Aren't we all going to get really tired really quickly of prefab modernist boxes? It seems like Dwell has beat this typology to death. A box used to seem spare and elegant to me, but now it just feels like the architect had no ideas (particularly when it's covered in wood slats.)
But what's the alternative? Are there any examples of prefab that move away from the dumb box typology?
Maybe I'm just getting tired of the Dwell magazine/Design Within Reach orthodox modernism that a lot of people seem to be promoting these days (at least in the U.S.) Much of it seems deeply unoriginal and even uninspired.
Could it be Dwell that's annoying ? Do we resent the popularization/commercialization/fadding of what was once an achitectural insider's convention ? Or don't we want to go there ?
i remember reading somewhere that a lot of the projects by todd saunders were prefab to a large extent.
dwell is definitely annoying, but it seems to have a large circulation of non-architects which isn't neccessarily a bad thing. just as long as clients aren't coming in w/ architecture digest i don't mind. but dwell is too heavy on the adverts, which has been heavily discussed in the forum.
frankly, i'm not a fan of these pretty little boxes in the country. i don't see any difference between the images above and what is published in dwell. good detailing does not necessarily make good architecture. these projects seem absolutely void of an idea.
i have no problem with boxes as long as there is thought behind them.
Nov 10, 07 3:34 pm ·
·
The Beginning of Boxes?
Louis I. Kahn, Norman Fisher House, construction completed June 1967.
Until flat and straight materials are no longer the most efficiently-produced (or least expensive) elements of building construction, and until occupants no longer require horizontal surfaces on which to stand and move, the box (I suspect) will remain.
"box" architecture will never die, and i agree, the residence from the article isn't very compelling, but i think what makes a simple box great architecture, is the focus on the interior. By saving money etc. on the exterior, it's possible to create an interesting, rich interior. Obviously its possible to go wrong with a box, but its possible to go wrong with any type of architecture. There are plenty of buildings with unique, twisting (non-box) exteriors, and shoddy interiors.
i think the box is an interesting architectural exercise, it's been used forever and i'm sure it won't die anytime soon.
i always thought this was the precursor to blobitecture
Nov 10, 07 7:36 pm ·
·
The second Goetheanum is certainly sculptural, but I wouldn't call it blob-like.
Though it's hard to discern from the model and plans of the 'cafeteria' facilities of the Olivetti center, there is a definite free-flow circulation between levels which is a strong 'blob' characteristic.
And Orhan made a great point that I am going to repost on his behalf: i don't see anything green about a second home you built on a floodplain which you visit once a month.
solartube, takagi water heaters, low flush toilets and what, disposible baby diapers? bah... standart details even in city of los angeles proper.
where are the cisterns, self generated electricity, waste manegement, self sustaining food production? that would be worthy of an article on sustainability focused article.
this one should be in business section on second income investments.
i have seen this house before. it was in holland or something? nice house but haven't i seen this article before with the same details?
i don't know? maybe i am just responding to the way it is written up. seems like nothing worthy of newspaper article unless it has acres of wood facade screen screwed and a picture of family in front of it.
wk, i am just shooting at the messege not the messenger. you know i respect you a great deal. i am already feeling like a same old tune, but i think most of my points are valid.
I totally agree, and I posted the link because I figured it would stimulate a discussion that I did not have time to engage at that particular moment. How is a second home a sustainable option? Why not take that money and sink it into making your primary residence less of an energy hog? I suppose it's more cost efficient/better for your career to take that money and make a statement for yourself if you are an architect, and oh, I don't know, get a write up in the New York Times.
On the issue of boxes however, I am pretty good at them personally, so I will probably keep doing them myself. ;o)
Yes I'm tired of the bad prefab buildings in dwell that cost more than a custom home. But the article says this is not prefab, so I'll leave that to the prefab thread.
I think projects like this (and most of the stuff in dwell) are refreshing. It's a lot better than 99% of the homes that get built by architects or otherwise and dwell isn't doing a horrible job of promoting the value of architects (better than the AIA is doing).
So now this couple has (2) 900sf homes. Both combined are still smaller then the average size American family home and driving out there once a month the commute is still less than most people do going to work on average.
If the New York times comes to you and wants to do a writeup on your project you will you decline to speak to them because you don't believe your modest project is newsworthy?
