; if architecture has such limited potential to change, and yet it's stuck in the same old ideas, then.... WHAT IS IT???
You're not the only one wrestling with disillusionment, tyler. The world isn't perfect, but our only chance for happiness is if we do the best we can.
i love everything about architecture, any architecture, anywhere.
it's architects who are a f*&kin' yawn. just all of them.
Ok - (word, by the way)
here is a philosophical question to relieve the boredom
slab cabinet doors are modern in appearance - but 5 panel doors are more 'modern' in their honesty of use of material (to my mind anyway).
So - - - now that nothing is made with real wood - is a fake 5-panel door more honest than a fake (fake anyway) slab door?
- I think the answer is still YES! At least it pretends to be something that it sort of is . . .
Architecture suffers from a profound lack of meaning because most of us, if called upon to do so, would be quite good at living without it altogether.
What the fuck is wrong with a hut that no one ever sees in a magazine? I find the idea rather appealing - in a perverted, rather uncivilized kind of way.
I hate f-bombs.
earmuffs.
I felt like you do for a long time tyler. Dont worry my man, you'll find light somewhere.
At a certain point you realize that the consternation is self-imposed. We all think this sex of "new form" is liberating but end up just copying zaha and nox. Its always been that way. The truth is youre right, it is just style and the theory behind it isnt all that genuinely played out. Gehry doesnt have a theory. Hes just having fun. But theres absolutely no reason you yourself have to follow it. I actually ended up going back and reading the shit. Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Berman, Vidler, Merleau Ponty, Tschumi. I read poetry and studied minimalism, dug up some old precidents that no one pays much attention to anymore. You dont have to do all that. Just plow your own path and dont worry if youre not towing the party line. You'll probably find you get more positive feedback than you probably even want ha ha
I felt like you do for a long time tyler. Dont worry my man, you'll find light somewhere.
At a certain point you realize that the consternation is self-imposed. We all think this sex of "new form" is liberating but end up just copying zaha and nox. Its always been that way. The truth is youre right, it is just style and the theory behind it isnt all that genuinely played out. Gehry doesnt have a theory. Hes just having fun. But theres absolutely no reason you yourself have to follow it. I actually ended up going back and reading the shit. Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Berman, Vidler, Merleau Ponty, Tschumi. I read poetry and studied minimalism, dug up some old precidents that no one pays much attention to anymore. You dont have to do all that. Just plow your own path and dont worry if youre not towing the party line. You'll probably find you get more positive feedback than you probably even want ha ha
eramuffs!
great reference!
huts are the best sort of architecture I think Dazed.
Huts Review - now That would be a worthwhile subscription magazine
What if the Huts Review grew into: Hut Modern, Minimal Hut, Hut Digest, HDM (Hut Design Magazine), or, H+U?
oe - you seem to have taken a reactionary position with respect to theory and criticism, why did you go back and study those writings?
perhaps this will be of interest to you. http://www.wwtdd.com/
oh, and the nytimes had this interesting article about screen names http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/fashion/thursdaystyles/13nicknames.html
oe thanks for those words...it really is about trying to find your identity
...albuquerque, new mexico
...being at work
...big sunglasses
...haters
oh, and rap-rock
and to pick up on oe's point on gehry. have fun. we should all try to find a job that we enjoy. not always possible, but we are in a better position to make this happen than most.
brujitadulce, hey dude... first rule about.... is that you do not talk about .......
why dont you all just think about unicorns that smell like fresh vanilla scent and be happy for a second
I think my plotter had a PRE_PROGRAMED ___FART!...DAMMN I HATE BIG BUSINESS.....WE BE DESIGNING OUR NEW $295.00 BASE.. "think this post belongs here...about being ******!
this dude tyler is going to go far in life .
perhaps this is brad pitt's architectural philosophy?
talking of brad pitt , I found this ( women ) collector's piece....
one more of Frank and pitt ( & Cinderella)
sorry here's the resized one.
builders... and those who blame it on god when tornados rip off paper homes, then they rebuilt same f#$ing paper homes on the same spot...wtf?!
I'm so fucking bored of...
11. Starchitects and fame-whores
The whole Brad saga is the affirmation of architecture's obsession with fame. Diva = Zaha, Rock Star = Rem. All you need to do is to attend any of the lectures that Zaha, Rem or Peter gives and see how students react. At the sight of these starchitects, they all gasp and gawk, flick out their cameras and phones and go into a frenzy.
But little do these fame-whores, star-worshippers realise; that today you do not do architecture to be famous, you need to be famous to do architecture.
ha. i like that one. very pithy, thir.
tyler...You'r talking of gasping students ?
Thats nothing...
there are people here who even know that zaha has an ingrowing toenail.
yea.
cool , isnt it !
people who bitch incessantly
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