KILLIN IN THE NAME OF JUNK
What's better than a TV? How about a headset that takes you on an experience into another verse. A pseudo verse, or in our case, the META VERSE! This is a magical place that satisfies your urge to get the things you really have ever wanted! Go buy that car you always wanted, or that house you've always dreamed of! Everything is possible in the Meta verse.
Don't worry about going to the mall anymore either! Those are dying anyway. This digital architecture is fabulous, and we'll give you the comfort of the mall experience, and right from your own couch! That's right! Don't move a muscle.
It's always so interesting to me how people simply don't ask the tough questions about cause and effect. What happened to the ethical route? Did convenience wipe out this line of thought?
In Irrational Exuberance, Ellen Dunham praises and criticizes Koolhaus for his take on opportunity of the architect in modern times. The opportunity of course is the ability for the architect to become a starchitect for the first time in history. I for one really loved some parts of what I read. In particular there's a quote that says,
"Bataille’s writings influenced both Tschumi and Koolhaas to seek to liberate architecture from itself, to destabilize and deconstruct the discipline’s will to order space and society. In their design projects in the ’90s, both architects pay particular attention to ramps, spaces of movement and sculpted voids — indeterminate, un-programmed sites for transient events. Both employ montage, text and translucent materials in order to de-emphasize formal boundaries; and perhaps most innovative of all, both promote programmatic instability in order to counteract architectural rigidity.”
I really love this because, its sort of a response of more open spaces, in terms of architecture, relating to the Berlin Wall and that traditional, rigid, form, that really stood for oppression and limit to freedoms.
I think we can use this excerpt as an example of what we should do as architects in this society going forward. It's a much bigger responsibility than we realize. To create meaningful architecture, not just off monetary gain. We don't need more junk space. We need to get the capital gain monkey off our back, and provided lasting shelter that is meaningful and emotional to the masses.
I've been enamored by youtubers who exclusively create content centered around the Sims. Part of me feels like I missed a more lucrative calling, but it fascinates me that people out there earn hundreds of thousands of dollars working exclusively in digital content and ideas. I think the metaverse is opening up interesting ideas about what realm we truly exist in. I think it's a stroke of brilliance that people have found a way to sell products that do not actually exist in exchange for real currency. I agree, we don't need more junk space (digital or physical) and we need to provide shelter and physical solutions to needs that exist in this current reality that we all share.
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