A New Perspective on Architecture

Reading through the manifestos, "'Life in the Metropolis' or 'The Culture of Congestion'" by  Rem Koolhaus and "Learning from Pop" by Denise Scott Brown, I was able to gain this whole new perspective on how to analyze and utilize architecture.  Both of these passages speak to the topic of pragmatism which, by definition, is "the attitude of looking away from first things, principles, categories, supposed necessities, and of looking towards last thing, fruits, consequences, facts". 

The Koolhaus reading stuck out the most to me.  He speaks about a metropolis using the example of New York City, and more specifically Cony Island.  He talks about how Cony Island was created with the vision of an utopia.  If there was something missing, they created it.  One example was using lights to provide extra "daylight" so that more visitors could use it.  I think this is a very interesting way of looking towards architecture. 

On the one hand, you can look and respond to your environment and utilize and emphasize what is already existing, or in Koolhaus's example, you can create whatever you want.  If the desired resources are missing, then just create them.  These seem to be two very different extremes in terms of thinking about designing architecture, but I think there is something that can be learned from this utopian way of thinking. 

For our current studio project, we are building in Haiti.  Along with this comes the restraint of limited resources, water, electricity, etc.  It is not feasible to use a utopian approach such as the metropolis and Cony Island did, however, what if there was a way to manipulate what is currently available at our disposal into something that we otherwise wouldn't have access to?  An example of this would be the way many buildings create windows there currently.  They do not have traditional glass windows as you would see in other places of the world; instead they creatively use CMU blocking to create the aesthetic of a window.  Perhaps the lesson that can be taken from these readings is to not stop thinking outside of the box, even if you have limited resources.  Perhaps there is a way to reinvent the wheel.