2007.07.12 09:29
Sarcastic Architecture
Is sarcasm more of a dark comedy? (I always thought so.)
Is seminal post-modern pastiche also sarcastic? I suppose it did taunt establishment Modernism keenly (and perhaps even somewhat bitterly?). Although one could say establishment Modernism became much more embittered because of it.
The D+S example above intrigues me the most. It is indeed taunting and you can almost taste the bitterness. (Not exactly architecture though.)
Perhaps Rossi haunts more than taunts.
Does any sarcastic architecture wound feelings? The Eisenman West Avenue proposal (next to Ground Zero) seems to have that potential.
Has Koolhaas (subliminally?) made a whole career out of taunting and bitterness?
2007.07.12 11:06
Sarcastic Architecture
765, you're misrepresenting when you say V, SB and Izenour were "excluded from the High Modernist cocktail party" and therefore bitter. Venturi a Rome Prize recipient, Complexity and Contradiction coming out of MoMA, V and SB teaching at Penn and Yale, Learming from Las Vegas coming out of Yale. I'd say they were definitely guests at the "cocktail" party. The exclusion, you could say, came after Learning from Las Vegas was published (thus no bitterness before the publication, as you imply).
I did begin to re-read Part II of Learning from Las Vegas last night, and I agree with kablakistan in that sarcasm isn't really the modus operandi. It may be too hard now-a-days to recognize the "Pop" sensibility of the critique--the whole mixture of high art and low art which was then something like sacrilege. Plus, the "in your face" stance (i.e., naming names rather than remaining cautiously abstract) was "just not supposed to be done."
For sure there is much taunting and ridicule within "the ugly and the ordinary," as there is always taunting and ridicule whenever an orthodoxy is questioned and critiqued, but the task was accomplished without much sarcasm at all.
765, you and others may well see sarcasm as an effect of "the ugly and the ordinary" critique, and I concur that that is one fair interpretation, but there is very little sarcasm within the actual text itself.
It's probably also fair to say that most people that saw Venturi and Rauch's entry at Roma Interrotta saw sarcasm as well. But was "Pop" sensibility too often just confused for sarcasm? Does "Andy W" suggest more Andy Warhol rather than Andy Williams? Does Lennon suggest more John Lennon than the Lennon Sisters?
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2007.07.12 12:41
Sarcastic Architecture
sarcasm 1 : a keen or bitter taunt : a cutting gibe or rebuke often delivered in a tone of contempt or disgust
The overall tone of Part II of Learning from Las Vegas is not one of contempt or disgust.
For example:
"Many people like suburia. This is a compelling reason for learning from Levittown. The ultimate irony is that although Modern architecture from the start has claimed a strong social basis for its philosophy, Modern architects have worked to keep formal and social concerns separate rather than together. In dismissing Levittown, Modern architects, who have characteristically promoted the role of the social sciences in architecture, reject whole sets of dominant social patterns because they do not like the architectural consequences of these patterns."
--p. 154, 2nd edition
This sounds to me like solid critique rather than contempt or disgust. And the whole texts reads more of solid architectural (because the text really is so rich with just talking about architecture) critique then some sort of sarcastically based evil plot.
2007.07.12 22:33
Sarcastic Architecture
MVRDV have an interesting way of taking things/concepts to an extreme. Have they maybe learned from "Exodux, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture"? I like their imagination nonetheless. A breed of Dutch sarcasm utilized when most useful?
"Holy Stations of the Cross, Batman!"
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It's probably also fair to say that most people that saw Venturi and Rauch's entry at Roma Interrotta saw sarcasm as well.
2011.07.12 18:58
Question about Charles Jencks' Declaration
Jencks: "Rather than a deep extended attack on modern architecture, showing how its ills relate very closely to the prevailing philosophies of the modern age, I will attempt a caricature, a polemic. The virtue of this genre (as well as its vise) is its license to cut through the large generalities with a certain abandon and enjoyment, overlooking all the exceptions and subtleties of the argument. Caricature is of course not the whole truth. Daumier's drawings didn't really show what nineteenth-century poverty was about, but rather gave a highly selective view of some truths. Let us then romp through the desolation of modern architecture, and the destruction of our cities, like some Martian tourist out on a earthbound excursion, visiting the archaeological sites with a superior disinterest, bemused by the sad but instructive mistakes of a former architectural civilization. After all, since it is fairly dead, we might as well enjoy picking over the corpse."
