(no subject)
You know the problem of the little child who asks the question "why?" in response to each preceding answer which inevitably ends when the parent or adult exhausts their knowledge of the world? I think it is a beautiful scene that begins a process of questioning the world for what is essential? What the child is looking for is actually not an infinite chain of responses but a concept that is capable of satisfying any amount of inquiry. This concept would have to be powerful enough to transcend the problems of culture, of time and even of matter and space. For many of us the possibility of this concept simply vanishes as we grow older either because of preoccupation with lesser matters or a fear of facing its possible existence. Nevertheless, it is an endlessly repeating scene because the problem with criticizing the idea of timelessness is that it can by definition never go out of style.
I don't think the current predicament of "let a thousand styles flourish" is necessarily as much of a mish-mash as it is made out to be - it is in fact not so much a matter of quantity as it is a matter of quality - quality not in the objective sense but in the conditional one.
And I think that Eisenman's idea of post-place and post-meaning is interesting as a problem, but also seems to me to be a fantastic opportunity - when we have exhausted our sense of place we are forced to make new ones, when we have outgrown our sense of meaning we are forced to create that sense again.
This is why I think that while architecture is right to avoid literal-meaning in the postmodern sense, it is incorrect to shy away from it altogether - meaning is in the end our most direct line of communication with the public. But in an era where a network of individual meanings take root over singular doctrines dictated from a ruling party, it is not any specific significance that can be attached to a project through a design that is important, but more so it is crucial for each and every project to have a capacity for meaning, for a connection to individual users. How to objectify this capacity is our greatest struggle, and like the individual receptors there can only be individual methods. Eisenman's use of old maps to create cuts through his Santiago project is one of many ways in which the site can be projected onto a design - a bit direct for me but nonetheless a rather successful trial.
I think it is soon time to strip away all of the trivialities and futilities of trying to achieve meaning through increasingly abstract complexities and really use all of our means to express those basic things again - what we know, and more importantly what we don't know. What is important for that part of us that asks why?
I don't think the current predicament of "let a thousand styles flourish" is necessarily as much of a mish-mash as it is made out to be - it is in fact not so much a matter of quantity as it is a matter of quality - quality not in the objective sense but in the conditional one.
And I think that Eisenman's idea of post-place and post-meaning is interesting as a problem, but also seems to me to be a fantastic opportunity - when we have exhausted our sense of place we are forced to make new ones, when we have outgrown our sense of meaning we are forced to create that sense again.
This is why I think that while architecture is right to avoid literal-meaning in the postmodern sense, it is incorrect to shy away from it altogether - meaning is in the end our most direct line of communication with the public. But in an era where a network of individual meanings take root over singular doctrines dictated from a ruling party, it is not any specific significance that can be attached to a project through a design that is important, but more so it is crucial for each and every project to have a capacity for meaning, for a connection to individual users. How to objectify this capacity is our greatest struggle, and like the individual receptors there can only be individual methods. Eisenman's use of old maps to create cuts through his Santiago project is one of many ways in which the site can be projected onto a design - a bit direct for me but nonetheless a rather successful trial.
I think it is soon time to strip away all of the trivialities and futilities of trying to achieve meaning through increasingly abstract complexities and really use all of our means to express those basic things again - what we know, and more importantly what we don't know. What is important for that part of us that asks why?