My Manifesto

Architecture is subjective. There is no set of rules or reasoning that can define architecture. Some may say architecture is the science of design, or an art piece that one can walk through. Others may say architecture is the creation of space or the arrangement of forms. Some might say that only buildings can be counted as architecture while others say memorials and parks are also elements of architecture. A compound might see ornaments as beautiful whereas another sees it as a sin. None of these phrases are correct, nor are they wrong. They are all different point of view or perspective within their opinions, which creates different languages of form to the results in their design. With tens, hundreds, and thousands of languages start to appear in the world of architecture, a call for dominancy in style and form starts to appear in each architect’s compound. Each compound or style is trying to prove to the world that their theories and point of view is correct. However, with the subjectiveness of the architecture, where nothing is right or wrong, a big area is open for arguments. I see this open area as a big battlefield of mind wars. Who can provide the best reasoning and logic behind their creative design? Who can persuade the public into believing that their design is the most rational? The one that wins the debate gets the prize of establishing an era in architecture history.

            However, these mind battles do not only happen once, but we see it repetitively throughout the history of architecture. For example, the Renaissance set up a set of rules of proportion and symmetry, and then the Baroque architects come and break down these rules with their invention of the oval and its axi line. Soon later, Modernism comes back with a new set of rules of non-ornamental, non-bourgeois architecture. Then again, the Post-Modernist breaks these sets of rules with the design and with terms like “Less is a bore” and “Grey over Black and White”. The history runs in cycles over and over again like a tug-a-war fight between the “I love making rules” people and the “I love breaking rules” gang. When more people join the “love rules” group, they win, then they get bored and move over to the “hate rules” gang and get bored and move back and forth. What is interesting about this cycle is that even though they are in different time periods with different technology, the rules setters always seem to come back to a similar thinking, BUT with different point of view. Renaissance’s concepts started with the Da Vinci’s diagrammatic drawing of the Vitruvius Man. As the cycle makes the round, Le Corbusier starts another diagrammatic drawing of his Modular Man. Renaissance deals with pure geometry, squares and circles, Modernism comes back with honest forms: same concept different definitions.

            These cycles reappear with the same subject, but with different analysis and interpretations. It seems like these architects are asking history questions. “What if” the interpretation of the man can be different from how Da Vinci drew it? - (Le Corbusier) “What if” the same pure forms seen in the Renaissance mean honesty of material and structure? – (Modernism) “What if” we retort the pure shapes like the Baroque architects did? – (Post Modernist) “What if” Robert Venturi’s starting from zero means he is saying starting back at zero? “What if” the Metropolis movie and Playtime movie did not meant what we analyze? “What if” is a question of perspective and point of view. Some things have always existed, but we cannot see to it since our point of view is focused on something else. If we are going to move forward, we must use past events, or history, and existing things to determine our future. To be capable of creating something new, we must question the past and the present. Because architecture is subjective, questioning the past would not give us a right or wrong. It would only give us an opportunity to see things that previous architects have missed out or did not focus on. With different technology and culture growing and changing over time, only if we look back at history, use it well, and ask “What if … ?”, we may be exploring a whole new set of concepts that have not been seen, even if it is based on the same subject. “What if?”

Baroque-ing the Rules

Architecture, like almost everything in the world, has a beginning and an end, but what defines the end of each architectural era or phrase? We have seen many times in architectural history that in order to start a new era, someone must have the guts to break the rule. And by breaking that rule, that person must also have enough companion or followers in order for the public or the majority of the people to accept him and start mind wars with the existing era. In order to have that many people believing him, the person must have enough reasoning to mess with people's logic. Baroque architects accomplished to win that war. They challenged the Renaissance's perfect symmetry and proportion and bend it to their appreciation. An element that the Baroque was very proud to present was the form of an oval. Just by extending two sides of the circle, the Baroque architects challenged hundreds of years of theory, but because of their logical and creative reasoning, they seem to persuade many people to believe them. Shortening their reasoning for using the oval would be that ovals create an axi line which leads to something else. It was like magic at that time, at least for me if I was in that period. People realized that by being perfect, or proportional and symmetrical, was not everything, but breaking the rules might create a whole new perspective in form. And it all comes back to perspective and point of view.

One can say Baroque is like Post Modernism or the other way around, but for me, Baroque architects seem  to be respecting the rules more than Post Modernist. Baroque architects bends the rules while Post Modernism architects does everything opposite of the rules. Baroque architects seem to be experimenting on what would happen if they distort the form, while Modernism architects breaks the form entirely.

