Manifesto : Technology and Imagination

“There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.” (Gilbert K. Chesterton, English writer) This quote is somehow strike me at the very first time I saw it. We can dream what ever we want, think of anything we can build, but can we build it? Can our technology serve what we draw in our imagination? Imagine if the marble stone is as light and strong as concrete, will the Pyramid be in the shape we all see today? Will the arch and dome of Hagias Sophia sits there if the steel framing is invented in that era? Think further, imagine if we can have a surface material that covers with a material that look just like nature, will Robert Venturi’s duck look like it is now? (Will it quack?)

What I’m saying is that we as human always dream of building the great architecture, however, we usually limit our self to the reality, which is the possibility that the building won’t collapse and eventually, subtract our design to the basic shape like square, circle, and triangle. Of cause, it’s not our false to design something that will stand straight, but on the opposite side of our idea, just because we want it to sell. It may not be the form that follows function or something that we got from our proportion, but it’s build to served the customers need. As we look back to the history of architecture, and questioning, how and why are they did that? The true reason is unknown and we can only guess what is the purpose of designing that particular part. So how does the technology affect the way we design things? Simple reason, because we “can”. To define the word “can,” I mean that with the technology, we use it to decrease the possibility of building to collapse. So with some courage, we start to think “different”, and in the end, breaking the rule and challenging the previous movement.

To be more precise, I’ll divide the movement into two groups, the teacher and the student. The teacher represent as the one who made the rule, whether the building will be decorative or to be symmetry, and the student as the one who try to challenge the rules and try to make the things in their own way. In history, Renaissance and Modernism are the teacher, which means Baroque and Post-modern are the student. Teacher, as the word means, have to teach their student the right and wrong, he will show the way and proclaim that “this” is the only way to do it right! However, with a better technology like notebook and AutoCAD, the student comes up and starts to question his master about the optional path he can take, which is of cause rejected by his master. So they decide to get off that school and start the new one, which have totally opposite way of thinking in their old school. This isn’t just happening once, it happen in a lot of time in Architect history when one is trying to questing the right from their master. Renaissance is setting their design to be symmetry and proportion, Baroque come in and question what if we make the axi-line, oval and add on enormous decorative will that be wrong? Since they have a newer and better technology to do so! Same concept apply to the Modernism, the rule is set to be non-decorative, and as pure as it should. And so Post-modern comes and ask why this boring black and white situation? How can people live without any uniqueness in their architecture? Why should the form follow function? Why not take both? And so the situation happens again and again.

These question start to appear once they are sure what they are capable of doing, If they’re unsure, of cause this revolution won’t happen. So with the outcome of post-modern ruling the world right now, will there be any other –ism to come up and challenge the way they think or not? I truly believe that one-day we’ll have our new –isms that will over take the post-modern, but that “day” will not come in the present era. Since the post-modern is very wide and their rule is very adjustable, clearly see the recent announcement that they accept constructivism in to one of their branches. Constructivism, as we expect from the rapid technology growth, is very wild and crazy, too crazy that our ancestor won’t never ever dreamt about it. Now that the Constructivism is here, with the use of best technology “now”, they will be boom for sometime. After all, as the technology developed, we may think of something different, and from that we may have courage to start and questioning the post-modern whether they build things the right way. After all, this phenomenon happen because the word imagination that is a gift for human. And with a huge help from our knowledge and technology, we got our self one nice architecture.

Post Modern : the break down

A hugh slab in the face for modernism, post-modern is here for a revolution! modernism is what hold people back into a box, that's why post-modern is here!!

Whey I put the heading as the break down? simply because post-modern is here to kill modernism. With a little time people are bored with the same pattern over and over again. They want something unique and brilliant. This is where post-modern arrive in 1950s but not until 1970s when it is accepted as one of the architectural style. So what's so good about this post-modernism? Robert Venturi call it grey. It's neither black or white, but gray, in between the two. It have little of ornamentation but still unique enough to extract it from modernism.

In my opinion, modernism isn't a bad-ass who controlled the architecture, it just a teacher who want their student (i.e. the building) to be in the same pattern, on the other hand, post-modern is one of the teenagers who doesn't want to be like others. So he tried to blend every thing he learn from the book, history and what his teacher told, and come up with a new idea to show his own identity.

