Quote:
Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc
? You seem to be saying that the only building suitable for an advanced society is one that demeans their humanity by denying them anything interesting to look at. That whole "machine for blah" notion...
|
No, this isn't the point. The basic presumption is that we stay true to our time and try to respond to the era in which we live. Architecture must respond to the problems and situations of modern life, else it loses all validity and social meaning. Architecture is so much more than forms. It is actually a place-giver for daily life. It is the venue in which exchange, experience, and activity occur. Architecture has a great unseen impact on our lives and this is reflected by what
types of experiences it renders possible. A thoroughly
modern architecture will try its best to enhance life and make new types of living arrangements possible, and also increase interaction between groups of people and encourage greater openness in society.
Since you chose to bring up the bungalow I'll illustrate how it reflects exactly what I'm talking about.
Back in the day of the bungalows (1900-30) Modernism was just getting started in Europe. American practitioners of the style were technically being OVERTLY MODERN for their day. The bungalow, in fact, changed the American lifestyle in that it made things much more casual. Instead of having the ground floor be home to formal entertaining areas all the rooms were situated in close adjacency to one another on one level, promoting greater interaction of the public and private realms of the home. Instead of intricate Victorian detailing, simplified natural wood became the choice. This is at once both aesthetic and pragmatic. Since these homes were often, yes, mail-order, they were planed and cut in a huge factory. This actually eliminated the ability to replicate the complex detail work of the previous era. The individual master craftsman who could do fine plasterwork was no longer a quintessential part of the construction of the home. Furthermore, though the bungalow has many vague precedents in architectural history (its most recent and greatest influence being the English 19th century Arts and Crafts movement), it was a uniquely American building type that originated out of changes in lifestyle, technical production, and a need for abundant houses to suit the middle and worker classes. Though it may have 'borrowed from the past', it wasnt about mimicry and it didn't try to be anything more than what it was.
100 years later it's ludicrous to think we need to turn back to antiquity and cheaply and poorly try to
identify our time with their architecture. It is an attitude that considers architecture to be only a facade and nothing more, when, instead, architecture really has no such more meaning that is often mistook.