A kind of a "dangerous supplement", marked, scarred on a body, post-orgasmically, always, already in anticipation of (a) crisis OR for a desert avec 'agape'. Mindb(l)ogg(l)ing Noise. "Avalanche, would you share my last pursuit?" (Baudelaire)

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Zaha And Futility

Of Other Spaces



"For a brief, but achingly significant period in the middle of the nineteenth century, architecture and engineering really did meet, in the sense that there was a reciprocal demand for expanding the limits of each field. New technologies led to new building types, which forced engineers to come up with new structural systems. The iron and glass palaces really were as close to that perfect moment as construction could get, but by the end of the 19th century, the capabilities of the engineers had exceeded what they could be needed for. Look at the Paris exhibition of 1889; the Eiffel Tower and the Galerie des Machines were both engineering feats that totally over-fulfilled the demands that could be made of them by society; there was no need for any building that vast, and there never really would be. In a way, this outstripping of technology is akin to ‘the fall’ of functionalism; humans are incapable of living up to this ideal synthesis of technology and design, and it can therefore only ever be a case of expressing something that cannot actually be, of ‘elegant’ (or of course, cost-effective) solutions to our inadequate problems. This fracture in the conceptual foundations of modernist architecture haunts it still.For a brief, but achingly significant period in the middle of the nineteenth century, architecture and engineering really did meet, in the sense that there was a reciprocal demand for expanding the limits of each field. New technologies led to new building types, which forced engineers to come up with new structural systems. The iron and glass palaces really were as close to that perfect moment as construction could get, but by the end of the 19th century, the capabilities of the engineers had exceeded what they could be needed for. Look at the Paris exhibition of 1889; the Eiffel Tower and the Galerie des Machines were both engineering feats that totally over-fulfilled the demands that could be made of them by society; there was no need for any building that vast, and there never really would be. In a way, this outstripping of technology is akin to ‘the fall’ of functionalism; humans are incapable of living up to this ideal synthesis of technology and design, and it can therefore only ever be a case of expressing something that cannot actually be, of ‘elegant’ (or of course, cost-effective) solutions to our inadequate problems. This fracture in the conceptual foundations of modernist architecture haunts it still."

3 comments:

Andreas said...

From the elegant archi(tectonic) feats of the industrial era to the overbearing engineering nightmares of zaha... the comparison is surprisingly appropriate.

It seems to me, that there was a genuine public interest in terms of presenting an almost experimental building as a symbol of triumph and technological progress. Regardless of the fact that their enthusiasm fell through the gaps of modernist ideals, it seems as though the efforts that were originally genuine and truly impressive have now been replaced by the commercial success of signature architects showing off in magazines.

I wonder, how long it will be until we see Zaha in a reality show judging the efforts of architecture students that are filmed drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes during their all-nighters?

Demetris said...

Smoking cigarettes during their all-nighters?! Surely not.
The post-Zaha-smoking-in-the-AA-attics while-slaving-away-at-deconstructing- Lissitzky-and-Malevich-drawings-by-SHOCK!-HORROR!-hand days are gone for good.
What we are left wth however is the dictatorship of the hand: from the twitching of technology to a supposedly humanizing fluidity to the inescapable need for plethoric manual labour, the hand, more or less erased by modernist architecture has returned, almost repressively, to haunt us as 'signature'.

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