The American Vernacular as a Culture of Chaos

 

The reading by Mockbee on the Rural Studio related well to last week's article of local architecture and the lack of definition within our American local architecture. It is easy to look at examples of buildings from around the world and see a close connection with the local culture. Even our local architecture is hard to define with so many different climates and locations just within the lower 48 states. That made me think that maybe American architecture is more closely related to what Rem Koolhaas described in Delirious.

Koolhaas describes New York City's evolution as a "culture of chaos" with its varying tall skyscrapers and urban landscape constantly changing. Maybe this chaotic architecture isn't just limited to defining New York City, but America as a whole. It could relate to our defining characteristics of a country of individual ideals with each local area having buildings that relate to them and only them. Florida homes are supposed to be different from New York homes and a South Carolina city is supposed to be different from a California city. To me, the American vernacular should be related to the smaller local level, like how Mockbee experiments in rural farms to explore this idea, rather than a national level of a vernacular style.