I've worked on projects that have been published, the articles can be comical if not delusional. The facts are pretty much all wrong and they clearly don't understand the project at any level. I never cease to be amazed at the stuff the journalists make up, conversations with them that you never had, and they place them in "quotes" no less. Fabricating facts that just aren't true. Most of it was innocent enough (not all) but I mean, come on, that's your job? To interview me and you somehow got a quote that I never said to anybody ever? How's that go? Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I guess I'm a bit cynical but after the limited experiences I've had with the media, I don't put to much faith in thier words. And at the end of the day even with the misinformation it did bring in some new clients so...
So yes Orhan I think you're being a bit harsh. Don't get too bent over the media, they aren't worth it. You raise some really good points, green isn't in the spec. book. It's sort of like eating healthy food but consuming 10,000 calories a day.
Publications gushing about "green" when it amounts to a buzzword for what should be common sense is disappointing. But even if it is disingenuous does it at least bring an important issue into view of the public and form some semblance of a social concious towards how we build?
And on the selfish side "green" architecture places clear value and importance on Architects and architecutre.
One more comment on dwell :) is it just me or are 75% of the homes featured in there the architects own home? Is that disturbing to anyone else? I guess it's not really an issues with dwell, but it starts to give the impression architecture is for architects. I'd like to see some homes for clients.
(It's surprisingly hard to find images of the Endless House online. There are several models made during the 'fifties; the 1959 model measures 38" x 42" x 97 " !)
There's so much still to do with the box -- with the square, (with the circle) -- that it seems foolish to consider abandoning it just because it's now easier than ever to make a blob or because some are temporarily bored with orthogonal or other regular geometries. But that isn't necessarily the question posed in this thread. . .
It's innovative architecture that's well detailed and perhaps responds to the site and environmental conditions versus, well......super-bland architecture that's ripped straight out of Dwell magazine circa 2003.
I don't necessarily have anything against the form of the box. It's just that it's become such a crutch for "modern designers": here's my pedigree in the shape of a shoebox, with wood siding and the obligatory Eames furniture (purchased from Design Within Reach) and George Nelson clock. Ugh.
But I also feel that many examples of "blobitecture" seem uninhabitable—a form of visual masturbation, as if to say, "look at my fancy rhinoscript!" Architecture should go beyond its slavery to mere forms, whether they're blobs or boxes.
I sort of like the following as a suggestion for a new kind of house. Don't know what the budget was, but at least it's original:
the spider project by roch is a great piece. In the last issue of Mark, there was another project based on the same idea, less sculptural but with a more functional approach toward the tent structure around the house, wich was basically a chamfered box. I think in many ways the idea of hybridation is pretty much the way to go for me (and it dates back to my thesis in the 90's); it allows to go in any formal direction basically, and outside of a precise contextual description of site, client and whatnot, i find it difficult to judge an architectural form in itself.
Do you mean you don't like the work they took you to? Or that the website didn't work?
Why do you think they "looked" meaningless? Is it all about looks? How do you evaluate meaning in architecture anyway?
What's interesting to me about R&Sie's work is that they incorporate natural processes of landscape growth into their projects—the net is meant to hold the encroaching forest at bay, carving out a space of dwelling within it. It's a simple idea, and to me it has much more meaning than a lot of what's being designed today.
You can like it or not like it on an aesthetic level. But at least it's different from the typical modern box typology.
One of my favorite quotes (paraphrasing):
"Fashion is that which at first looks beautiful but becomes ugly over time.
Art is that which at first looks ugly but becomes beautiful over time."
Jean Cocteau
I have to admit that when I first saw R&Sie's work, I thought it was ugly and perhaps meaningless. But then I got to know it better, and now I like it.
Same, for many people, with any architecture. The Frank Gehry house is a good example. Ugly and hated at first, but now quirkily beautiful.
Links worked for me.....I saw that first one in Abitare recently and it suggests a bit of blob + box with quite a blur between inside and out. It looks like it would be fun to experience.
I've sometimes wondered if the whole loft/open space-kitchen with bar transition to living space will slow.
I hear what you're saying farwest with the Design Within Reach Box formula. Leaves a bit to be desired for me too.
