Post-Functionalism or Modernism ?
This week's readings were interesting in different aspects, although hard to consume and digest, my interpretation of different passages from Eiseman's "Post-Functionalism" and Manfredo Tafuri "L' architecture dans le boudoir" led me to believe that post-functionalism and modernism, even if different theoretically and design wise, share the same purpose which is subjective innovation.
Indeed, both theories if we can call them that, derive from a language that changed the relationship between human beings and the objects they use everyday especially mathematically shaped objects. However, I like to go back to Frampton's "Avant-garde" theory and Heidegger approach on the concept of dwelling because these helps us bring a better support to understanding Eisenman post-functionalism theory as related to making purposeful spaces.
On the one hand, Eisenman seems to give a clear and decisive interpretation of the difference between modernism and post-functionalism. As he highlights in the reading, "the effort to represent the inner logic of the object in the object itself is made not because of some preordained decision to exclude other considerations but because of the felt consequence of a historical evolution crucial, if not unique, to the discipline of architecture itself." This leads some readers like myself to think about "modernism" as an ideology rather than a final product of architecture, maybe it is, or maybe it is not. That in turns make sense as we start diving more and more into modernism, and looking at the work of Le Corbusier by example, and his approach to solving social needs through "La Ville Radieuse." I am bound to agree with Eisenman on functionalism as a paradigm that keep up the theoretical process of architecture alive following the end of the modernist era, but Eisenman's architecture itself, although theoretically challenging and hard to interpret I would say, has been an important factor in helping us rethink how geometric shapes and specifically "pure geometric shapes" can metamorphose and gives us not forms that we need, but forms that critically approach the making of "spaces that are less pure in shape, more intriguing in function, and harder to understand. "
My question then is, what are the barriers and gray areas between the two, how can we better distinguish post-functionalism to modernism through theory? (the first image from Le Corbusier Zurich Pavilion shows a contrast between post-functionalism and modernism but still hard to fit the building into either one so which era does it belongs to and why?)
Really cool post, Mohammed. Although these dualism are always full of grey areas, to me the difference between post-functionalism and modernism is clear: modernism was created around social utopia, in moment of political and social unrest, a moment of cultural inception and new directions. Post-functionalism is devoid of any social idea, and emerges in the 80's, a moment of super-aestheticization.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Now it starts making sense.
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