Stuck in a Bubble

“Koolhaas suffers from what I call ‘Blade Runner syndrome’,” Fredric Jameson once said, proclaiming his buildings were all “inside without an outside.”  In a 2007 book Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism, Jameson goes back to this: “What I have been struck with the in the work of Koolhaas is the way it builds an enormous envelope for all kinds of unprogrammed but differentiated activities.”

My reading of this is that you have a pretty box and the inside is a mess—differentiated, to be sure, but a mess—where you can put absolutely anything and everything and nothing at all—my understanding of the definition of Junkspace.  It doesn’t even matter what’s going on inside, but there’s a definite difference between who’s in and who’s out.  Take Lee III.

I have the unpopular opinion of not particularly liking this building... I'm known to say that I hate it.  It’s oppressive.  It’s maddening.  It’s a hot, noisy bubble of stress, sweat, tears, and (sometimes) blood.  Undergraduates, graduate students, practicing architects, professors, architecture students, landscape architects and their students, art students… classrooms, offices, studios, review spaces… they crash together and pile on top of each other in a sickening, maddening, nightmarish mess.

And, of course, the thing everyone applauds it for: the “trees” inside that support the canopy of the roof.  “They’re designed to look like trees,” everyone coos.  Sure.  They’re designed to look like trees—they’re not trees.  It’s unnatural nature… fake nature.  And let’s not forget, it’s a—pardon me—fucking bubble.

We’re surrounded by nature and physically separated from it.  We can admire it all we want safe and “cozy” in our steel forest with the dappled light coming in through the skylights—err, canopy.  But no greenery… no birds… no wind… no ambiance… it’s an “inside without an outside.”