I think the beauty of something simple works best with an element of the project less so.
really i was puzzled. the page it took me to didn't resize so all i was seeing was the little picture in the top left corner. you can understand my confusion....
ok. i found the work. now i can actually look at it.
i tend to agree with steven's first impulse - "what's the point?" i think most of us will agree that there is something unsatisfying about the dwell/dwr box, i.e. architecture as commodity, but i think the problem is that few of us can agree on the antedote. to me the projects you posted, farwest, look directly out of the tafurian school of criticality. these projects to me create more problems than they seek to answer and for that reason are completely insular and really only comment on their own making. there's clearly thought embedded within them, but i question to what ends.
First we has to agrea , that these houses and objects, perform best visualised by the designer, as core structure nothing more. What can and digitaly can, produce the thing, the house, the object nice or brute, houses we will find cost a third and is four times as strong.
Artestry there might bring the real thing, the mastery we seem to have been waiting for our survival --- it's there, it's there in having a 3dh framework cut by simple nc cutters now, now everything suddenly proved to be worth the trust. The early digitaly inspired pictures of 3D volumes, was miles away, from discussing the fabric the trivial issue of things bore. If you can only ,either rearange the decor or only decore a cake, then it will become difficult, to promote the whole issue of architecture, pointing to a dramatic change in perception of the build works. When you replace 200 different items that othervise assemble a house, and replace all these with just one materialas in 3dh, a material that profit sheet material fabrication. work with even primitive Rhino software. We need a new architecture and we need one that respect credit ,why make everything that don't work ,when a bit , just a bit credit is even without costs for you, honer both nice design and a brand new oppotunity ?
Let me addm that I contribute this, after adding a link to some early sowjet architecture, -- dig holes the form of the building parts on site, pour in concrete and steel ,prepared holes for steel profiles , jack it into place ,winch the other side up standing, place the transverse. Now there are a house. Can also work in lines of houses, --- what would that "cost" case there was free one to one plans ? And They made this 1930 how far further, has the computer rearanged that ?
Sorry Steven. I thought you had seen the work, thus your "meaningless" comment—didn't realize that the link didn't work for you.
jafidler,
I guess I question the need for a singular antidote. One thing I love about global architecture right now is its diversity. I can appreciate the R&Sie work, the swiss work that holz.box posted, and even someone like Jim Cutler's work. A spectrum from fairly radical and perhaps ugly to fairly conservative and easily accepted. I like it all, as long as it has a certain quality and some uniqueness.
What I was criticizing was the copycat tendency in American modernist circles.
I don't think there's a single antidote that we have to try to agree on (or even a problem that needs an antidote, really. Part of me is glad about the prevalence of modernist boxes, even if they're copycat and cheaply detailed, because it ends up supporting the cause of innovative architecture.)
Wolfhilde von Schlittenfahrt, Schachtel Architektur, 2005.12.09
Conjecture: Kiesler's Endless House project may well have inspired the 'blob' elements within Le Corbusier's Electronic Calculation Center Olivetti at Rho-Milan for there are more endless-house-like elements within the Olivetti Center design.
farwest1, your last statements (to jafidler) rings true. Diversity is much more a reality than most (critics) like to admit. I'd even go so far as to say diversity is a viable design methodology.
both frampton [and tzonis and lefaivre's] critical regionalism and the 'opposite' camp of eisenman & hays's critical architecture are a reaction against commodification.
farwest, your comments on diversity follow frampton's side of the argument, which argues for appropriateness to place and culture.
unthinking, do you have any more images of the olivetti center? i'd never seen that project.
Nov 11, 07 5:05 pm ·
·
aml, from Oeuvre Complete, Vol. 7:
The design is an interesting combination of box, blob and mat.
farwest, i think the "problem" is as aml points out commodification. architects ever since tafuri have been trying to confront architecture as commodity. throughout much of postmodernism that meant removing architecture from participation by refusing to build, i.e. the paper architects of the 80s and 90s. the effect was to marginalize capital a architecture while the soms and hoks of the world created our built environment. it wasn't until koolhaas embraced capitalism that it again became acceptable for architects to build and thereby participate in the system, but this time in a more clever way by simultaneously participating and commenting on the systems they are working within.
the reason why the projects posted above bother me is that they seem to be stuck within the tafurian model of self-referential critique; frankly they seem dated. sure, there is room for diversity, but in terms of a larger discourse of architecture, some projects are better than others.
but this may all be straying too far from your initial critique of form...