Perspective into Physical

Now that we've come back to the Renaissance period, or rebirth, or post modernism of the ancient people, we've come to see "out of the box" architects challenge the rules set up by the majority. Similar to post modernism, which challenges the "Less is more" and "Honest" theories of the Modernist, the Renaissance architects had their debate. Since the architecture at that era were mainly based on the drawing of the proportion of the human body, Da Vinci's Vitruvian man, the arguments were mostly about symmetry and proportion. So if Classicism was the pass, why would someone start a new era repeating something that already happened? I'd say they are trying to point out some things that Classicism architects never arrived at, or in other words, giving a new perspective or point of view towards architecture. Many architects arrive at their building from diagrams and drawings, but these diagrams are things that are subjective to the person who made it. Say, why did Da Vinci only drew circle and squares with the Vitruvian man? Why cant we add a triangle, or a hexagon to the Vitruvian man? If we position the guy in another way, we we'd get new shapes. I believe this is why architecture can move on and on and on with just one main concept, but looking at it in different ways. For example, hundreds of years after the Vitruvian man was drawn, Le Corbusier drew a modular man in a different diagram showing a new aspect of the proportion of a man and used it in many of his buildings. By doing that, he is not proving Da Vinci wrong, but he is saying that he is not wrong as well. Even though diagram may seem to be arrived as facts, but the detail can be emphasized differently. That is why we see so many rebirths in the history of architecture.

Using History

"Why study history?" is a worldwide asked question. Many say that history is the past that we do not need to cover since it is just events that already happened written in a book. But, to be capable of understanding this, we must first explore the true definition of history. History, according to the dictionary, means “the knowledge, study, or record of past events” and “pattern of events determining the future” (dictionary.com)
We use history, not only to understand our past, but also to DETERMINE the future. For example, if we look at the overall picture of history through a timeline, it can be seen that history repeats itself over time. What is the difference between post-modernism and renaissance? One may say that it is totally different in which the Renaissance is ornamented and Post-modernism plays with simple forms or whatsoever, but if we look conceptually, both of it is mimicking, or playing with a concept established in an earlier date. Renaissance is using Classicism, while Post-modernism is playing with Modernism. We may be centuries away from when Burnellisky started his manifesto, but we are now creating manifestos similar to the ones that were established hundreds of years ago. Going further, what is the difference between Modernism and Classicism. In ancient Rome, there were not much technology. Human beings were the greatest invention at that time. Humans could create pyramids, cathedrals, or whatever they could think of at that time. Again, Humans were the greatest invention. Therefore, why not create architectural forms abstracted from the human form if they were the strongest at that time? That was the Roman's thoughts, which I would say, is pretty much similar to Modernism. After centuries past, humans created factories, robots, and machinery. Nowadays, what we think is the strongest invention is not humans anymore, but robots. They are stronger, can carry more, and can produce more. Why not crate architectural forms abstracted from machines?

Nothing starts absolutely from zero. New forms may be created, but the conceptual thinking has already happened years ago only in a different format. By knowing history, we can use this concept to apply it to what we face in today's society

Difficult is More .. More is too Much

In the past few lectures, we have come a long way from “Less is more”. We’ve quickly been through “Less is not more”, “Less is a bore”, and now, as I see it, we are entering an age of “More is more”, or architectural Expressionism. If Expressionism speaks, we are in a whole new language of “function follows form”, which for me is a very difficult language to grab hold of. With only one switch of wordings, I believe a whole new limitation of design is changed. When it was still “form follows function”, we have a definite limitation, or in other words, the design is created to serve a purpose. However, if “function follows form”, then the purpose is pretty much faded. How do we start the design? What is the design meant for? With the purpose fading and with the design base on form, the limitations of shapes or representation of the exterior can go beyond imagination. I believe many Post-Modernism architects, who believes in “Less is a bore”, is starting to question Expressionism as well. Both of the two manifestos are bored with the similar looking Modernism buildings, but Expressionist architects are taking it further, or maybe too far. I believe if we were to simplify Rem Koolhaas’s wordings on bigness, it would be something like “More is too much”.

