You just can't get rid of some architects. If they're successful, everyone wants to use them. The older they get, the more in demand they are. It was true in the past of America's Frank Lloyd Wright and France's Le Corbusier, it's true today of America's Frank Gehry, Italy's Renzo Piano, Britain's Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. This has always been an art where wide acceptance comes relatively late in life - though the current crop of septuagenarians are striplings compared with Oscar Niemeyer, creator of Brasilia, who is incredibly still working at 100. Even so, we're now at a pause moment. What on earth comes next?
Gabion
13 Comments
Terminator X, Bring the Noise!!
about every week now, i see a what's next article.
seems like a lot of people are goin' down by the wayside. you run into these conversations behind the scenes as well. definitely somethings are coming to an end. yet only half baked ideas are emerging.
what's next? ;.))
I think he is right about ornamentalism. However, it is not necessarily new.
Everyone one likes a shiny facade. And isn't a turbine just a new type of gargoyle?
New Ornamentalism is a terrible name, the name won't last. We should call it Laser Cutter Architecture.
Seriously, of course you're going to see a lot of this, as more industrial scale lasers, mills, and water jets come online. It's really cheap to wrap a box in some patterned skin.
The question at the very end intrigued me: the next authentically British architecttural movement...?
Will there be any more movements that aren't, somehow, global?
nouvel's institut du monde arabe...ornament with function and concept...still ornament?!
i visited IIT's student center by oma, and those graphic wall portraits of mies were composed of iconic "stick figures" of student activities that take place in the building...so symbolic, right?!
regardless, my vote for what is next: modernism
Simples,
Would that be post-post-modernism?
ha!!! there have been so many "post" modernisms already...all reactions...
personally, we got to clean things up again, and find a way to bring validity to (modern) architecture again!!!
It's weird to read such an article only talking about style and not about the roots of each style described. British Hi tech is deeply rooted, in my point of view, in the Archigram era, and at the time where Beaubourg was build, hi tech was in itself a form of critiscism of technology.
The way he describes eco architecture as just another style is to me a misunderstanding of what we are facing. It is not right now defined as a style, but anybody that looks at a photo of the new ornementalist monument, ie the Pekin Stadium by Herzog and de Meuron (frequently nicknamed as "H&M") can see the problem of the pattern concept as it is: beautiful form, material waste. It is important I think to understand what problem lies behind the style considering the subject most emphasized as a problem by today's society.
I don't know exactly how to adress the environemental problem in architecture but I think it's the topic of the decade. For every country, not just for yer ol' Island I mean.
Sorry for my bad spelling. I don't find as much time as I used to to write my comments in these columns. But I hope you guys will get my point...
I believe that they should just start using numbers. We'll call this 1301a & b
wait... Corb was Swiss! If they're saying Corb is France's, then by the same metric Gehry should be Canada's :)
if FAT is leading the new wave... i hope i got reef rash.
i'm even on the fence about transparent house's decorative concrete
fingers crossed for "interesting times".
Sam Jacob has an interesting essay up about contemporary design tendencies at his blog Strange Harvest
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