Play TIme

to be posted

VISUAL ACOUSTIC

5 points from Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier design a series of house base on dom-ino house as an inexpensive house and quick construction to rebuild a town from a destroyed state. He describe

"So we designed a structural system, a frame, completely independent of the functions of the plan of the house: this frame simply supports the flooring and the staircase…"

This was the pioneering moment in the use of reinforced concrete, the one which from the outset was designed in the broadest perspective of architecture and town-planning. From his repeated efforts to introduce the standardized house and standardized house features, he arrived at his most famous 'Five Points of Architecture' :

1. 1. pilotis raising the house from the ground - to introduce more light and to free the ground space for parking or a garden

1. 2. a roof garden for private exterior space

1. 3. the free plan, facilitated by the skeleton structure, allowing independent interior partitions

1. 4. ribbon windows to improve lighting

1. 5. the free facade, free in the structural sense from the basic skeleton

By using this theory, he endeavored to open up the house, to create new possibilities for connections between its interior and exterior and within the interior itself. His Five Points concept is most purely demonstrated in Villa Savoye, poissy, Seine-et-Oise, France, 1929-3

Metropolis by Fritz Lang (1927)

Metropolis was filmed in 1927 at the age of machine. Of cause no one know that one day what the put in to the movies will be real, they can only predict and hope. One of the biggest scene at the start of the movie is the workers shifting phrase. We can clearly see the different between those who been working and the freshly workers. The maker predict that we'll use man power till the end, and of cause he's wrong, After the invention of robot and A.I. we tends to use machine to produce work and control the quality which usually have the same standard. Next scene is where we found a hugh city with a air ship floating around, which is another prediction that didn't happen in our life. The airship was prove to be danger by the disaster of Hindenburg airship, which is the main cause that people don't want to have the gas tank floating around their sky. However, the maker did success in predicting some of the future work : Human Robot. Now a day, developers try to make robot as close to human as possible, why?, I believe that if we make it look, talk,eat and sleep like us, then people will likely to accept it as another earthlings, not an alien object.

Second HUGH point is the separation of class. In the movie, we can clearly see the different between two types of people: The middle to upper class and the lower class or the worker. First fact is that workers have no name. The worker in the movie call themselves as a number, which can have a lot of meaning by calling them by number. But I think that to call people by numbers the population have to be big, and by looking at the "condominium" they live in, I think this population is really massive!. On the other hand, the middle class have the name for themselves and tends to fly around having fun all day, which is mostly true. The worker in our time have to work 24/7 to receive the money that is enough for maintaining their life. But us as the middle class or higher, just sit and study,trying hard not to change our status to the worker class. One time in the movie, the assistance was fired and in his thought all he have left is to be worker. It's like to become a worker means no future ... at all, you have to work until you shift is over and the daily routine is the same, It's that scene that really show how bad the worker class is. The next scene,rewind a little, is when the middle class men found out the living quality of worker class. He was shock to see that their life was sitting on the cliff. They didn't know when the machine will blow in to their face, in fact, the only time they know will come with the "boom". And with this quality of life, I'm sure they will have a protest or event a riot for sure. As we can see from the poor country, the crime rate and the amount of riot that happen is quite high compare to the richer country.

In conclusion, I think the maker try to show the bad side of the mass product or machine made. I think that he's an anti-modernism. Why? one thing I found interesting is the way they dress. I'm not sure if he predict the fashion that It'll return to pre-modernist or not, but the way middle class dress is very rich and exotic. Unlike the worker where the cloth pattern is all the same and the house is very modernism. Still It's a very good experience to know what the 1920s people predict the world will be in the next decade or so. The same as we trying to predict the our world in the next decade and the other world.

From Bauhous to Our House

In my opinion, The book is trying to open a new point if view to us. By showing us how modernism transfer from european country to America. It also point out the meaning of modernist and how it interact with time and people. For example, Modernism is happen in the 19th century, as we know that it's the start of machine age. Modern architecture try to use the profit of the machine age as much as possible, as we can see from the rising building, they tends to use whatever that can be reproduce over and over again in a small amount of time, which of cause have to be made by a machine. Later, after the war, it came to a cost problem, modernist architecture have to change his design and adapt to what it's happening in the world. In this case is to reduce the production cost of the building, either decrease the excess decoration, rooms, wall or ceiling, or reduce the cost of materials by using the local materials. All of this is related to our studio work, the house I choose is Herbert Jacob's house by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1936. He reduce the excess decoration, use the locals material and also reduce his own design cost to build this house as cheap as possible. The pure modernism house which will be the prototype of the later usonian project.

The book also mention some thing about purity of architecture,but I'm not sure what they really means. But what I think it trying to tell is that we should be honest to the the people, to the material and shape, by that is mean not to blend the truth. We architect, are the one to build and design the living space for others, if we put and unoccupied space in to that, that'll be a dishonest to the customers. The material is another part, we can't build a house that doesn't have a core for ceiling. We also can't make a wall out of wool and order them to stand a load. This is to be true to what they really are, or what the customers really want, That's what I think purity means to me at the moment.