I believe this approach to architectural form is pretty much telling a story of the social life and the technological advances we have accomplished. To be capable of playing with form in buildings, there must be ways keep the forms up and strong. In today’s engineering field, we have come up with many advances, which we did not have in Modernism period. This is one of the reason why today’s architects are more confident in playing with different forms. Another analysis I have from this change in era is that the society’s thinking is changing. After years and years of seeing rectangular and pure shape buildings, we are getting very bored visually. We are not happy with just enough anymore. We need something beyond the function. Something that we look at it, oohs and aahs will be heard. With this, different companies are trying to make their building look so complicated in form so that it seems like they are having a new technological advances. “Difficult is more”

            

Analyzing the Attendance Check

Just being cautious here in case I become the victim of the random blog check. In one semester, there are around 13 or 14 weeks of class. We are just through midterm week which makes us in around 8th or 9th week. From my analysis, if a student have been studious and hard-working throughout the past 9 weeks, but missed only one class, or the class on Monday March 21, in which I really have to go do business out of town and cannot attend class, he should be given another chance and not get cut 5%. Since it would be the first class he did not attend and if he hits the jackpot as the victim of the random check, it would be dreadful to see 5% go missing. This blog also acts as an apology in case I get checked and is not in class, but I will be ready to talk about post-modernism next class for sure. Hope no one get to read this

THank you

The Black The White The Grey

In the previous class of History to Architecture, we have started to explore the colors of architecture, not in the sense of ornamentation or decorating, but the color of style in post-modernism architecture. We have seen how the changes were slowly made and style were pulled away from modernism, which could be linked back to the previous posts on how Jacques Tati were explaining how the form of the international style was confusing itself with everything else that was being building according to the manifestos. With the lectures combined with readings from Complexity and Contradictions in Architecture by Robert Venturi, another big viewpoint have been opened in my understanding of architecture.

"Both-and" over "Either-or"
"Grey over Black and White"
"Less is not more" but "Less is a bore"
"Function follows From" rather than "Form follow Function"

These simple, yet strong phrases from the book is changing the phase of design. When looking at these words put side by side, it seems like post-modernist architects are a lot more optimistic than the ones have once conquered the world of design. These post-modernists are not limiting themselves to anything specific, but it seems like they are opening the eyes of people to something that was always existing, but unnoticed, which is "space and time". I would say this seems like enlightenment from a long meditation where you start to notice your breathing even though you do it all the time. (maybe a too direct analysis), but for this era, post-modernism IS the new and more practical way of looking at design. Robert Venturi, Peter Eisenmen and other new wave of architects are setting up a new writing or script for this new era. What I like most about this upcoming style is the fact that the manifesto states something like how architecture should not be created upon a limit to a certain boundary, but should have a process to it so that it creates its own way of writing according to, again, "space and time". Not a direct quotes but a phrase to this sort. This makes me better understand the history of architecture to this day of how architecture is a form of writing. The abstraction of nature in Egypt, abstraction of human form in Rome, abstraction of machine in Modernism, and now the abstraction of process in Post-Modernism. This also makes me understand the hard-work that we have to put through in studio class to make all these diagramatic analysis. This is all to create a new form of writing. A new form of character. In this new style, if function follows form, then the remake of Playtime would be people dressed up as Lady Gaga walking around post-modernist buildings.

Playtime - Jacques Tati

By watching the film by Jacques Tati, Playtime, we can see how people around the late modernism period are responding the international style at that time. At the time period where the film was created, modernism was playing a big role in the society and the egos and confident of the architects were almost at its top form. These architects were becoming like perfectionist where everything have to be done the way they wished when it comes to using the buildings as if the people were one of the controlled characters in "The Sims". We can analyze this behavior by watching many of the scenes in the movie. For example, in the opening scene, we start off with an airport. The exterior is non-ornamented, pure glass facades and metal framing, a direct translation of the modernism manifesto. Inside the airport, there were several groups of people displaying different behaviors, but explaining the same meaning. A couple was sitting at the waiting area and the wife would keep asking and ordering her husband, a cleaning person is always trying to find something to clean, and there was a group of nun walking around. These are different personifications of perfectionism which was the main theme of architecture at that time. Then, the director seems to try to point out how modernism is affecting our lives, or the lives of people at that time. He does this by displaying an adventure of one character. This particular character wonders off in the big city and into many modernist buildings. In these adventure, the character always confuses himself with other people since they dress up similarly, walks similarly, and does thing similarly. By doing this, the director seems to be saying that by having modernist set up manifestos on how form should follow function, form is starting to become one aesthetics. He is saying that there is no uniqueness or individual characters within the buildings. I believed that this topic was clearly pointed out in the movie. By watching and analyzing this movie, I understand architecture as writing or as symbol of history further. Architecture does not only become a habitat for human, but it is a writing, a story, a film, and a viewpoint for society to dwell upon.

