Austerity, you say!
aus·ter·i·ty
1. sternness or severity of manner or attitude.
2. extreme plainness and simplicity of style or appearance.
I, admittedly, had to google this word when I came across it in the readings, as well as class. These are the two definitions offered by a quick google search. I find the contradictions in these definitions, severity and simplicity, incredibly interesting and appropriate to discuss the architectures of the Rural Studio and the likes. Plain in material and form, but also incredible ‘loud’ or definite. Since undergraduate school, I’ve always also been a fan of brutalism, and I think it’s for the same reasons. There’s a truth in brutalist architecture and Mockbee’s projects, an honesty that is immediately clear and revealing. I think this fascination also compliments my interest in studios like Lake Flato. To me, a lot of architecture today is so covered up and plastered with fake veneers, not only literally in material but also in form and vernacular. I get asked all the time, mostly by people outside the profession like family and friends, about what my favorite ‘style’ is… I know the answer they’re expecting is something like craftsmen or classical, or modern (whatever the hell that is), but my new response is usually “authentic”. Scarcity, in my mind, is expanded to mean derived directly from place… history of place, material of place, people of place.
Perhaps with the globalization we’re experience, this notion of place has been expanded beyond a healthy extent, so much so that the architecture of the global place is suffering.
Scarpa, Khan, Fehn, Flato, and Rural Studio
Austerity is just one of words...not that everyone assumes austere is negative...but just maybe that people dont know how to 'deal with it'. Too often I feel that it is in our nature (architects) to add more, more, more...that surly this giant slab of concrete cannot stand alone as an architecture..
ReplyDeleteI think that is too bad and is exactly why I enjoy reading posts like this so much. Thanks Mr. Whitt.
There's definitely a danger in globalization that we don't talk about too much. Often, the derivation of place is lost on a bigger scale and it’s a shame because the impact that has really defines the project. Without place and context, the building becomes a foreign object defined by those veneers that clad it.
ReplyDeleteI think it is essential that a project should always relate back in someway to the place/location it is built whether that is through the use of local materials, the way it sits on a site or the way the building responds to the existing site around it. It is sad to see all these generic box buildings popping up everywhere we turn that have nothing to do with the site, context or community.
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