Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays
That's because they didn't go classical right. They tried to mix in the new.
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Well, what is classical?
Is this classical?
blogspot.com
Is this classical?
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Is this classical?
futouring.com
Is this classical?
eahn.org
Is this classical?
blogspot.com
Post industrial culture seems to have brainwashed the entire world into thinking that all buildings are the same underneath a stylistic application of 'architecture' and those buildings with Greco-Romanesque columns applied to them are 'classical' and those without are 'modern.' That these discrepancies cannot be made by our public anymore only proves to me that 'classicism' as a stylistic rubric must be abandoned.
'Neoclassicism' came about because of an enlightenment era discussion on what the pure origins of humanity were. The consensus was that Greek temple design was the ideal, most primitive-perfect form of human design. What theorists and architects of that time failed to address was the fact that the Greeks never had opera houses, train stations, factories, skyscrapers, or art museums, and that the Greek temple was really only a giant functionless sculpture which nobody was ever allowed to enter. Herego, the solution was to glue Greek temple fronts onto apartment buildings, factories, or whatever else the Greeks didn't have in an attempt to make it 'pure.'
I bring this up only because it echoes the conversation occuring here. 'Classicism' is referred to as some set of agreed upon rules that can generate fantastic architecture because it is pure and unquestionable.
But doesn't the application of that Greek temple design dilute the purity of anything it is applied to when it is not a temple? I don't disagree with the use of invention and creativity in bending the rules of classicism, but the intellectual conflicts in the work above should suggest that 'classicism' is devoid of the value of purity, clarity, and humanism it claims to represent.
'Classicism' is an over-generalization of cultural history which excludes the disorder and chaos inherent in therein, and which is used to criticize 'modernism' for promoting those values. 'Classicism' was the continual mixing of 'old' with 'new,' and that we can't acknowledge creative evolution or even the value of invention (why can't we mix old with new, exactly?) really speaks to the hazards of 'classicism.'
The entire 'classic v. modern' argument needs to end. It won't anytime soon, since contemporary culture prefers branding and image more than much else, and there won't be architectural conversations in the public realm that talk about much else besides how a building will look on a postcard in the meantime.