discussing architectural cliches has become a cliche

Exactly. I never did a Decon(structivist) design in school, and took flack for it from the other students, because I didn't get why the building should look like that.

Shade screens at least serve a purpose, as do things like green roofs and cooling towers, when they're used properly. Slapping one on because it looks cool is indeed a cliche.

I'm also tired of parametrically modeled decorative screens that don't do anything more than look pretty. They DO look pretty, and certainly delight is a function, but I'm curious what structural, mechanical, constructability, and/or functional improvements parametrics can give us.

zaha

Whaddya call a parametrically designed decorative screen on the south side of a building?

Sunshade!

Whaddya call a parametrically designed decorative screen on the north side of a building?

Deconstruction!

and so do many practitioners. that project looks a lot like neil denari's work from the 90s... specifically the multisection office block... I bet with a bit of research I could find those forms going back even earlier...

niemeyer maybe?

IMO - there's nothing wrong with stealing forms - what makes an architect great is if when they steal them they either make them better or use them in new and interesting ways. I agree that it's probably good if you understand what generated the forms in the first place, but sometimes you don't really need to - as long as you recognize where they are coming from.

with that said, I'm tired of the blobs - short fat ones, tall skinny ones... they all seem lazy to me...

in parametricism there is potential in quickly exploring the redundancy of elements - and as a tool to automate certain iterative processes - however in most cases the investigations we continually see are extremely superficial. It's always been that way - before the days of parametrically driven design there were designers superficially copying forms that would impress people for a short while - they are still doing the same thing, except with fancy computer graphics and hacked scripts that make it seem like there is depth. I think now that it's become ubiquitous we're finally starting to realize who is actually producing meaningful work and who is simply adept at the tools.

for eyebeam competition, leeser's design looked more neat to me, just by looking at appearance.

neat!

Hey . . . I was being serious.

actually, the eyebeam ribbon -- see that one a lot. Also, variations of the Seattle Public Library / discreet volume within skin idea. In urban work it's either follies (a la tschumi) or programming strips (a la oma).

The thing is, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. Mimicry is not a bad place to begin as a student; and from what I've seen the students seem to do a pretty good job of analyzing the underlying reasons / organizations for the form and adapting the ideas to better fit their own project. By the time they're done they've usually managed to create something unique and appropriate.

I'll be honest, I wish I had mimicked more as a student; I thought, at the time, it was inherently bad and refused to even look at the magazines, thinking I was taking the high road. In doing so I cut myself off from some opportunities to develop by learning from the masters. Thankfully I figured this out after the first couple of years.

it used to be that architecture was taught by having students replicate the designs of famous buildings with elaborately rendered ink and watercolor elevations and plans. That's the beaux arts method.



hey, even the Egyptians copied the pyramids several times. So why can't we accept that copying is part of practice and education?

the Chinese are doing it very well.

the cliche I hate the most is folks thinking they are doing something original without bothering to look behind them at what other architects have done before - claiming precedent eliminates originality. This is most infuriating when done by students, choosing to be original versus thorough, or competent.

This kind of stuff. I am glad it is down to first year undergraduate projects -->

I used to be that way with my guitar designs, ignoring history and trying to be inventive. Little did I know how much cooler the stuff built by masters was than anything I could dream of as an amateur. Also, in working with the extremely original builders, I heard a lot of "I should have made more guitar copies." That is, folks who were inventing new instruments wished they had built more of what I built at guitar building school, something that was completely laid out 100+ years ago. They said it was all about process when you're just starting off.

But then, after twenty five years of not building copies, he is able to do things like this:

and


Talk about not-cliche...

But I digress. I'm not sure I even had a point besides saying "I plan on agreeing, once I have the experience to know to do so."

I guess those are cool.

But instrument shapes are not necessarily cliche no matter how genericized they've become.

I mean, the first example is a mildly distorted cello de gamba with a lyre attached to it (nothing even remotely new). And the cello de gamba is a ripoff of the viol which is a ripoff of the vihuela. And the vihuela is almost identrical to that minus the useless geometry.

The second one is a mandore with a lyre clumsily attached to it.

If anything, those are even more cliched than regular instruments because they're an iherent cliche of trying to be non-cliche.

The design of both of those instruments more than likely does nothing for the acoustics. That and find someone who is not the builder that is able to play either of those to any capacity.

There's a reason guitars are shaped like guitars and violins are shaped like violins.

Still cliched bordering on new age.

Corrugated metal used as exterior cladding.

Big brushed aluminum windows.

Pastels.

Slats and perf.

Before decon was pomo and high-tech. Mockitecture has a deconstruction of the clichés of the latter two here

There's something to be said for taking the time to use your hands and a pen to figure out a pattern or form-repetitious or not. In drawing something on paper or making a model there is time and labor involoved in which you know that if you make a decision you have to draw it and that takes time and energy, so it makes you think a little harder.

So much architecture today just looks like a trend rather than a statement-whether object building or 'chorus' building or whatever you guys call it.

They say arch is ten years ahead of landscape, but I wonder if it's heading ten years in the right direction.

no student is going to entre the area as this original innovative star..it takes time and sometimes from imitation (which is a form of our initial exposure to the discipline)..to figure out what we like
and without the technical know how....it's hard to even start thinking about innovating when you don't know what your parameters are.

also isn't creativity an expression of what we want to say..so unless we know ourselves..and know what it is we want to say or are interested in exploring in the world..we are simply making 'ignorant' forms that we feel somewhat of an intuitive connection (ie zaha knows why zaha creates the form she creates, but zaha imitators only create forms that look like zaha and don't know why)

i believe it is a continuous process of asking ourselves 'why am i doing this, what is it i am trying to say, who is it that i am, and which ways do i want to shape the world and why' these are difficult questions with even more complex answers

also i think we must be waru and not be too naive to think that creativity is this amazing Autopoiesis..isn't knowledge cumulative..and design build on on precedents..so without lots of knowledge and without being exposed to precedents..it's a high expectation no doubt..

my 4 cents worth

what do you think?