My visual response to the question "Architecture is?" is my feeling on what architecture education is, or isn't. It seems as though the process of learning architecture is through a series of examples on what not do. Thus, the image. Not that all my feelings are negative, or that there is much "right" about the collection of images, but it is rare to find a professor that is enthusiastic about something happening in the real world, or a popular architecture literature that doesn't criticize the way things are done today. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I just haven't slept much lately, but this is the impression I have been getting lately.
Look, I know everyone hates on Frank Gehry. I did, too, until this last semester. Having visited the Bilbao Gugg, I've come to LOVE the building. The experience inside is all intentionally designed to hold artist-architect collaborated gallery spaces (meaning, Frank designed certain spaces with the artists' work in consideration such as Richard Serra's and Jenny Holzer). In addition, the spacial layout and juxtaposition between curves and orthogonal surfaces is very intriguing. That being said, I don't agree how that style has been copied and pasted in Chicago's Millenium Park (although I find the outdoor theater really enjoyable) and in Walt Disney's Concert Hall. That, to me is a big fat NO, and kinda of what I'm trying to get at in my architecture is...
ReplyDeleteYou're right, I don't really have anything against the Bilbao Guggenheim, I've never been but it looks intriguing. But it is arguably the poster building for the recent trend of starchitects copy-pasting the same building in every major city (Calatrava?). It's not Bilbao, it's the lack of any originality since then. What I'm really focusing on is how schools teach architecture (don't design a building without regard to context or culture). The statements are entirely correct, but lately we've been getting mostly a string of what not to do and how our profession is so outdated and archaic that it's hard to find anything that is truly "correct" or successful in architecture. Is there no room for positive inspiration? Or is education doomed to go the same way as the profession?
ReplyDeleteI think what you bring up is very interesting. Something that I thought of when you spoke in class was the ideal of architecture in the mind versus when architecture becomes reality. I don't think you were going this way with it, but is there the possibility that the reason bad architecture is pointed out rather than good is because of this? In a sense wouldn't good architecture be when the idealized architecture of the mind could become reality without any imperfections?
ReplyDeleteTo get back to the issue of contemporary architectural pedagogy, one of the only defenses I can think of for why we are educated as to what NOT to do, is that to tell aspiring architects what is good can be taken as prescriptive on some level; by leaving the question of what constitutes 'good' architecture open, one could make the case that professors are attempting to leave students' creativity run (somewhat) uninhibited. That being said, it is simply easier to criticize than to support. In contemporary academia, negative criticism and outright pessimism (of which we see plenty of both) are often conflated with intellectualism- nobody wants to seem dumb, so they place the proverbial dunce cap on someone else. The result of this mode of teaching is that students are forced to understand their education as well as what is being taught in order to make educated stands on what is being criticized. Unfortunately, it may take a few years for students to understand this, and some may miss the opportunity entirely.
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