Now, in the wake of the housing-market collapse and the recession, [starchitects] and their work are being accused of prioritizing surface over substance. But it’s likely that decades in the future, historians will look back at this period as one of unusual architectural creativity, particularly on the domestic front. Now, in the wake of the housing-market collapse and the recession, [starchitects] and their work are being accused of prioritizing surface over substance. But it’s likely that decades in the future, historians will look back at this period as one of unusual architectural creativity, particularly on the domestic front.NYT
I made the mistake (I really knew better, but did it anyway) of reading a lot of the comments after the article. Even on the Times boards, where one can suppose most people are fairly intelligent, one gets so much backwards illogical nostalgia-based dreck when reading comments. But this one by dg I thought was quite smart and apt:
The difficulty with this article is that it covers very complex designs and can only treat them as part of an overall thesis: look what architects did in the 90's and the 00's and how smart it is.
Whether you agree with, like, or dislike each specific project; the point is this architecture is markedly different from what preceeded it. It was enabled by clients who got richer through these decades, and a public who was happy to pay for such opulence (apartments, museum fees, product prices etc...) Architects are always serve the client (the client pays for the project!). What the client wants is conditioned by what they (or the markets they serve) will allow. If you dislike these buildings and their technological savvy, then you dislike society with its technological fascination of the last 3 decades. Just like New York, society can't stop changing.
The issue here is not that New York (or the world) is becoming collctively ugly or mechanised because of architects, but rather, that it is so because people have asked for it, implicitly or explicitly.
We complain here that "the market" demands faux-traditional McMansions; non-architects complain that "the market" demands shiny glassy shards. And people go on living happily in whatever kind of home they decided they liked.
Aug 27, 10 9:53 am ·
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I made the mistake (I really knew better, but did it anyway) of reading a lot of the comments after the article. Even on the Times boards, where one can suppose most people are fairly intelligent, one gets so much backwards illogical nostalgia-based dreck when reading comments. But this one by dg I thought was quite smart and apt:
The difficulty with this article is that it covers very complex designs and can only treat them as part of an overall thesis: look what architects did in the 90's and the 00's and how smart it is.
Whether you agree with, like, or dislike each specific project; the point is this architecture is markedly different from what preceeded it. It was enabled by clients who got richer through these decades, and a public who was happy to pay for such opulence (apartments, museum fees, product prices etc...) Architects are always serve the client (the client pays for the project!). What the client wants is conditioned by what they (or the markets they serve) will allow. If you dislike these buildings and their technological savvy, then you dislike society with its technological fascination of the last 3 decades. Just like New York, society can't stop changing.
The issue here is not that New York (or the world) is becoming collctively ugly or mechanised because of architects, but rather, that it is so because people have asked for it, implicitly or explicitly.
We complain here that "the market" demands faux-traditional McMansions; non-architects complain that "the market" demands shiny glassy shards. And people go on living happily in whatever kind of home they decided they liked.
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