Ego of architects
The article about Peter Eisenman has provided me with a completely different view of how architecture should be. I have to carefully think that the architecture, which totally separates from its own context and people who would use it, could be named as a real architecture, couldn't it? In this circumstance, the relationship between the object (building) and man (who uses the building) is broken down and disappears. The building just serves itself. The form which has no meaning or reason behind is just a pure physical object like a stone on a large field which we just ignore or have no awareness of its existence.
Peter Eisenman_Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
I believe that this kind of architecture is just a way to represent the ego of the architect. Actually most of architects nowadays have a big ego inside and they tend to show, at least, a bit of that ego in their design. Some architects just love the white colour in their buildings while others like to use glass to illustrate the transparency in most of their designs. However, architecture is a composition of many different relationships between the object, human, nature and so on. All of them evenly relate to each other and form the structure of our society. Doing architecture just depends on the ego is the shortest way leading to the destroy of our values.
A lot of the "Starchitects" out there do make their money based on their ego. Many clients want the status symbol of the building no matter how well the building works. So something about the ego has to work.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if that is "good" architecture, but it is successful.
I agree with the idea that buildings as self-contained objects does derive from the ego and make me think o artist like sculptures that make works that are meant to be just looked at. This is what is essentially being created through the idea of "objecthood", something that is suppose to just be looked at not used.
ReplyDeleteGoing off of what JJ says, the buildings we study are a result of big egos creating what they believe is the best design for the client (or the best statement they can make.) Those who do not put themselves into the building lose their signature that makes the building theirs. I don't see (some) ego as a bad thing, more as just the driver that creates the statement design. The buildings overtime develop their own egos, individual of the architect that designed it.
ReplyDeleteI think that ego is a source of obvious thing in architectural design that we are not able to reject it. I also agree with Gray that ego is not a bad thing. The matter here is how far we go with it in the design. Ego could make a successful architecture in terms of business but it also could wipe out the local values.
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