it's been a long time since the last few posts. hopefully people will stay read this thread.
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Ad hominem is a logical fallacy.
Brother, if these illiterate societies are so wondrous and pure and we're so evil why doesn't he go out and live with them permanently? There certainly have been plenty of people who have done so. He's just a neo-Gauguin who knows how to seduce the NPR set
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you make an analogy between primitivism in art and its effects on modern architecture. i think your theories are anachronistic and i don't agree with you for a variety of reasons. more importantly, you fail to discuss postmodernism as it relates to architecture.
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I think though we will always place much greater value in the great works predating the industrial revolution and those first industrial wonders like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building. Dubai has been designed on generic computer programs conceived elsewehre, built primarily by machines designed and built elsewhere, with heave-ho by a lot of unskilled labor courtesy underpaid and abused immigrants and so for those reasons I don't think we'll ever respect that place like we admire the European cathedrals and great works of late 19th and early 20th century ingenuity here in the United States.
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oh man.... where to begin with you? don't throw dubai into this argument. as bad as dubai's labor practices are, the golden age (1890s-1930s) of american architecture WASN'T some proletarian utopia. at least get your history straight. cheap, exploited labor was, and continues to be exploited by the construction industry.
art isn't the same thing as architecture. unfortunately for architects, all the theoretical bases are not enough to overwhelm access to wealthy patrons, budgets, and media exposure. the various 'starchitects' fame and their high profile projects are less reflective of a postmodern philosophical/artistic/architectural mindset, than they are a result of their access to wealth and media. find a celeb 'starchitect' interview, and i'll gag from sarcasm. none of them ever reveals anything other than (usually subtle) self-aggrandizement and (usually subtle) nods to his/her patron.
the media publicizes the latest creations of gehry or libeskind or hadid, but NEVER delves into anything more than the most facile analysis. the public at large is more interested in seeing something they haven't seen before, than they are interested in seeing architecture itself. most people don't care about architecture, period. but fashionable designs connected with effective marketing generates buzz. it's sad how everything from high budget ivy league buildings and museums, down to the latest flavor of the month subdivision tract, are sold via their imagery.
i also sense that many forumers have conflated everything built in the postwar era with a vague, nefarious definition of postmodernism. that's simply incorrect. to understand postmodernist architecture, we have to first delve into the origins of its precursor, modernist architecture.
modernist architecture began as a practical response to the changing dynamics of society. advances in construction and materials inspired the contemporary visionary architects to adapt architectural styles for more efficiency (mind you, de stijl, art deco, art moderne and streamline were all gradual developments). unfortunately most of these practical, early modernist buildings (namely in central europe) were bombed out in the war. several examples of 'good' modernism exist. miami beach and tel aviv come to my mind right now. strangely enough, modernism in america wasn't presented as a practical, more efficient use of materials and construction methods. instead, philip johnson used his heft to hail modernism as a new corporate aesthetic.
unfortunately modernism in the US coincided with the rise of two negative developments; automobile dependence, and the rise of media culture. unfortunately many people inextricably link modernism with endless freeways and urban decline. but correlation isn't the same as causation. how is a relatively high density, mixed use area of miami beach more car dependent than a lower density neocolonial development? similarly thanks to the influence of philip johnson, architectural tastes have become more dependent on the whims of marketers and yuppie poseurs than architectural professionals.
cue the rise of postmodernism. postmodernism was a revolt against the stifling, BORING utilitarianism of modernism. postmodernism initially meant grafting historicist elements onto modernist (in terms of construction and materials) buildings. then people got bored again, and wanted everything from stylized historicist styles, to gelatinous blobs, to exploding blobs, up to disney-fied replicas of previous eras.
thus i get a kick out of people conflating postmodernism with modernism. these two 'isms' are at opposite ends of the architectural spectrum.