Who knew?!?
And they say, history is no mystery. OR When in doubt, blame the butler.
12071201 Mikveh Israel Synagogue plan 220ci02
12071202 The Philadelphia School plans 217ei03
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2013.07.12 18:36
Why is everyone bashing OMA and Rem Koolhaas?
... just before I read your post above, I read (in the Labyrinth preface), "As for Kafka's precursors, Borges's erudition takes pleasure in finding them in Zeno of Elea, Kierkegaard and Robert Browning. In each of these authors there is some Kafka, but if Kafka had not written, nobody would have been able to notice it--whence this very Borgesian paradox" "Every writer creates his own precursors.""
Because of this thread I have a whole new appreciation of the Seattle Public Library--"a genuine affordment of a covered liberal space." Is this really something of a rare manifestation in today's urban realm? Can the SPL be seen as a truly new paradigm of "covered liberal space"? Is commerce-free, covered liberal space even a viable urban typology? Yes, "it needs more thought."
2013.07.12 19:37
12 July
Just read this is Maurois's 'Preface' of Borges's Labyrinths:
(Schopenhauer, Borges remarks, has already written that life and dreams are leaves of the same book: reading them in order is living; skimming through them is dreaming.) In death we shall rediscover all the instants of our life and we shall freely combine them as in dreams. "God, our friends, and Shakespeare will collaborate with us." Nothing pleases Borges better than to play in this way with mind, dreams, space and time. The more complicated the game becomes, the happier he is. The dreamer can be dreamed in his turn.
14071201 Ury Farm c1812 site elevation 2090i16
14071202 Ury Farm c1812 site model in sync with Latrobe watercolor via pers01.vw 2090i17
14071203 Ury Farm c1972 site plan in Ichnographia Quondam context 2090i18
15071201 NNTC plan 2262i01
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16071201 IQ61 full plan
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16071202 IQ61/01 grid blocks Campo Rovine plans
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16071203 IQ61/02 grid blocks Acadia National Park Headquarters Building plans
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16071204 IQ61/03 Ury Farm Dominican Motherhouse Wagner House Cooper & Pratt House Mayor's House Green Enfilade House ICA House Wacko House 002 House in Laguna 002 Gooding Trice House Wave Wall House 002 Green Enfilade House 002 plans
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16071205 IQ61/07 grid blocks Ury Farm Villa Appositional plans
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16071206 IQ61/08 grid blocks Karastan Levy Memorial Playground plans
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16071207 IQ61/09 grid blocks TJCC Bathhouse TJCC Day Care plans
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16071208 IQ61/10 grid blocks Villa Rotonda plans
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18071201 CCTV elevations work 2332i14
18071202 CCTV model 2332i15 b
18071203 Maison Dom-ino Salon d'Automne Maison du Peintre Ozenfant Maison La Roche-Jeanneret Villa Stein de Monzie Villa à Garches Single House Weissenhof Villa Baizeau Composition Three Maison de M.X. Villa Savoye Pavillon Suisse Plan Obus Maison Curutchet Capital Complex at Chandigarh Notre Dame du Haut Governor's Palace Palace of Assembly Unité d'Habitation Monastery of La Tourette Maisons Jaoul Villa Shodhan Museum of Knowledge Tower of Shadows Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Electronic Calculation Center Olivetti St. Pierre at Firminy-Vert Maison de l'Homme Palais des Congrès Un Pavillon d'Exposition plans 2140i21
18071204 Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts plan 2188i03
18071205 Notre Dame du Haut plan site plan 217ui06
18071206 Erdman Hall plan work image 218ci02
18071201 Aires Mateus Maritime History Museum Saint-Malo
19071201 Museum for Nordrhein Westfalen aerial perspectives 2226i42
20071201 Pantheon Hurva Synagogue plans elevations sections working data 206gi51
20071202 Pantheon Hurva Synagogue plans elevations sections 206gi52
21071201 iiq06 model Wallraf-Richarts Museum Breslauer Platz Battery Park City NNTCWTC working data 249ai01
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