I agree. Some projects are certainly better than others.
I also think that architecture can and should react against third-wave capitalism and commodification as a form of forced sterility: one product for the entire world, and the mall-ification of the planet. For this reason, I do believe to some extent in Frampton's notion of critical regionalism.
But I think that one way architecture achieves that reaction is through its sheer diversity. Architects should have a conscience, but that doesn't mean we can't occasionally design a shopping mall. And maybe improve upon the mall in the process. (I also think it's possible to overcritique, and in so doing, constrain oneself in a kind of conceptual straitjacket. That's my perception of what happened in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Architects had tied themselves completely up in a knot of theories and were afraid to act. But "thank god," as Koolhaas later said, "the semantic nightmare is over.")
The other problem is that you pull out Tafuri and use it to criticize a project. But then someone else comes along (me?) and says "Tafuri? Who cares what some dead theorist says. I like the project, it seems fresh to me, it seems interesting." And Tafuri grows a little bit more dated himself.....
The End of Boxes
Just saw this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/travel/escapes/09away.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
and one thing occurred to me:
Aren't we all going to get really tired really quickly of prefab modernist boxes? It seems like Dwell has beat this typology to death. A box used to seem spare and elegant to me, but now it just feels like the architect had no ideas (particularly when it's covered in wood slats.)
But what's the alternative? Are there any examples of prefab that move away from the dumb box typology?
only because the prefab boxes look like ass.
i posted a ton of non-dumb box pre fab here.
as for me, i'm sticking to the swiss box. has worked well thus far, and it never gets old.
i like dumb boxes. but then i like quiet unassuming buildings.
that house is fine, but probably didn't need to get published or recognized.
i beat box....... i dont it will get old
as for boxes.... if it's broken up proportionaly to make sense then do it...
Great examples, holz.box.
Maybe I'm just getting tired of the Dwell magazine/Design Within Reach orthodox modernism that a lot of people seem to be promoting these days (at least in the U.S.) Much of it seems deeply unoriginal and even uninspired.
agreed, there is no rigor and it's all a [bad] variation on a theme.
all the dwell prefabs are devoid of soul. i thought flatpak might be an interesting take, but the detailing was a little rough.
Could it be Dwell that's annoying ? Do we resent the popularization/commercialization/fadding of what was once an achitectural insider's convention ? Or don't we want to go there ?
i remember reading somewhere that a lot of the projects by todd saunders were prefab to a large extent.
dwell is definitely annoying, but it seems to have a large circulation of non-architects which isn't neccessarily a bad thing. just as long as clients aren't coming in w/ architecture digest i don't mind. but dwell is too heavy on the adverts, which has been heavily discussed in the forum.
frankly, i'm not a fan of these pretty little boxes in the country. i don't see any difference between the images above and what is published in dwell. good detailing does not necessarily make good architecture. these projects seem absolutely void of an idea.
i have no problem with boxes as long as there is thought behind them.
The Beginning of Boxes?
Louis I. Kahn, Norman Fisher House, construction completed June 1967.
aerial view
street views
Until flat and straight materials are no longer the most efficiently-produced (or least expensive) elements of building construction, and until occupants no longer require horizontal surfaces on which to stand and move, the box (I suspect) will remain.
the end of blobs
The Beginning of Blobs?
Le Corbusier, Electronic Calculation Center Olivetti at Rho-Milan, 1963-64.
boxes look great if well detailed.
Certainly. We know a certain gentleman who advocates doing away with the brick. Why would you throw away a useful tool or material ?
. . .or form ?
"box" architecture will never die, and i agree, the residence from the article isn't very compelling, but i think what makes a simple box great architecture, is the focus on the interior. By saving money etc. on the exterior, it's possible to create an interesting, rich interior. Obviously its possible to go wrong with a box, but its possible to go wrong with any type of architecture. There are plenty of buildings with unique, twisting (non-box) exteriors, and shoddy interiors.
i think the box is an interesting architectural exercise, it's been used forever and i'm sure it won't die anytime soon.
viva la box...box modernism - its hot love it, damnit!! The box will set you free!!
i always felt the steiner's goetheanum in CH was a better precursor to "the blob"
first goetheanum
second goetheanum
i always thought this was the precursor to blobitecture
.gif)
The second Goetheanum is certainly sculptural, but I wouldn't call it blob-like.
