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When I think about the relationship between city and architecture, I think of democracy. Architecture can be the representation of a community. We can grasp this concept when there is an absence. When the Buddhas in Afghanistan or the Twin Towers in New York were destroyed, or the Golden Dome of Samarra in Iraq disappeared, or the synagogue in Dresden was destroyed by Nazis, there was a feeling of absence, of lack, of vacuum. Such events, after which architecture no longer exists, help us better understand its importance. Even when they are ugly, don't function or are aesthetically horrible, buildings are the representation of society.
Architecture can - or rather must - have an effect on society. Because what we architects do is try to build a set in which people are the actors. Architecture cannot be independent of people, because if we imagine a city without people, or people without architecture, there is an evident absence. Human beings are obliged to live together with their architecture. s0 we design a set in which the actors perform, and if this set does not allow their entrances and exits, or the culmination of the action, everything collapses.
If you say to an inhabitant of Paris's banlieue that the buildings should be demolished because they are ugly, he will respond that, yes, they are ugly, but he doesn't want another typology. And you think: 'How come, they're ugly, you live badly, you've burnt the stairs, the lifts don't work, the landings are a disaster, why do you want them?' And he replies: 'Because we were born here'. He has performed his human comedy in the set that was offered him, even if in the worst possible place. There is a challenge of sensitivity here, because you know you have to destroy this set so as not to perpetuate these places of desperation, but at the same time you have to find a way to enable the transition, There is no building that can be annulled in an instant.
When I do a project I speak of 'geography' and not of landscape. There are three components in geography, but we architects usually tend to ignore at least two of them. The first component is the landscape, then there is the economy and the third is the human being. These three things are essential for proceeding toward a better understanding of what we are doing. So geography has taken on a fundamental importance. I started talking about geography 20-odd years ago without knowing what the outcomes would be. The architect is never a theorist, but rather someone who has an idea, forgets it the next day and does something else, I used 'geography' because it was more useful to me, in that I substituted it for 'morphology'. Rather than making a territorial, topological, topographical analysis of places, I used a concept, geography, which yielded greater complexity.
I also think it is necessary to talk of 'context'. There are extreme positions, the mythomaniacs of context or those who hate it. I'm not for 'fuck the context' or 'context is best'. I'm for the idea that context exists.
Another word I use a lot along with geography is 'horizon': you move the horizon, raise it, lower it, then turn it around. It's like cinema, Rossellini used to say: 'I'm never behind the camera, only in front'; he never looked through the viewfinder. Technique is useful until you understand it, after that you no longer use it.
Bruno Zevi told me that it was not enough to be a great architect. There is something more: to be a good architect, with interest in the greater complexity of society. I think the architect ought to resume the role of connecting those parts of society that are no longer together. We ought not to dream up visions of a future world [though no one forbids it], but rather begin to revisit the initial problem: how can the architect help many different people live together without killing one another, without insulting one another, with respect and resources for all? Of course one can't resolve everything alone, but we have to start becoming part of that process. The architect should be like Brunelleschi, who was greeted when he walked around Florence; like Masaccio, like Tintoretto, who were part of a community. As a profession, we have to go back to being part of a community.
Massimiliano Fuksas was speaking with Richard Burdett
Article taken from Cities, Architecture and Society: 10th International Architecture Exhibition - Venice Biennale 2006, Volume 1
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
An argument of our Contemporary City = Generic City
These are some of the important quotes argue against the current trend cities are transforming into modern monoculture:
"[Tragedy] I don't believe anyone will ever be able to make any city council understand that from an urbanistic point of view, the most attractive parts of the city are precisely those areas where nobody has ever done anything. I believe a city, by definition, wants to have something done in those areas. That is the tragedy." quote by Architect Rem Koolhaas & Designer Bruce Mau, published at S,M,L,XL
"The loss of Singapore's historic center foreshadows a disturbing global phenomenon. It is sad enough when a people and a city expunge their own cultural achievements, but in the twentieth century, throughout the world, where historic architecture in old cities is lost, it is frequently replaced with the new architecture of an international modern monoculture. Whether in northern or southern climates, in Asia, African, European, or American cultures, the generic buildings of modern development change little in response to their geographic and social surroundings. Just as American fast-food chains offer identical dishes, with the same names, in the same wrappers, by waiters in matching uniforms, so most of the new architecture of Singapore primarily reflects the economic formulas of modern speculative development." quote by Anthony Tung, published at Preserving the World's Great Cities. The destruction and renewal of the historic metropolis
From Louisana Manifesto, architect Jean Nouvel stated : "In 2005, more than ever, architecture is annihilating places, banalizing them, violating them. Sometimes it replaces the landscape, creates it in its own image, which is nothing but another way of effacting it. "........ "The global economy is accentuating the effects of the dominant architecture, the type that claims “we don’t need context”. And yet debate on this galloping frenzy does not exist: architectural criticism, invoking the limits of the discipline, is content with aesthetic and stylistic reflections devoid of any analysis of the real, and ignores the crucial historical clash that – more insistently every day – sets a global architecture against an architecture of situations, generic architecture against an architecture of specificity. Is our modernity today simply the direct descendant of the modernity of the 20th century, devoid of any spirit of criticism? Does it consist simply of parachuting solitary objects on to the face of the planet? Shouldn’t it rather be looking for reasons, correspondences, harmonies, differences in order to propose an ad-hoc architecture, here and now? " ......."In the name of the pleasure of living on this Earth, we must resist the urbanism of zones, networks and grids, the automatic rot that is obliterating the identity of the cities of all continents, in all climates, feeding on cloned offices, cloned dwellings, cloned shops, thirsting for the already thought, the already seen in order to avoid thinking and seeing."