Julius Shulman vs. Modernism

            Presentation is a big part of finishing every architectural project. How we present the project can reflect the thoughts that we have put in. Some important design elements that are so small, yet important, maybe overlooked if we do not pull it out and exaggerate it in our presentations. In the field of architecture, designers may show their design through diagrams and plan, but in order for the public and normal people to understand, the best way to express is through pictures. One of the most important architectural photographers is Julius Shulman who worked with many architects in portraying finished works into magazines and newspaper. However, Shulman’s photography was unique, as we have seen in the documentary shown in history class. He would carry furniture into the houses that he would photograph and set it up so that it would feel “like someone was actually living there”. By doing this, it seems like he is upsetting the scheme of modernism. Is whatever Shulman doing right or wrong according to the theories and manifesto of modernism?

            To remind of the earlier classes on modernism, modernism architects designs according to their own manifesto made by each compound. They would design buildings and houses in their own way, not caring about any client, and wait for someone to come in and say “I like it, I’m building it”, or something close to this extent. I still remember that some architects would design the whole set of the house including chairs, tables, and even clothing to fit into the house. There would be stories in which clients would hide the architect’s furniture and then display it when the architects come and visit so that the architect won’t get mad. Moreover, everything had to be real and pure. What is concrete must be concrete and load bearing and non-load bearing and etc. What Shulman is doing to these houses is like totally flipping this theory over. By putting furniture into the house just for his photography and taking them back is like taking something very impure into the house. Sometimes, he brings other people into the house to take as models, such as the Case Study 22 house. The girls that were in the picture were not even the owner.

            By doing this, I believe that he is pulling architects away from modernism. He was considering the fact that there is actually living things, or human, living in these houses and buildings and that they have to be emphasized on. It is like showing that architects cannot just design houses to please themselves, but they must also please the people living in the structure and that lifestyle is a big part of design issue. Architects cannot force people to open or close curtains anymore. All in all, I believe this was a big change towards post-modernism which I would really like to learn of more.

Coming into Modernism

            From the last history class we have studied further into the development of modernism and into the works of Le Corbusier. In the lecture, it have been shown the interconnectivity of art and architecture. Even though it seems that art and architecture is a whole different field of study, art is made for visual expression while architecture is for people to live or work in, but the two somehow grow along side by side into Modernism and retrieving its form.

            We have seen beautiful realistic paintings in the past history in the Classic and Renaissance periods, but the trend in Modernism would be to reduce everything to its basic form like what Picasso and other Cubist had in mind. In my opinion, cubist may have its affects into the designs of architecture in its conceptual thinking of reducing, but the art pieces that really affected architecture would be the paintings from the De Stijl movement. Cubism may have reduced its form, but if we were to use those forms into the building, it would be mere impossible. On the other hand, if we considered the paintings by the De Stijl movement, we can see the form and grids that are very similar to building structures of the Modernism age, or working house aesthetics.

            Even though coming from different countries, we could still see how the De Stijl have affected even the most important architect of the world, Le Corbusier. In Unite d’ Habitation, we could see the resemblence of the painting by the De Stijl movement in the façade, both in color and in form. It was a matter of proportion, symmetry, and the hierarchy of shapes, size, and it format. Coming to Le Corbusier, we could see that his later buildings still kept its shape and form of these grid line cubes where he showed it in his masterpiece, Villa Savoye. The pilotis were in grid form, and the main structure of the house was somewhat a rectangle.

            Maybe these form had the best interconnectivity between art and architecture. Since architecture had a wider scope in which they had to create functions for space, but in studying history, our analysis may connect the fields of study together.

The Metropolis

There have been predictions of the future for as long as history can be dated back. These predictions come in many different forms, from writing, pictures, and the one with the most visual form, movies. In history class this week we were assigned to watch “The Metropolis”, a movie in the 1900’s that tries to define what would things be like in the future, or in other words, now. The special effects and pictography might not have the latest technology and look realistic, but the movie can reflect the architectural and cultural standpoint of that era.

I believe movies have become a big part in reflecting the ideas of human in the period of time the movies are made. The way we present our thinking or prediction of the future, relates back to the issue that we are facing in that period of time. For example, in these past few years, we have seen a huge amount of movies that are about the end of the world, such as 2012 and The Day after Tomorrow. Many movies made today or in the past decade depicts the future as the end or how close it is to the end of the world since we are having a crisis on global warming and natural disaster. If we were to look back about ten to twenty years, a hit movie would be The Waterworld, where the whole world changes into water and we try to adapt to living on man made islands. When robots were created, the hit movie would be A.I Artificial Intelligence and the scientific genres.

