Wednesday, February 16, 2011
I am boring.
In this week's class I was called boring alongside the rest of the class. I resent this and feel that it shows the paradox that our professors want us to live up to. They want us to be outrageous and inventive but will fail us if we do so. Archigram had no buildings that I know of that were ever built, and what good is innovative architecture if it does not exist except on paper. Why would I design something that has no possibility of being built. I design things that work. It is very easy to make colorful drawings with pens and crayons and things. But to design something actually functions, that takes skill. Walking city is a great looking facade. That is it. Where were the mechanical diagrams, where were the floor plans. Where are the sections? Do they exist? While Archigram was a vital catalyst during the 60's, they are not needed and have no place being taught in our class today as anything other than history. They shouldn't be called to the front of the class' attention as precedent. No professor should say, "Why don't y'all do something like that?" In my opinion a professor is in the wrong if they encourage us to practice irresponsible and reckless architecture and should be held accountable for it. Our society doesn't need an archigram. We just need more people with better taste who give a shit. A box is boring, Wiley tower is boring, Memorial gym is boring. But I AM NOT BORING.
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Please excuse me for calling you boring. It was a rhetorical device to make sure I had your attention. Perhaps it caused you in particular to shut down and stop listening. I agree with you in the notion that to really be radical, you have to be real. Some of the most radical work I know is the work of Douglas Darden. His work was buildable, but never meant to be built. The one book of his work, Condemned Buildings, put forth the proposition that what would it mean to make an architecture that would be condemned, not on the grounds of being unsafe, but rather for being so aesthetically shocking that people would demand it's demolition. His drawings are exquisite, deep, and powerful. He channeled all the paper architects to date: Piranesi, Boulee, Ledoux, Lequeu, Corbu, and Peter Cook. Zaha and Rem were "paper architects" until a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteI am a card carrying architect. I love to build and I love the built. I hope you are made the same way. But paper architecture has its place. It can inspire new ideas; and if architectural history, or architectural theory have any impact on what is built in the present, then paper architecture has an effect on the built. There is no reason why the unbuilt, or paper architecture, cannot inspire the built.
On the whole, though, from within my architect's skin, I believe as you do, that to be really radical is to build . . . and build with intensity. It is the hardest act of all. I happen to admire the boring, especially when a thing is so boring that it transfers into being profound . . . like the work of Giorgio Grassi. "Cool form" is the cheapest way of being radical. To not be boring, you have to rethink architecture at its core, not at its surface. But you already should know that.
It's too bad you shut down during my lecture and did not listen further. I hope you'd see some of the work the students at the Architectural Association are doing. I would reccommend that you look at the work being produced there. It's not boring. The work is intense, adventuresome, radical, and realizable (some stuff, not all). If you really want avoid being boring, then you'll have to get radical. If you want to be boring, then at least be radical doing it. If you insist on being radical, then don't be boring . . . you'll have to push the envelope beyond the real sometimes and venture into places where technology and society's ambitions might just have to catch up to you.