The Architecture Thread

[StephenHero]

Fitting. You're a one-trick pony that uses irony as your crutch to lean on as a means to preserve a unique identity.

-A monocle with eyeglasses? You'll wear it and be ironic.

-Brutalism is dead and discredited? You'll admire it and be ironic.

-Car phones are outdated and extinct? You'll use one and be ironic.

Congratulations on being so non-conformist that you become wildly predictable and lame.

 

[LabelKing]

Originally Posted by StephenHero

Fitting. You're a one-trick pony that uses irony as your crutch to lean on as a means to identify yourself. -A monocle with eyeglasses? You'll wear it and be ironic. -Brutalism is dead and discredited? You'll admire it and be ironic. -Car phones are outdated and extinct? You'll use one and be ironic. Congratulations on being so non-conformist that you become wildly predictable and lame.
Don't forget my predilection for psychedelic Baroque, inappropriate AIDS & Holocaust jokes, sleazy fetishes, glamorous disabilities, and other general vulgarities.

 

[StephenHero]

Oh, you're such a character. You probably watch the tv while it's turned off.

 

[LabelKing]

Originally Posted by StephenHero

Oh, you're such a character. You probably watch the tv while it's turned off.

 

[RyJ Maduro]

Originally Posted by StephenHero

Congratulations on being so non-conformist that you become wildly predictable and lame.

Predictable is the last word which would come to mind when seeking to describe LK.

Except, perhaps, when it comes to luxury goods produced at the expense of various endangered species.

Sorry to interupt.

 

[LabelKing]

Originally Posted by RyJ Maduro

Predictable is the last word which would come to mind when seeking to describe LK. Except, perhaps, when it comes to luxury goods produced at the expense of various endangered species. Sorry to interupt.

For example, I am a great fan of boiled cabbage and fruit juices while disliking most alcoholic beverages and substances.

 

[StephenHero]

How ironic.

 

[LabelKing]

Today we are all ironic.

 

[StephenHero]

Enough with your attention whoring. I will put this thread back on its course later with some more architecture. Maybe tomorrow morning.

 

[LabelKing]

I look forward to your next set culled from the latest issue of Monocle or Wallpaper.

 

[LabelKing]

 

[hypersonic]

Hmm, interesting little *****-session going on here --- some interesting thoughts have been raised.

I am fascinated with the comparison between Rococo and Brutalism. Essentially, Rococo was a break away from the 'serious' grandiosity of Louis XIV.

RÃ

gence and [High] Louis XV (style) were certainly more feminine than Louis XIV, but Rococo's flamboyant eccentricity embodies the same type of unrestrained creativity that we witness in the Post-Modern times we currently live in (Neo Baroque).

But Brutalism was unlike Rococo in so much as it was so strongly ideologically-driven -- subscribing to a Utopian-belief in Modernism -- Modernism (or at least a branch of Modernism) taken to its Rationalist extreme. Rococo was not ideologically-driven at all -- it was a "liberated" style of excess and chaos.


Modernism had always been very concerned with Social-reform and order through architecture.
Brutalism represets the last efforts by the Modernists to create a new world with an idealistic and intellectualized desire for complete order and social-reform through architecture. This was a generation who lived through WW2 -- their architecture was monumental (like war memorials?) ...powerful and strong (like Cold-War nuclear fallout bunkers?), Idealistic and monocultural (*like the United Nations?)

Brutalism was the new architecture for the post-war world -- undeniably noble in their intentions ...but we can now probably interpret it as being the architecture of a generation with deep personal scars. The architectural equivalent of a Francis Bacon painting?

Brutalism was the last real Modern architecture ....before post-Modernism with all its pluralistic contextualism.

Today, architecture, like art, literature, and politics, is decidely multi-faceted -- we live in a Neo-Baroque age of chaos and disorder -- nothing is clear or interpreted from a single context.



*I suggest the UN was monocultural (Modern) immediately after WW2 ....but it is a thoroughly post-modern institution now ....which has only made its purpose obscure and questionable.

 

[binge]

Ran across this in (former-East) Berlin last week, I thought you might dig it LK. From what I could make of the signs and the people going in and out, it is an apartment complex, and a fairly new one at that. The full building is about 3 times longer than captured in this photo.

 

[StephenHero]

David Adjaye has won the competion to design the African American History Museum in DC. Adjaye is a Tanzanian born, London based designer. He's extremely talented and shows great restraint in his designs. His aesthetic is extremely versatile. Here's his design for the museum, as well as a couple other projects of his and some losing schemes from the competition.

House in London.

MCA Denver

Diller Scofidio + Renfro proposal

Norman Foster proposal

 

[RyJ Maduro]

Originally Posted by StephenHero

Mumbai esthetic?