A Boring Dystopia
"The virgin nature that is the destination of this frantic migration
disappeared under the onslaught of the unprecedented hyper-density."
- Koolhaus, Culture of Congestion
Culture of congestion to me describes the strangeness of how we've appropriated these natural elements (the landscape, cows, bathing, horses, love) and examines instances where we’ve substituted them —through a process of highly rational invention, design, planning and engineering— with these bizzare facilities that serve us. It came about both organically and inorganically. That someone along the way, during the very deliberate and purposeful design of the Downtown Athletic Club and its very careful “planning and choreography of mankind”, decided that an oyster bar belonged in a boxing club — that the application modernism was capable of being absurd. That no matter how rational the design of a building is, how it is occupied is subject to the peculiarities of how we behave.
“while the interior is in a constant state of flux—of themes, programs, iconographies—in which the volatile metropolitan citizens, with their overstimulated nervous systems, combat the perpetual threat of ennui.”
- Koolhaus, Culture of Congestion
It was collectively felt in early modernism that the metropolis and urbanity would be the answer to everything, and we’ve learned through experience that that's maybe not quite the case. Through mechanisms of capitalism, the tremendous capabilities of building, and of industry we’ve gone too far in some places. We’ve created an unnatural landscape where we behave unnaturally. Everything has become commodified, including architecture. We hardly even produce things, our economy is built on the exchange of specialized services. I think what Koolhaus is getting at is that we’re strange, we’re mostly governed by where we live and money. Not passing judgement on whether its a bad thing or not; it's our reality, it’s kind of dull and it’s kind of absurd.
In his description of Coney Island, Koolhaas highlighted man's search for "superior substitutes" for reality, including the natural world, through the application of technology. Bladerunner offered a possible outcome--a city lacking natural objects. Besides the constant rain, the white dove that the replicant Roy held as he died, and the human inhabitants (who were either threatened or subjugated), there were no signs of natural life. There were no plants, trees, flowers, animals, or sunlight in the metropolis. The city was completely man-made--buildings, streetscapes, police cars, animated toys, and robots. It was not until the final scene, when we might assume that that Rick and Rachel had fled the city, that a natural landscape appeared.
ReplyDeleteBoth the film and Koolhaas suggested that humans have devalued reality by creating an improved man-made version of nature. Dom's comment--"We’ve created an unnatural landscape where we behave unnaturally"--made me think about the sustainability challenge as the consequences of climate change become more obvious. How can architects and others replace the trend of replacing nature with a practice of revering and sustaining nature?