Objects in the sky don't look us in the eye
In my architectural journey thus far, I have purposefully avoided the skyscraper. I have lived in small towns, worked at small firms and chosen studio projects at much smaller scales. To me, these buildings in the sky are faceless, daunting, and disconnected. I am not scared to admit – I am afraid of bigness.
However, I feel like we find bigness everywhere we look – even in small towns. Bigness doesn’t have to be physically big, either. It is the billboard for not only size, but excess in the qualtity vs. quality relationship. When you think about the typical American citizen, their view is go big or go home, they always want more. Koolhaas says “there are too many ‘needs’ too unfocused, too weak, too unrespectable, too defiant, too secret, too subversive, too weak, too ‘nothing’ to be part of the constellations of Bigness.” In the constant search for more is where we lose the present, and find the superfluous “needs” he writes about.
I think that this is the problem we have to solve moving forward if we want the general population to understand design. Just as the architect is lost in bigness, we also lose the architect, or respect for our craft, in the typical public arena. We are not revered for our time and skills, not because we don’t have them, or even that we don’t represent them well, but because we do not fall head over heels for the bigness clients desire. Most choose to continue the fantasy rather than improving the reality.
This then begs the question, how do we merge these two actual needs – good design and the high-rise typology – without contributing to the fantasy of bigness? I don’t have a good answer, but love the mantra of architect Julie Eizenberg - architecture must “look you straight in the eye.”
However, I feel like we find bigness everywhere we look – even in small towns. Bigness doesn’t have to be physically big, either. It is the billboard for not only size, but excess in the qualtity vs. quality relationship. When you think about the typical American citizen, their view is go big or go home, they always want more. Koolhaas says “there are too many ‘needs’ too unfocused, too weak, too unrespectable, too defiant, too secret, too subversive, too weak, too ‘nothing’ to be part of the constellations of Bigness.” In the constant search for more is where we lose the present, and find the superfluous “needs” he writes about.
I think that this is the problem we have to solve moving forward if we want the general population to understand design. Just as the architect is lost in bigness, we also lose the architect, or respect for our craft, in the typical public arena. We are not revered for our time and skills, not because we don’t have them, or even that we don’t represent them well, but because we do not fall head over heels for the bigness clients desire. Most choose to continue the fantasy rather than improving the reality.
This then begs the question, how do we merge these two actual needs – good design and the high-rise typology – without contributing to the fantasy of bigness? I don’t have a good answer, but love the mantra of architect Julie Eizenberg - architecture must “look you straight in the eye.”
Looking up in NYC
bestamazingplacesonearth.com
Pico Branch Library, Koning Eizenberg Architecture
catalan-architects.com
Comments
Post a Comment