War Creates Peace, Peace Creates Junk space.
War is never a great thing that can happen. The damage it does to countries and the loss of life is detrimental. World War ll specifically took a toll on the world like none other. The loss of human life is irreplaceable and so were the amazing and historical works of architecture bombed to oblivion.
However, after the war there was a change and things were different from before. Prior to the war a third of Americans lived in poverty and were still in the effects of the great depression. Low and behold after the war ended, the war industry now had nothing left to produce so they switched back to commercial production and began to make goods that people could afford. Here is where the majority of consumerism began. This is where we found architects filling the voids with junk space rather than work to replace what was lost. And Americans after being without for so long and feeling the prosperity of winning a war fueled that fire for a financially driven architecture.
I appreciate this interesting look at one of the factors that caused consumerism and therefore junkspace. It's important for us to remember changes to the built environment don't happen in a vacuum. There are at least a dozen other factors that when into the phenomenon surrounding the mall as well, like white flight and the invention of air conditioning.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to consider the consequences World War II had on architecture. It is one of the common themes many articles elaborate on. The most recent world changing event in our lifetime has been the pandemic. We've seen some retrofitting in architecture because of it and it could only be described as junk space, Plexiglas dividers and the remnants of peeled up dot stickers on the ground denoting 6'. Will we see any substantial changes in architecture due to covid? What will they be?
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