Unpopular Opinion
Unpopular Opinion:
We take ourselves too seriously as architects.
I thought it was kind of funny that the majority of the class was so against Peter Eisenman and the idea of Post-functionalism. In retrospect though, this isn't too surprising considering not many of us are theory or concept based thinkers here at Clemson (which is definitely a much more technical school than the average architecture program). As students, we were always told that "form follows function" or that everything needed to have a purpose or a convincing narrative to be considered successful. I don't necessarily disagree with the previous statement, but I also don't think it's fair to rule out all other other types or forms of architecture (or any design) simply because it doesn't follow your own opinions and rules. I think Jess makes a really great point in her post about the DAAP building at UC. While we definitely hated the way spaces were organized (because navigation was almost impossible and took forever), the professors and students were able to adapt and create really amazing events in ways that maybe Eisenman didn't intend for. I would consider that a success.
We take ourselves too seriously as architects.
I thought it was kind of funny that the majority of the class was so against Peter Eisenman and the idea of Post-functionalism. In retrospect though, this isn't too surprising considering not many of us are theory or concept based thinkers here at Clemson (which is definitely a much more technical school than the average architecture program). As students, we were always told that "form follows function" or that everything needed to have a purpose or a convincing narrative to be considered successful. I don't necessarily disagree with the previous statement, but I also don't think it's fair to rule out all other other types or forms of architecture (or any design) simply because it doesn't follow your own opinions and rules. I think Jess makes a really great point in her post about the DAAP building at UC. While we definitely hated the way spaces were organized (because navigation was almost impossible and took forever), the professors and students were able to adapt and create really amazing events in ways that maybe Eisenman didn't intend for. I would consider that a success.
VS
I wouldn't consider architecture that forced people to adapt to it in unintentional ways successful at all. (That's the success of the people.) Why then even have the concept of an architect?
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with your unpopular opinion: Eisenman took his theoretical framework too seriously and conducted experiments with it, and any greatness attributed to it came from the architecture adapting to his rigid theory to appear acceptable enough, instead of theory serving architecture.