Though it's hard to discern from the model and plans of the 'cafeteria' facilities of the Olivetti center, there is a definite free-flow circulation between levels which is a strong 'blob' characteristic.
Also posted in the news:
http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=67366_0_24_0_M
And Orhan made a great point that I am going to repost on his behalf:
i don't see anything green about a second home you built on a floodplain which you visit once a month.
solartube, takagi water heaters, low flush toilets and what, disposible baby diapers? bah... standart details even in city of los angeles proper.
where are the cisterns, self generated electricity, waste manegement, self sustaining food production? that would be worthy of an article on sustainability focused article.
this one should be in business section on second income investments.
i have seen this house before. it was in holland or something? nice house but haven't i seen this article before with the same details?
i don't know? maybe i am just responding to the way it is written up. seems like nothing worthy of newspaper article unless it has acres of wood facade screen screwed and a picture of family in front of it.
wk, i am just shooting at the messege not the messenger. you know i respect you a great deal. i am already feeling like a same old tune, but i think most of my points are valid.
I totally agree, and I posted the link because I figured it would stimulate a discussion that I did not have time to engage at that particular moment. How is a second home a sustainable option? Why not take that money and sink it into making your primary residence less of an energy hog? I suppose it's more cost efficient/better for your career to take that money and make a statement for yourself if you are an architect, and oh, I don't know, get a write up in the New York Times.
On the issue of boxes however, I am pretty good at them personally, so I will probably keep doing them myself. ;o)
Yes I'm tired of the bad prefab buildings in dwell that cost more than a custom home. But the article says this is not prefab, so I'll leave that to the prefab thread.
I think projects like this (and most of the stuff in dwell) are refreshing. It's a lot better than 99% of the homes that get built by architects or otherwise and dwell isn't doing a horrible job of promoting the value of architects (better than the AIA is doing).
So now this couple has (2) 900sf homes. Both combined are still smaller then the average size American family home and driving out there once a month the commute is still less than most people do going to work on average.
If the New York times comes to you and wants to do a writeup on your project you will you decline to speak to them because you don't believe your modest project is newsworthy?
I've worked on projects that have been published, the articles can be comical if not delusional. The facts are pretty much all wrong and they clearly don't understand the project at any level. I never cease to be amazed at the stuff the journalists make up, conversations with them that you never had, and they place them in "quotes" no less. Fabricating facts that just aren't true. Most of it was innocent enough (not all) but I mean, come on, that's your job? To interview me and you somehow got a quote that I never said to anybody ever? How's that go? Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I guess I'm a bit cynical but after the limited experiences I've had with the media, I don't put to much faith in thier words. And at the end of the day even with the misinformation it did bring in some new clients so...
So yes Orhan I think you're being a bit harsh. Don't get too bent over the media, they aren't worth it. You raise some really good points, green isn't in the spec. book. It's sort of like eating healthy food but consuming 10,000 calories a day.
Publications gushing about "green" when it amounts to a buzzword for what should be common sense is disappointing. But even if it is disingenuous does it at least bring an important issue into view of the public and form some semblance of a social concious towards how we build?
And on the selfish side "green" architecture places clear value and importance on Architects and architecutre.
One more comment on dwell :) is it just me or are 75% of the homes featured in there the architects own home? Is that disturbing to anyone else? I guess it's not really an issues with dwell, but it starts to give the impression architecture is for architects. I'd like to see some homes for clients.
SDR... the brick took me a minute :)
psyco-mullet
first thing i learned in school:
FABA (for architects, by architects)
(Do they still say this in the studio: FIx it, Fake it, Fudge it or Forget it ?)
Isn't the architect's own home sometimes the only unmolested evidence of his best intentions ?
isn't kiesler considered the granddadddy of the blobs? or maybe he's just like a friendly uncle?
endless house, 1960. sorry to digress.
kielser is also considered the first true link between surrealism and architecture, having been a surrealist himself in the early 30s
I don't know about you guys, but I love box.
(It's surprisingly hard to find images of the Endless House online. There are several models made during the 'fifties; the 1959 model measures 38" x 42" x 97 " !)
