Junk/Space = Big Brother's/Belly???
"Babel has been misunderstood. Language is not the problem, just the new frontier of Junkspace. Mankind... has launched a new language that straddles unbridgeable divides like a fragile designer's footbridge.. coined a proactive wave of new oxymoron's to suspend former incompatibility: life/style, reality/TV, world/music, museum/store, food/court, health/care, waiting/lounge... they aim to shed meaning in return for a spacious new roominess... Junkspace KNOWS all your emotions, all your desires. It is the interior of BIG BROTHER'S BELLY...
They know everything about you, except who you are.
Junkspace pretends to unite, but it actually SPLINTERS."
What the heck does this have to do with architecture? I've asked myself those questions before, but I'm starting to understand that architecture is a product of its time, culture, and place. Understanding what is happening in a cultural perspective sets up our understanding of architecture's inevitable response. As architects, we capture space for use, and our desire is for the form that surround the space to be beautiful. But instead, junkspace architecture emerged from a culture that looks more like "Big Brother's belly" instead of beauty. The programs of the buildings we are asked to design are jammed full of all the things that "Big Brother" knows you want... but by junking it all together, we've ruined the small amount of unity that we used to have.
Our culture has taken things that used to be sacred and separate, and fused them together thus beginning the remaking of the Tower of Babel. We once were scattered with our own small communities, cultures, languages, products, and architecture. But now, through this new language of oxymorons, the commonality of the English language, and the technological advancements that allow us to access a world of information, we have attempted to unify things that actually desired to remain beautifully separate and amazingly different thus creating a watered-down world where we all look alike, think alike, and therefore, design to accommodate it all. Thus Koolhaas would contend that the vast conditioned spaces found in the modern shopping mall is no longer the product of beautiful architectural concepts but instead the shell of Big Brother's belly.
Sydney - this was very interesting. I should go read the tower of babel story.
ReplyDeleteSyd,
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting read, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this! I definitely think that architecture is a product of its time. I mean just look at how much trends contribute to the most recent designs. When I think about that I immediately think of the modern farmhouse-- which was brought up in class one day with Chip + Jo. Unfortunately, the conformity of trends messes with the uniqueness that architecture had and could have.