Architecture-Related Journals - Literature review Example

LITERATURE REVIEW: ARCHITECTURE Junkspace Rem Koolhaas’ Junkspace is an essay published in 2001. In the essay, the clearly states that “if space junk is the human debris that litters the universe, junk space is the residue mankind leaves on the planet”.1 The author uses direct inversion to put forward his argument. The author is trying to make an argument that current cities are facing challenges because they are overwhelmed with junkspace. Koolhaas believes that junk space results from self replication. The author’s perspective of the world is useful because of the real junk space that occupies urban landscape. The concept of junk space is applicable to modern cities. The application of the concept is possible because the spatial form of cities reveals patchwork of different levels of left over, which appear alongside sets of artfully designed compositions. The consequence is that city life does not gel with the imposed utopian order.2 A close look at city life reveals that organization is continuously disrupted. The organic juxtaposition and growth is differentiated from Rem Koolhaas’ junk space. According to Koolhaas, junk space actually splinters urban centers and cities. From my understanding, the junkspace under description is the architectural spaces that are designed and built with the intentions of trapping people and inhabitants in surrealistic environments. These include the casinos, shopping malls and airports, which function as conditional and conditioned spaces. In my opinion, these facilities help in the meltdown of modernization.3 Within these conditioned and conditional spaces, people lose the concept of time, focus and reality. An example of these spaces is the airport. Most airports globally are public spaces that hold numerous spatial and architectural characteristics that link with contemporary cities.4 In the article, the author compares an airport to a city. The author notes that airports, like cities, are gradually becoming complicated in terms of their building and circulation techniques because of the lack of space. Nature in Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture Adrian Forty’s article presents an argument that architecture does not paint its patterns in nature unlike other arts. He vibrantly talks about what man makes and what nature cannot make. For instance, nature does not: build a house make a locomotive Or make a playground. Alberti outlines his theory of concinnitas (the principle of harmony that underlies the graceful arrangement of parts in relation to each other and to the whole) that the significance of nature emerges as the model for architecture. All things in nature are governed either by numerical relations or by geometry. Neo-Platonists argued that art, in so far as it was satisfying to the human mind, followed the same principles. Everything that nature produces is regulated by the law of concinnitas. This law lead to the development of the idea that beauty resided in objects and its replacement by the notion that beauty is a construct of the viewing subject. The article also explores the origin of architecture with some believing that it started with huts and caves. He explains that poetry, painting and sculpture could all achieve their results by representing nature. However, architecture was not a representational art: it neither reproduced natural objects, nor, like poetry, human moods and emotions. The difference between nature and art was that, as Aristotle put it, art partly completes what nature cannot bring to a finish’. The critique of capitalism shifted from the social relations of production to the relations between human beings and nature. This argument provided at least part of the basis of tin-Green movement and has sustained its attacks upon international capitalism. It has also stimulated the development of an alternative architecture, employment techniques and processes outside the main system of industrial production. Architecture and the Rain David Green’s Architecture and the rain details an interview with Peter Cook, founder of Archigram. This interview was prompted by an illustrated talk given by him at the ‘Returns of the Avant-Gardes’ conference at Westminster in November 2000 at which he also showed two films from the Archigram Archive: one made by Archigram in the mid-1960s and one made with his students at the Architectural Association in 1974 entitled “Warren, I Remember Architecture Too”. In this interview he asks him what he was thinking when making the film. He replies by saying that Archigram was inspired by the current situation they were experiencing. This included the following factors: Post-war architecture The city The excitement of space programming New magazines such as Scientific American and Fortune. He uses the word ‘naïf’ to refer to the film because it goes all the way to the traditional architecture. Greene says that the film is criticized for having an anti-intellectualism approach to it as seen in Warhol. Peter justifies their actions by replying that Warhol was not stupid rather they used the aspect by Taking things from magazines and tipping everything upside down. In addition, he explains that they weren’t totally political rather they were saying that technology and consumption are going to change the way everybody lives, so the city must alter and architecture’s got to alter. When asked what he thinks about the movie right now he replies that he likes its soundtrack. He also thinks that there is a general drift through the film that continually suggests this idea of the city as being in the information business and of the city as a collection of events. Architectures’ public Giancarlo De Carlo’s “Architectures’ public” confirms that since the beginning of architecture to present, it is still relevant. Academic architecture still seeks to isolate itself much further. After the Second World War, students demanded a renewal in organizational structures as well as teaching methods. They wanted the academic body to allow new ideas to penetrate into the school. The academic body accepted this renewal and the new ideas were incorporated by the state and property speculators. This was however realized to be a bad idea because, the students decided to take architecture in different direction to fit into the different world. This has however never being since there is nothing in the faculty that can facilitate courageous exploration. Defining and understanding the role of an architect has been entangled in complexities. The architect is viewed as the head brick layer, the ones in power. As a professional, he is the person involved with study and application