There's so much still to do with the box -- with the square, (with the circle) -- that it seems foolish to consider abandoning it just because it's now easier than ever to make a blob or because some are temporarily bored with orthogonal or other regular geometries. But that isn't necessarily the question posed in this thread. . .
Project from 1930 russia experiment for a green city.
For me, the argument isn't "blob versus box."
It's innovative architecture that's well detailed and perhaps responds to the site and environmental conditions versus, well......super-bland architecture that's ripped straight out of Dwell magazine circa 2003.
I don't necessarily have anything against the form of the box. It's just that it's become such a crutch for "modern designers": here's my pedigree in the shape of a shoebox, with wood siding and the obligatory Eames furniture (purchased from Design Within Reach) and George Nelson clock. Ugh.
But I also feel that many examples of "blobitecture" seem uninhabitable—a form of visual masturbation, as if to say, "look at my fancy rhinoscript!" Architecture should go beyond its slavery to mere forms, whether they're blobs or boxes.
I sort of like the following as a suggestion for a new kind of house. Don't know what the budget was, but at least it's original:
http://www.new-territories.com/split%20the%20wood.htm
Or this, by the same folks:
http://www.new-territories.com/roche%20barak.htm
are those links right, farwest1? what they took me to looked meaningless.
the spider project by roch is a great piece. In the last issue of Mark, there was another project based on the same idea, less sculptural but with a more functional approach toward the tent structure around the house, wich was basically a chamfered box. I think in many ways the idea of hybridation is pretty much the way to go for me (and it dates back to my thesis in the 90's); it allows to go in any formal direction basically, and outside of a precise contextual description of site, client and whatnot, i find it difficult to judge an architectural form in itself.
Do you mean you don't like the work they took you to? Or that the website didn't work?
Why do you think they "looked" meaningless? Is it all about looks? How do you evaluate meaning in architecture anyway?
What's interesting to me about R&Sie's work is that they incorporate natural processes of landscape growth into their projects—the net is meant to hold the encroaching forest at bay, carving out a space of dwelling within it. It's a simple idea, and to me it has much more meaning than a lot of what's being designed today.
You can like it or not like it on an aesthetic level. But at least it's different from the typical modern box typology.
One of my favorite quotes (paraphrasing):
"Fashion is that which at first looks beautiful but becomes ugly over time.
Art is that which at first looks ugly but becomes beautiful over time."
Jean Cocteau
I have to admit that when I first saw R&Sie's work, I thought it was ugly and perhaps meaningless. But then I got to know it better, and now I like it.
Same, for many people, with any architecture. The Frank Gehry house is a good example. Ugly and hated at first, but now quirkily beautiful.
Links worked for me.....I saw that first one in Abitare recently and it suggests a bit of blob + box with quite a blur between inside and out. It looks like it would be fun to experience.
I've sometimes wondered if the whole loft/open space-kitchen with bar transition to living space will slow.
I hear what you're saying farwest with the Design Within Reach Box formula. Leaves a bit to be desired for me too.
I think the beauty of something simple works best with an element of the project less so.
ah.
really i was puzzled. the page it took me to didn't resize so all i was seeing was the little picture in the top left corner. you can understand my confusion....
ok. i found the work. now i can actually look at it.
FAR architects, via dezeen.com
i tend to agree with steven's first impulse - "what's the point?" i think most of us will agree that there is something unsatisfying about the dwell/dwr box, i.e. architecture as commodity, but i think the problem is that few of us can agree on the antedote. to me the projects you posted, farwest, look directly out of the tafurian school of criticality. these projects to me create more problems than they seek to answer and for that reason are completely insular and really only comment on their own making. there's clearly thought embedded within them, but i question to what ends.
First we has to agrea , that these houses and objects, perform best visualised by the designer, as core structure nothing more. What can and digitaly can, produce the thing, the house, the object nice or brute, houses we will find cost a third and is four times as strong.
Artestry there might bring the real thing, the mastery we seem to have been waiting for our survival --- it's there, it's there in having a 3dh framework cut by simple nc cutters now, now everything suddenly proved to be worth the trust. The early digitaly inspired pictures of 3D volumes, was miles away, from discussing the fabric the trivial issue of things bore. If you can only ,either rearange the decor or only decore a cake, then it will become difficult, to promote the whole issue of architecture, pointing to a dramatic change in perception of the build works. When you replace 200 different items that othervise assemble a house, and replace all these with just one materialas in 3dh, a material that profit sheet material fabrication. work with even primitive Rhino software. We need a new architecture and we need one that respect credit ,why make everything that don't work ,when a bit , just a bit credit is even without costs for you, honer both nice design and a brand new oppotunity ?
