we're having downtown athletic club for dinner
In response to
Koolhaas: The Culture of Congestion
I am definitely a fan of Rem Koolhaas’ writing. Reading this article made me feel like I was invited to a dinner party the guest list including 100-story Building, Elevator 2, Love, and the Inexhaustible Cow. He sets the table and introduces the topic like the main course, then goes around to each attendee and asks them how they like the meal. I think it is interesting that as he talks about each specific topic, it seems sequential; like one could not happen without the former. He makes it all the way to the main course; The Downtown Athletic Club, explaining its functions in detail. Having the context of today's class, and learning about Koolhass' career, made this article more interesting to me because analyzing the Downtown Athletic Club was one of his first impressions of New York as a young, foreign architecture student.
“Through the mutual reinforcement of the elevator and the steelframe (the latter with its uncanny ability to support the newly identified territories without itself taking any space), any given site in the Metropolis could now be multiplied ad infinitum, a proliferation of floorspace that was called Skyscraper, prime instrument of the architecture of density.”
“Through the medium of the Skyscraper, each site in the Metropolis accommodates— in theory at least—an unstable and unforeseeable combination of superimposed and simultaneous activities whose configuration is fundamentally beyond the control of architect or planner.”
The want to create this power in commanding space is a result of our culture of more and excess but as Koolhass says, anyone who believes they can reverse the damages of this phenomenon, are just creating traditional, dignified empty spaces in the name of “stoic good taste”.
Is there a good in-between for the Metropolis or is congestion the answer?
Adrianna,
ReplyDeleteI can feel you are a big fan of Rem Koolhaas' writing from the title of this article. I like the way you tell the story. It sounds incredible at first, but it piqued my curiosity to read to know what happened next. About the last question, maybe new technology will tell whether it is a good in-between for the metropolis or not in the future.