Warm Architecture 🤔?
The study of architectural history is to be informed of what happened, what is happening, and how would it inform (or not inform) the architecture in the future. After reading about critical and projective architecture, I couldn’t help but started to question if architecture of today has became “WARM”. What do I mean by it?
Let’s me first express on how I understood what critical and projective architecture are? Critical architecture, also known as Hot architecture, is where the architect disregarded everything that is of and surround a project, and only focused on a big idea that is the main driving force of that said project. Whatever that big idea was. Like we see in Peter Eisenman’s and Daniel Libeskinds’ works. As a result, hot architecture seems to possess a quality that we can loosely identify as “out of context”. That the architecture resulted in that we might question “Why?”
Projective architecture, also known as Cool architecture, on the other hand is where the architect allowed others factors within and surround a project to influence the outcome of that said project. Like we see in Rem Koolhaas’s Seattle Central Library. The project allowed the functions and the grouping of these functions to inform the final shape of the building. The library itself also seems to fit in with the physical context that it is in by the use of glass and steel.
WARM architecture 🤔… I question this in betweenness when looking at parametric architecture. Perhaps one of the iconic example would be the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not trying to critique their works. In fact, Zaha Hadid was one of my admiration in pursuing a career in architecture. Coming back to this idea of WARM. The project has a strong gesture and a unique language that is similar to the characteristic of critical architecture. Looking at the building in its context, one would agree that it is out of context. However, the design’s concept tied with the culture’s believes and outlooks. As it is stated in an Arch Daily article, the Heydar Aliyev Center was “designed to become the primary building of the nation’s cultural programs, breaks from the rigid and often monumental Soviet architecture that is so prevalent in Baku, aspiring to express the sensibilities of Azeri culture and the optimism of a nation that looks to the future.”
Image from archdaily.com. Copyright Hufton+Crow.
So warm architecture happens when the two ideas of hot and cool became blurred in our contemporary practice. The Heydar Aliyev Center is just one of the example. I could see the same logic can be applied to other architectural pieces (large and small) in the contemporary time.
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Perhaps, my question of warm architecture could be analyze through the lens of what is context? But this is another topic on its own.
Tuyen,
ReplyDeleteThe idea you're postulating about the existence of "warm architecture" is highly perceptive. It is almost as if as time goes on and context shifts, hot and cold architecture find themselves adapting to the moving forces surrounding them in order to survive. The context of the real world is generally at room temperature, and so every object within starts to slowly shift up or down in temperature to meet the temperature of the context. If we lived in an exclusively cold culture, cold architecture would last, and hot architecture would die, and vice versa.
Tuyen,
ReplyDeleteVery thoughtful analysis. Warm and cool architecture, to me, is an example of the historical architectural pendulum that will be going back and forth forever. The warm architecture that relies heavily on shock factor and artistic influenced form reminds me of heavily ornamented architecture that was big and swung to sleek and simple modern architecture that we see today. Could warm architecture possibly be the future? As architects it seems uninspired and overly aesthetic but is there an argument in favor of it?
These are good questions to think of. After today class when David told us that we should take our own stand and finding people that we take inspiration from. I do feel now that perhaps the idea of "warm architecture" could be a possibility.
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