Let me addm that I contribute this, after adding a link to some early sowjet architecture, -- dig holes the form of the building parts on site, pour in concrete and steel ,prepared holes for steel profiles , jack it into place ,winch the other side up standing, place the transverse. Now there are a house. Can also work in lines of houses, --- what would that "cost" case there was free one to one plans ? And They made this 1930 how far further, has the computer rearanged that ?
Sorry Steven. I thought you had seen the work, thus your "meaningless" comment—didn't realize that the link didn't work for you.
jafidler,
I guess I question the need for a singular antidote. One thing I love about global architecture right now is its diversity. I can appreciate the R&Sie work, the swiss work that holz.box posted, and even someone like Jim Cutler's work. A spectrum from fairly radical and perhaps ugly to fairly conservative and easily accepted. I like it all, as long as it has a certain quality and some uniqueness.
What I was criticizing was the copycat tendency in American modernist circles.
I don't think there's a single antidote that we have to try to agree on (or even a problem that needs an antidote, really. Part of me is glad about the prevalence of modernist boxes, even if they're copycat and cheaply detailed, because it ends up supporting the cause of innovative architecture.)
There you go. Problem solved. . .
The new cookie-cutter architecture ?
Wolfhilde von Schlittenfahrt, Schachtel Architektur, 2005.12.09
Conjecture: Kiesler's Endless House project may well have inspired the 'blob' elements within Le Corbusier's Electronic Calculation Center Olivetti at Rho-Milan for there are more endless-house-like elements within the Olivetti Center design.
farwest1, your last statements (to jafidler) rings true. Diversity is much more a reality than most (critics) like to admit. I'd even go so far as to say diversity is a viable design methodology.
both frampton [and tzonis and lefaivre's] critical regionalism and the 'opposite' camp of eisenman & hays's critical architecture are a reaction against commodification.
farwest, your comments on diversity follow frampton's side of the argument, which argues for appropriateness to place and culture.
unthinking, do you have any more images of the olivetti center? i'd never seen that project.
aml, from Oeuvre Complete, Vol. 7:
The design is an interesting combination of box, blob and mat.
farwest, i think the "problem" is as aml points out commodification. architects ever since tafuri have been trying to confront architecture as commodity. throughout much of postmodernism that meant removing architecture from participation by refusing to build, i.e. the paper architects of the 80s and 90s. the effect was to marginalize capital a architecture while the soms and hoks of the world created our built environment. it wasn't until koolhaas embraced capitalism that it again became acceptable for architects to build and thereby participate in the system, but this time in a more clever way by simultaneously participating and commenting on the systems they are working within.
the reason why the projects posted above bother me is that they seem to be stuck within the tafurian model of self-referential critique; frankly they seem dated. sure, there is room for diversity, but in terms of a larger discourse of architecture, some projects are better than others.
but this may all be straying too far from your initial critique of form...
I agree. Some projects are certainly better than others.
I also think that architecture can and should react against third-wave capitalism and commodification as a form of forced sterility: one product for the entire world, and the mall-ification of the planet. For this reason, I do believe to some extent in Frampton's notion of critical regionalism.
But I think that one way architecture achieves that reaction is through its sheer diversity. Architects should have a conscience, but that doesn't mean we can't occasionally design a shopping mall. And maybe improve upon the mall in the process. (I also think it's possible to overcritique, and in so doing, constrain oneself in a kind of conceptual straitjacket. That's my perception of what happened in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Architects had tied themselves completely up in a knot of theories and were afraid to act. But "thank god," as Koolhaas later said, "the semantic nightmare is over.")
The other problem is that you pull out Tafuri and use it to criticize a project. But then someone else comes along (me?) and says "Tafuri? Who cares what some dead theorist says. I like the project, it seems fresh to me, it seems interesting." And Tafuri grows a little bit more dated himself.....
tafuri is dated mainly because he is dead, but he was incredibly important in his time. we would not be having this discussion without him.
but i agree, there's something to be said for a project that makes you say, "cool"...
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.