The Braunschweig palace in central Germany is an imposing building dating back to the 18th century. It's got columns and statues of royalty on horseback, but walk inside and instead of suits of armor or priceless tapestries, there's a Starbucks. Everything about the palace is fake. The original building was bombed out during the war. The ruins were demolished in 1960. Palace 2.0 is just a facade. It was finished last year and serves as a fancy entrance to a $300 million shopping center called the Palace Arcades. The locals like the mix of history and consumerism.
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21 century architectural eclecticism or fake as a substitution for the ephemeral? the contrast between the new and the old does seem to make it more attractive for the public. i guess 'fake can be just as good' is going to become 'fake is superior'. after all, playing with fake is more fun anyways. it is more intelligent to begin with, even more considerate. thinking about corbu or mies who turned pretty much donkeys later in their lives, i think we should continue to celebrate the oppositions as a symbol of lived culture.
Is Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye still a real house, or is it now more like a fake shrine?
i had a chance to do some research while i was in school on how the concepts on villa savoye had been develped by corbu through his previous villas. it was a result of refinement of spatial, linguistic and architectonic orders apart from what had existed previously, so i don't think that it can ever be called a fake house. about considering the villa as a shrine, i guess it may have to do with how the orders of the villa have been translated to forms, whether as precedents or through negation in which case would be a fake shrine. hence, the question of epoch becomes relevant, whether we can call computer revolution as a real revolution or a fake one. i tend to think that we are still in the same epoch with corbu and mies until some of the researches being done with computers can be realized and revolutionize the building environments violently.
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