However, back in those times, analyzing from the movie, the big hit would be urbanization, industrialization, and the separation between classes. I believe the big scene that captured everyone’s astonishment back then would be the big scene where we could see hi rise buildings everywhere, traffic jams from cars, and helicopters flying all around. That were predictions from that age of time, which I would say, they made a pretty good prediction even though we don’t have that much helicopters. Even with all these component of the urban life, what I thought was very important and maybe overlooked was the depictions of the architectural style that can be related to the lifestyle itself, which is separated into above ground and underground.

Starting off with the underground lifestyle, we could see men working hard in factories: manual labor = unhappiness. Everyone is wearing the same shirt with the same size. Everything was the same: it was industrialization or production line. Everything had to look the same since it is mass-produced. It was, if we look back to our reading, non burgeois. But on the other hand, the view on ground was different. We could reflect it back to the big view of the urban city. The hi-rise a more decorative façade that stood out of each other. It was more burgeois than the view of the underground city. This shows that in that period of time, they were looking forward to modernism in this kind of way since I thought was pretty strange. They seem to separate modernism into two different scheme, in which the director seems to favor the decorative or the on ground city view more. I analyze it as a biased way of portraying architectural elements in that age. The director portrays the nonburgeois as a sign of harshness and labor while showed the facade as beauty. 

We did not finish the movie, yet, so the blog will be continued… 

From Bauhaus to Our House

From reading “From Bauhaus to Our House” by Tom Wolfe, there were so many issues that made me understand a lot more about the history of modern architecture and how the field of study was developed starting from zero.  The way I see it, the architectural industry is actually pretty similar to the music industry (it was mentioned in the text but I would like to emphasize more on this). The music industries have labels, while the architects have compounds. The way I see how this can relate to normal life is that there are independent music labels with various genres and there are mainstream music. Even though both of them produce music consistently, they cannot dominate the market at the same time. At one moment, people would choose to listen to one label and start a trend, so whatever music coming out of that label, from any artist new or old, will be appreciated. Then, people will start getting bored and move on to new labels and the cycle would go on and on. It moves pretty fast for the music industry since everything depends on likes and dislikes of what people hear. Music is produce within months or weeks, but on the other hand, architecture needs years of construction to be finished. It seems harder to judge things that are a thousand times your size and you have to go in and out of it all the time.

Nevertheless, the issue of my analysis would be the reason why modernism or theories by Mies and other European architects was such a hit and must be followed internationally, or at least in America even though the structure and design seem to be coming from worker’s houses in European country. I believe that the United States is a very young country with not much confidence of their identity at the time of the end of the First World War. When the Europeans migrated in, it was like being introduced to a whole new music genre, as if hip-hop has just arrived into another continent and every one was mad crazy about it. It was pretty usual to see that happen, but what I thought changed everything was when all the top schools put these architects into the professor’s chair. When that happened, all the architects produced by the United States will have the same thinking or to be nonburgeois. With every new architect having the same thinking or taught to design in a certain way, then the movement seemed to become permanent until a new genre can throw down this system that has been created. That was why modernism was so strong. If this was politics then communist would have spread in USA.

By seeing this happen, we have seen a country that did not get demolished by bombs in wartime learn the thoughts of those who went through such disaster. In my opinion, this nonburgeois idea seems to be very similar to the Socialist politics that has been going on in Europe where everything and everyone is equal. So if we were to apply this same procedure in Thailand’s education, by hiring a group of top thinkers and letting them spread the disease, I guess it might work the same as it did 50 years ago in the USA. However, what bothers me most is how do you teach architects to design in their own ways without any client. Looking at the way we learn design, we must always please our professor and work towards their goal, but what happens when you design something in your own way not caring about the client, how will you be graded?

I also wanted to apply what I’ve learned and analyze it side by side with my studio project. I chose Villa dall’Ava by Rem Koolhaas which resembles the Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier. At first when I did not really understand the history of what was going on, I thought that Koolhaas just used the Villa Savoye as a reference to being a masterpiece since it was close by in the site. As I now understand, it seems like Koolhaas was trying to challenge Le Corbusier’s modernism piece with a new approach to design. Villa dall’Ava had a client that was very demanding in having things done their way. By using some of Villa Savoye’s features, it seems like Koolhaas is saying that modernism can happen by pleasing clients and it should be about analyzing the site and the client’s need. By doing this, you have to put soul into the architecture so that it make’s the clients happy to live in. I believe that by doing this it means much more than to force people to stick up to the heat and not allow them to put curtains up just because you want your building to look good, it seems very communist.