Casual Fridays Forever
What a read. Koolhaas’s “Junkspace” is by far my favorite read so far. He brought up the ugly truth about the majority of architecture that surrounds us today, which isn’t often talked about in school. We typically spend our time praising all the “star-chitects” or the builders of the past, but if we don’t take the time to address our current situation, how will we ever be able to move away from it? At this point, can we even move away from it? Or, do we have to accept junkspace as it is and find a way to deal with it. Koolhaas says, “there once was a relationship between leisure and work, a biblical dictate that divided our weeks, organized public life. Now we work harder, marooned in a never-ending casual Friday.” There’s something interesting about architecture in that at times, it holds a set of rules as to how to act or dress in a space.
He also states, “The more we
inhabit the palatial, the more we seem to dress down.” It's like we have become
immune to certain luxuries and grandeur. People travel to see some of the most
incredible palaces and cathedrals wearing the classic jeans and sneakers because
“it’s more comfortable.” In fact, sometimes we expect nothing less than luxury,
comfort, and convenience. We now expect new shopping centers to be filled with
our favorite brands, nicely designed with new finishes, furnishings and most
importantly – air-conditioning. Don’t get me wrong here, I love air-conditioning,
but I found it interesting that he partially blames it in the creation of junkspace.
Because we now have air-conditioning, we can build ridiculously large
structures and shove everything we’ve ever needed and wanted inside.
I like to compare this “junkspace”
to athleisure. The clothing concept is rooted in comfort. It looks like
you’ve either come from doing some activity (the gym, working out, bettering
yourself, whatever) or you’re on your way to go do one of those things, but in
reality, you haven’t done anything, and don’t plan on it. “Junkspace thrives on
design, but design dies in junkspace,” Koolhaas states. Junkspace wants to seem
like it came from somewhere great, or is going somewhere great, but really? It’s
just there. And we can either deal with it or not.
"Because we now have air-conditioning, we can build ridiculously large structures and shove everything we've ever needed and wanted inside." It is an enlightening explanation because I am somehow baffled by Koolhaas' mentioning of air-conditioning.
ReplyDeleteFor people to indulge in the spinning and rotating of capitalist logic, any resistance and distractions must be eliminated so that people can continuously attend to commodities and always concentrate on shopping--air-conditioning does just that. It is a powerful enervating equipment that eliminates our sensitivities to surrounding environments.
I love this idea of junkspace as architecture athleisure: comfortable and convenient. Not much thought is put into the final overall appearance as long as it serves its purpose of making peoples lives easier, just like throwing on sweats before heading out of the house. It seems that it is almost more acceptable to walk into a high end store while dresssed down in sweats if it is located in a mall versus set in a stand-alone building. This way of dressing in these junkspaces has become the new normal - it truly is an endless casual friday of space.
ReplyDeleteThinking back to the question posed in our debate on Thursday "athleisure or Suit + PJs" I believe you are right. Junkspace is athleisure but there is a worse side to it - PJs. Athleisure to me is the over-priced, recently remodeled shopping mall while PJs is the vacant strip mall off of your local interstate. Is it better to start the ‘pyramid-building’ process backup and have ‘athleisure’ buildings turn into ‘PJs’? Or is it better to work with addressing athleisure buildings?
ReplyDeleteWonderful insight on the outcome of air-conditioning. If it was never invented, let alone put inside of a shopping mall, people wouldn't want to stay for more than a few minutes. It'd be interesting to see where architecture would have gone if air-conditioning was never created. Would there be overall better composition, or would modernity have let to an alternative with the same mediocre outcome?
ReplyDeleteZoom is the perfect example of how we can rethink junkspaces. Check it out, I can be wearing slippers and sweatpants while on a professional meeting without having to worry about wearing boots. What if architecture was like zoom, what if we could create spaces that reflected that idea of being able to go to work without having to worry about so-called norms. Just thinking about it somehow as a theoretical question.
ReplyDelete