of building technology. Subjugation which succeeded well with human activities could not do the same with architecture because it lacked structure. This lack of structure prevented architecture from specialisation hence the confusion in it still persists untill now. Its public includes everybody who benefits from it. The modern movement sought to changed the srtructure of architect but they had to seek its credibility to know who its public was. Modern movement however has preserved some defects from where it emerged from. In the process of planning, an architectural object is constructed and it continues to transform with changes introduced on it by the user. Growth and flexibility of an architectural object is not possible except under new conception of the property quality. Architecture in Britain In the past years there has been a growing historical interest on the architecture of post-war Britain. The modern architecture there has been criticized and considered as a failure. However, all art is a failure because it’s the mistakes made in designs and styles that make architects create a new work hence developing new forms. The attitude of 1990s and 1980s towards 1950s and 1960s is a reaction due to difference in fashion. The failures may have been technical, and instead of bringing them down to construct a new one, the society seeks to preserve it because of its historical value. It can also be geographical, because, if viewed from USA, it looks like a decadent art produced by culture in decline. It could also be the failure in modernism, the failure to consider the future in the present. We can’t really distinguish all this but what stands out is that the failure has been labeled on those built by the state. Historians have had four characteristic responses towards this failure; Apology Quality of the architecture Acknowledge the failure Denying it was failure Instead of historians finding a mistake in the works of the architectures, they did that in the minds of those who judged the work. Historical analysis has ranged from architectural to cultural and to political. It however seems that detail historical attention has been given to non-traditional construction hence overshadowing other important aspects of the building. An example is the royal festive hall. The presence of a concert hall there doesn’t go with the qualities of the foyer. The language provided for people to give opinion about the architecture is not provide with right terminologies used for them to dress themselves. Subnature: Architectures Other Environment David Gissen’s Subnature: architectures other environment amasses written and visual material. In his argument, David affirms that the present-day world is accustomed to perceive environmental forces as unfavorable to architecture. Such forces include dust, debris, and smoke. Sustainability involves the elimination of such elements, which are deemed as primeval. In this read, Gissen explores investigational work by modern-day’s scholars and designers that the world can actually subsist without some elements that make up nature. He dispels the notion of a decently natural world free of environmental components. Subnature gradually moves from disconcerting to exhilarating as it dispels notions in its argument of the relationship between ecosystems and architecture. The positive attributes of nature will always subsist in our day-to-day existence. This is glorified in architectural field, compared to dust and mud, which are deemed as negative aspects of nature. This is Gissen’s “sub nature”. In his literature, Gissen’s explores the other side of nature that is often ignored as distasteful. These sub-natural are defended in the article from both a social and architectural aspect. In the main, subnatures are meant to characterize things that are considered formidable, messy, or irrepressible. The read is both interesting and educative in the way that it presents its arguments. David Gissen presents a historical view, present perception, and future use of each subnature he outlines. He vividly discusses how to integrate the subnature into architectural considerations. He cleverly moves away from the social definition of nature to characterize its objective and scientific aspects. Agency of Architecture Agency is the action that causes change. An architect is one among the agents of change. An architect is thought to be that who has ideas and uses projects to deliver such ideas. Architecture is a socially and politely aware form of agency and is situated it he contact of the world beyond. Giddens sense of agency is the most relevant in trying to understand to be an agent is to work with intention and a purpose. Purpose is guided with factors obtained from one past experience. Giddens theory intervenes in the world directly and it should be indirectly, through buildings. This problem is solved by using John Law and Bruno LA tour formulation agency in which building and the architects work as agents. This construct however seemed to lack intentionality and it had to be reconsidered so that it plays out in special setting. Social agency provides planning that is equal and open to everyone. And architects should face up to the ethical and political responsibility to make special agency a success.in special agency; it is the agent that effects change through empowerment of others. Spatial agency concerns many episodes such as Union of contemporary architects Urban prescriptions The new architecture movement These episodes provide avenues where architects skills are used extensively. The transform into something more that delivers of a building and they exceed the mere of sense of agency as mere exchange of service and they expand into the open ended sense of the world. Critique combines with action is essential in understanding structures before transforming them as well as making difference in the intent all context. Architects should not be considered as powerless victims of the process of buildings but as agents of progressive developments. Reference List Koolhaas, R., & Foster, H., Junkspace: With, Running Room, Hillcrest Publishers, 2013, p. 56. Koolhaas, R., Junkspace, October, Vol. 100, 2002, p. 175-190. Koolhaas, R., Patteeuw, V., Office For Metropolitan Architecture., Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin (Germany), Nederlands Architectuurinstituut., Neue Nationalgalerie (Germany), & Kunsthal Rotterdam., Considering Rem Koolhaas And The Office For Metropolitan Architecture: What Is Oma, Rotterdam: Nai Publishers, 2003, p. 67. Sykes, K., Constructing A New Agenda: Architectural Theory 1993-2009, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010, p. 112. Read More