quondam @ archinect/79/7912x.htm
modernity/post-modernity
raj 2005.04.11 10:31
rita your point of Int-Style being european is exactly correct. but i would say that it is an attempt at really no style...modernism's attempt at purity, perfection, and plato's "heaven". i am facinated by the way it was used (by L'Corb) in india and africa, khan in india and bangledesh, and followers in South and cent america and has been really accepted as theirs. (though having been to chandigarh it is really weird!! it is NOT india in planning...but they really have embraced the buildings)
the idea was to strip its identity to place...and following loos' theory that all ornament was negative to a building. that ghetto can look the same as high end housing. government building and residence has a similar form. inervening with roof gardens to make a res feel more residential. while i don't have the tenants to the CIAM 'faith' in front of me (and have not studied for almost 10yrs in college) i am responding partly to what it worked out to be and how they hoped it would be.
i am facinated that south of the US border CIAM principles have more effect on their society than it did in europe. working so hard to strip identity...(individual, social, political). leaving gangs drug dealers etc. to usurp a control over the area (similar as with pruitt igo if i remember right.)
by the way i always ended colonialism with ww2 of course viet nam was french colonial...but it was really already ending...india, africa, south and central america, even eastern europe...political theories were causing "colonies" to overthrow their parasite...(ironically political theories from the west!!) i still maintain colonialism is a parasite stripping resources from its host...where as political theories have a different effect...sort of.
sorry it is kinda all over the place. i think i am still working all of it out...so i love the discussion...hopefully so do one or two others out there.
modernity/post-modernity
Rita Novel 2005.04.11 11:18
raj, I see where you're coming from. Here are some observations.
Many African nations did not reach independence until the early 1960s--childhood stamp collecting taught me at least that.
I'm not too sure that I would relate Le Corbusier and Kahn as the same type of 'International Style'.
South America does indeed appear to have much more 'International Style' architecture than North America.
Reread Loos because the whole anti-ornament issue stems from a critique of 'primitive' tattooing, which very much evokes 'colonialism thinking'.
All this discussion has reminded me of something I sent to design-l over six years ago:
re: assimilating architecture?
5 December 1998
Since c.1500, humanity (however, mostly Western/European culture) has operated predominantly under the influence of an assimilating imagination -- a process whereby everything about this planet, and even beyond, has been and still is run through the workings of absorption -- absorption of land, data, capital, whole societies, etc. (Science in general is a very assimilating process, and genocide is just one example of absorption in the extreme -- purge.)
According to chronosomatics, a theory based on the interrelationship of time and the human body (The Timepiece of Humanity - the calendar incarnate), there are roughly 200 years left where assimilation will play a major role with regard to the human imagination, and, more importantly, the next 200 years of assimilation will also be the largest and grossest ‘chunks’ of assimilation yet, perhaps culminating with the total and complete knowledge of every bit of rhyme, reason, cause and effect of the human genome. Chronosomatics also shows us that metabolism (equal doses of creation and destruction) has been steadily becoming the new and eventually predominate operation of the human imagination. Therefore there is a strong pluralism within the operation of the human imagination today as well.
Are there thus some things within the last 500 years architectural history that relate to the notion of an assimilating architecture? Is there something about the present state of architectural affairs that points to an assimilating and/or metabolic architecture? For example, is the high eclecticism of the late 19th century one form of assimilating architecture? Is Le Corbusier’s Purism akin to assimilating architecture in the extreme? Is the current widespread/global land development precisely a continuation of the assimilating process begun by the likes of Christopher Columbus? Will humanity, 200 years hence, have come extremely close to assimilating (for better or for worse) every square inch of this planet?
Personally, I think the answer is yes, but that’s not the worst of it. After assimilation ceases to be a major element within the operation of the human imagination, humanity will spend 500 years working under the influence of an almost purely metabolic imagination. Imagine living on Earth when pretty much everything thought and done is create and destroy, create and destroy, create and destroy. . . . .
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