"Distinctiveness is key, for although cities draw from each others' experiences the danger is that pioneering cities around the world quickly become textbook case studies for city officials. Cities then tend to adopt generic models of success without taking into account the local characteristic and conditions that contributed to those successes. The result is a homogeneous pastiche of buildings - aquariums, convention centres, museums, shops and restaurants - that prove to be remarkably similar the world over." Quoted from The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators
"[Tragedy] I don't believe anyone will ever be able to make any city council understand that from an urbanistic point of view, the most attractive parts of the city are precisely those areas where nobody has ever done anything. I believe a city, by definition, wants to have something done in those areas. That is the tragedy." quote by Architect Rem Koolhaas & Designer Bruce Mau, published at S,M,L,XL
"The loss of Singapore's historic center foreshadows a disturbing global phenomenon. It is sad enough when a people and a city expunge their own cultural achievements, but in the twentieth century, throughout the world, where historic architecture in old cities is lost, it is frequently replaced with the new architecture of an international modern monoculture. Whether in northern or southern climates, in Asia, African, European, or American cultures, the generic buildings of modern development change little in response to their geographic and social surroundings. Just as American fast-food chains offer identical dishes, with the same names, in the same wrappers, by waiters in matching uniforms, so most of the new architecture of Singapore primarily reflects the economic formulas of modern speculative development." quote by Anthony Tung, published at Preserving the World's Great Cities. The destruction and renewal of the historic metropolis
From Louisana Manifesto, architect Jean Nouvel stated : "In 2005, more than ever, architecture is annihilating places, banalizing them, violating them. Sometimes it replaces the landscape, creates it in its own image, which is nothing but another way of effacting it. "........ "The global economy is accentuating the effects of the dominant architecture, the type that claims “we don’t need context”. And yet debate on this galloping frenzy does not exist: architectural criticism, invoking the limits of the discipline, is content with aesthetic and stylistic reflections devoid of any analysis of the real, and ignores the crucial historical clash that – more insistently every day – sets a global architecture against an architecture of situations, generic architecture against an architecture of specificity. Is our modernity today simply the direct descendant of the modernity of the 20th century, devoid of any spirit of criticism? Does it consist simply of parachuting solitary objects on to the face of the planet? Shouldn’t it rather be looking for reasons, correspondences, harmonies, differences in order to propose an ad-hoc architecture, here and now? " ......."In the name of the pleasure of living on this Earth, we must resist the urbanism of zones, networks and grids, the automatic rot that is obliterating the identity of the cities of all continents, in all climates, feeding on cloned offices, cloned dwellings, cloned shops, thirsting for the already thought, the already seen in order to avoid thinking and seeing."
"Distinctiveness is key, for although cities draw from each others' experiences the danger is that pioneering cities around the world quickly become textbook case studies for city officials. Cities then tend to adopt generic models of success without taking into account the local characteristic and conditions that contributed to those successes. The result is a homogeneous pastiche of buildings - aquariums, convention centres, museums, shops and restaurants - that prove to be remarkably similar the world over." Quoted from The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators
State Assembly Building at the river front #1
The DUN - Dewan Undangan Negeri (State Legislative Assembly building). The bulk size of this building will dominant the skyline of Kuching city. It is built on the site where originally covered with thick vegetation prominently forms the unique image of Kuching. Now with the clearing had been done to the water edge, you can see the beginning of urbanising the other side of the river.
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