L'Arca International N° 112
May / June 2013
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Weirdism ?
The history of architecture over recent times has always grouped together and defined various variations in appearance and design in terms of "isms".
We smoothly moved on from eclecticism to rationalism and then postmodernism. Rather significant concepts for representing the stylistic languages of architectural design. In the case of "rationalism" in particular, they referred to the way in which the organisation of the layout of interior functions and spaces of buildings was genuinely geometrically rational.
Portions of structures generated from interior spaces mathematically studied in terms of positioning, lighting and the composition of solids and voids in relation to outside appearance, mainly using the latest construction methods and materials offered by the period in question. Reinforced concrete, glass, iron and plaster using just a few primary colours.
Without innovating or altering the interior layout of designs and attempting to openly reject that great mother of composition ‘rationalism’, postmodernism, which rose from the cinders of rationalism and its various hybridisations, became a testing ground for attempting to express an external and aggregative aspect of buildings interpreting languages already expressed by pop artists, even though the movement lacked any true design talents and hence of any masters capable of continuing and exceeding what had already been achieved. It drew on forms and colours from a catalogue of popularly known and conventional "things", such as arches and tympanums and columns and then, like some sort of wooden construction kit, composed them into buildings and settings.
A method that delegated everything to outside appearance, which, due to its ease of reading, rapidly caught on with architects in various parts of the world and equally rapidly (due to its lack of success with critics and new generations, as often happens in fashion) was soon superseded.
It seems to me that the problem we are experiencing at the moment derives from the fact that we have now moved on from columns and tympanums to reconsider the old-fashioned experiments carried out by Joseph Paxton, the constructor of the Crystal Palace", and, once again, by rightly attempting to concentrate all our creative and innovative efforts on forgetting the postmodern period and latching onto the cultural and scientific values attained last century by rationalism, we are moving forward from old experiments by taking advantage of computers as the only means of design; machines that allow us to express ourselves freely without the constraints of rulers and set squares.
We are finally managing to change the traditional vocabulary of architecture by removing such timeless terms as: roof, facade, courtyard, front, back, balconies etc....Nowadays, thanks to new construction technology and materials, buildings are becoming one single organism, rather like aeroplanes whose outside surface is by nature and in functional relation to its internal efficiency one single continuum, just like the "skin" of living bodies.
Due to the great freedom that the shape and appearance of buildings can take on, it is extremely difficult to try and attach any significant "ism" to this design philosophy and way of thinking. We might possibly try "formalism". I do not know about you, patient as you are to read what I have to say, but I firmly believe that now, after 20 years of complete design freedom with no rules and no mental constraints, the time has come to start thinking about whether the boundless flights of fancy, which have resulted in the construction of incredible and unimaginable-looking towers and structures that he can appear to defy the laws of gravity with their startling overhangs and angles of inclination, are actually creating a sort of toy land of the future constructed out of giant macro objects: beautiful, dazzlingly beautiful and even "transportable".
Indeed, it is hard to actually identify them with the places where they are built, because they could easily be relocated anywhere from London to Dubai without the slightest bother.
The impression I get is that an international design obsession with "making it strange" is beginning, which will inevitably lead to the construction of giant monuments, certainly capable of paying tribute to our current civilisation for those who come after us, but which do very little to improve and innovate the housing and urban spaces where we must live now and in future.
Perhaps if we put more imagination into designing the spatial layout of our homes, forgetting about last century's distributional schemes that we keep on applying without considering that our lifestyles have totally changed, even structural appearance could be more in accordance with modern-day languages, finally inventing a sort of "inconclusive-ness", whose definition or final transformation is left up to us.
I genuinely believe that in the near future we will engage in creating works of architecture in progress so as to finally achieve the aim of inhabiting an unfinished city capable of constantly adapting to the different needs and cultures of its inhabitants. But this is something that needs to be considered at a later date.
Cesare Maria Casati
