Renovate or Die
“O.K.., let’s talk about space then. The beauty of airports, especially after each upgrade.”
The topic of upgrades and renovations was briefly touched on
in class, when we mentioned how “Junkspaces,” like shopping malls, are constantly
having maintenance done during working hours. I find it interesting that even
with our modern innovations in both structure and materials, renovations are
extremely common, with topical renovations occurring once every ten or so
years. Koolhaas points out that we are not “leaving pyramids,” and I think most
of us would agree. Rather, and at least commercially, we are temporarily
marking society with fads that will physically cease to exist in only a few
short years, but if they remain, we detest their apparent age.
“Like multiple Babels, huge superstructures would last
through eternity, teeming with impermanent subsystems that would mutate over
time, beyond their control. In Junkspace, the tables are turned: it is
subsystem only, without superstructure, orphaned particles in search of a
framework or pattern. All materialization is provisional: cutting, bending,
tearing, coating construction has acquired a new softness, like tailoring…”
When I think about architecture that has truly lasted in
America, I think of 100-year-old homes, some of the churches in the first
American cities, and even state and national government monuments. Occasionally, you come across an ancient office building that
has been fully renovated to meet the needs of modern society. To me, the topical
renovation represents inadequacy. But I don’t believe this inadequacy falls solely
in the hands of the architects. Whether we design using trends or not, the cheapening
of the materials we prescribe constitutes necessary future change, but for
monetary reasons, client preference, and likely ease of design, we continue to
opt for the generic, minimum grade, and modular. Will our generation end the cyclical renovations that have become necessary for contemporary architecture?
Kat,
ReplyDeleteThose pieces of the texts stood out to me too. It is interesting that we are not longer building to withstand the test of time. Are we perhaps creating buildings that are too program specific where we need to have so many renovations in the buildings that happen to be testing time? Should we designing buildings that only last a few years to be torn down and rebuilt instead of doing renovations? We would then not have this layering effect happening in building? Maybe we should be building empty cardboard boxes instead of pyramids.
Like you implied, it all boils down to construction costs. Today it is important to make a building as cheap and fast as possible, however this results often in a lower quality building. Like the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day.
ReplyDeleteI think some of these differences in our buildings ultimately also comes down to the values that that building supports (or denies). With some of these large civic buildings, it was the shared identity and importance of these structures that dictated their permanence. So such importance has been placed on our commercial spaces, especially in recent years of the digital age.
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