Impending Junkspace

In the reading, "The Irrational Exuberance of Rem Koolhaas" by Ellen Dunham-Jones, I enjoyed the explanation of the context which produced Koolhaas and I find myself agreeing with many of the critiques she makes of his work. Specifically, the outlining argument that rather than attempt to solve the worlds issues through architecture, Koolhaas instead "rode the wave" of the 90s neo-liberal ethos, that economic growth and free markets would solve those issues for us. However, I find myself also believing that his work was a crucial step along an evolutionary path of architectural thought, which helped us arrive at, where we are at today. A major take-away from last weeks readings and lectures on retrospective manifestos was that sometimes it is required to view past architecture practice through a lens of non-judgement, so that we may extract the good aspects of it while learning and improving upon their shortcomings. 

Jones points out Koolhaas's concern for "the irrelevance of architecture and urbanism" due to "the disciplines inability to influence society", a time when the built environment was rapidly devolving into a sort of civil engineering of "increasingly inflated scale and the predominance of big-box stores, mega-malls and edge cities". His experience of the world was sort of like someone standing on a beach in which the moving water of a massive wave has already crashed around him and he was beginning to be pulled into the sea. To me, "Junkspace" is a reflection of this sense of being consumed by a world that no longer values the architect and design in the built environment. As the globalized world came into fruition, economic concerns and financial return on investment dominated any concern that societies once had for a different form of return on investment. The concept of social capital and the belief that the built environment plays a large part in the stability of this theoretical market. "He more or less single-handedly brought to the discipline's attention the burgeoning urban landscapes produced by the evolving global economy of the late 20th and early 21st century" -Jones. 

While it certainly was not a perfect approach or response to what was happening around him, it is clear that Rem Koolhaas gave architectural thought a new path to go down. This new path was free from the formal and rigid approaches of all previous movements and also largely free of the constraints of value engineering, but as Jones points out his work is free of the burden of having to solve larger issues. There are certainly obvious moral dilemmas in his skepticism of "ethical architecture" and its ability to save the world. However, what he did offer to us was the ability to live in a world where architecture can still have a sort of a deeper symbolism or intent. Often I find myself not really enjoying the symbolism and intent behind his work, however I can appreciate the rigorous nature of the work and the motivation to attempt to elevate architecture to enhance the human experience. I am not saying that he single-handedly saved the profession. But I do believe he had a large part in reviving societies value of intentional architecture and the relevance of design in the built environment. In a world full of junkspace with ever increasing quantity, if nothing else, he strived to offer an alternative that we can work with to develop better solutions.