no such thing as flexible architecture
"Architects thought of Junkspace first and named it Megastructure, the final solution to transcend their huge impasse. Like multiple Babels, huge superstructures would last through eternity, teeming with impermanent subsystems that would mutate over time, beyond their control."
-Junkspace, Rem Koolhaas (p.178)
One of the big buzz topics in architecture school and practice is the importance of flex spaces. Multi-purpose, flexible, adaptable. Your building/project must be the perfect solution for the program and applications of today, AS WELL AS be a viable solution for uses in the future you can't even begin to imagine. How is this possible when Architecture is supposed to be the solution to the specific need?
We design our buildings to last the test of time; to still be standing and used in 50, 100, 150 plus years from now. So yes, it makes sense to plan ahead for a future where your design will be adapted to a different use sometime within its life. But at the same time, is this solution and mindset an originating factor for Junkspace? The idea that buildings are designed to be pretty shells with different program shoved in through many lifecycles is a theme throughout Koolhaas' Junkspace. He even goes so far to align the different programmatic approaches to a virus, infesting the Architecture and mutating out of control.
In a sense he's right. I have seen buildings be a bank, sandwich shop, bar, post office, and back to a bank again. That is no longer Architecture with a capital "A". There is no defined space. It is not contained with an identity. It is ambiguous and flows from one program to the next. In designing and constructing new Junkspace, there is no thought for the present; all thoughts go to the future, what the space could be used for, rather than what the space definitely needs to be used for presently. Junkspace is not tethered to time.
-Junkspace, Rem Koolhaas (p.178)
One of the big buzz topics in architecture school and practice is the importance of flex spaces. Multi-purpose, flexible, adaptable. Your building/project must be the perfect solution for the program and applications of today, AS WELL AS be a viable solution for uses in the future you can't even begin to imagine. How is this possible when Architecture is supposed to be the solution to the specific need?
We design our buildings to last the test of time; to still be standing and used in 50, 100, 150 plus years from now. So yes, it makes sense to plan ahead for a future where your design will be adapted to a different use sometime within its life. But at the same time, is this solution and mindset an originating factor for Junkspace? The idea that buildings are designed to be pretty shells with different program shoved in through many lifecycles is a theme throughout Koolhaas' Junkspace. He even goes so far to align the different programmatic approaches to a virus, infesting the Architecture and mutating out of control.
In a sense he's right. I have seen buildings be a bank, sandwich shop, bar, post office, and back to a bank again. That is no longer Architecture with a capital "A". There is no defined space. It is not contained with an identity. It is ambiguous and flows from one program to the next. In designing and constructing new Junkspace, there is no thought for the present; all thoughts go to the future, what the space could be used for, rather than what the space definitely needs to be used for presently. Junkspace is not tethered to time.
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