METROPOLIS MANIFESTED

 

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  Culture of Congestion sparks immediate conflict with its analysis on the metropolis and its subsequent marvels for the masses. There is much to be appreciated about the raw and unfiltered approach Koolhaas employs when defining metropolis. For example, swimming at night, illuminated by the new suns of man are worth it if we ignore the people lost at sea or taken by sharks. Humanity's expansion and constant perversion of nature has left only highly accessible (that's a plus right?) and commodified immitations.

    The autonomy and autocratic architecture of the modern movement left many cities of the world with pure, rational, isolated, perfectly functioning, and usually blunt objects of utopia. These objects from their inception, were doomed to fail urbanistically. While they may be regarded in the design world for their purity and execution, they are (and should be?) universally dejected for their lack of engagement or total domination of place within a metropolis. 

     When architects acknowledge, engage with, and risk all that a metropolis or a history of place might entail, they immediately find opportunities to create that magnetic, intriguing, instigating, and yes, risky friction in architecture that is more in tune with what humanity actually lives like. Pretending something does not happen or putting a massive concrete, steel, and glass object on top of it does not erase it, perhaps it is obscured if anything. However, the truth lies in first acknowledging something in its entirety ideally to comprehensively design within in it.