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Posted by Kris Krieger on March 5, 2007, 12:31 pm
> It seems to me that there's a disconnect between architecture that
> architects prefer and architecture that non-architects prefer,
> GENERALLY. For instance, large corporations tend to hire big-name
> architects to design new headquarters done up in the avant-garde mode
> of design, then the big wigs at that corporation notoriously go home
> to Colonial Revival homes. Has anyone heard a good reason for this?
Just a guess, but, (1) one's preferred work environment is often
different from one's preferred home/living environment; (2) many company
executives what their company to be *perceived* as being cutting
edge,and/or modern, efficient, sleek, future-oriented, progresive,
constantly renewing itself, and so on - but what these same people
consider "home" - or, perhaps more accurately, what their *wives*
consider "homey" - is typically far more traditional and conservative.
IOW, the company "face" is typically something like a "sheep in wolf's
clothing". Sort of like taking plain old mundane Borax, and putting it
into a curvy-shaped brushed-stainless-steel container and calling it
"technoclean".
>
> Is there a good reason why architects expect avant-garde designs to
> resonate with the rest of the public?
As above. The visual language says "progressive/innovative". OTOH,
banks, for example, want to project a visual signal that says
"tradition" and "stability".
It's generally self-defeating to underestimate the power of symbols as
communication. Why do you think different people buy different style s
of cars? Practicality is, for most people, a very *very* distant second
to the sonconscious idea of "what does this item say about me, what image
does it project to others".
In essence, architects are sort of like "clothing designers" for clients
- and, as the saying goes, "clothes make the man". If you dress like a
bum, people will treat you like one, even if you have $10million in
investments and bank accounts. OTOH, you can be penniless, but, if you
can wrangle designer-label duds, people treat you like royalty.
IOW, it's all about perceptions - for the vast majority of people, their
actions are based, *not* upon rational analysis, but upon their
subconscious perceptions.
>
> Is there a reason that the architectural industry, as a whole, has
> turned its back on traditional design, which is widely recognized,
> accepted, and more culturally rooted in our society that avant-garde
> alternatives?
I don't knwo that the question is relevant. For one thing, in essence,
you're implying (whether intentionally or not) that "whatever is average
(a.k.a. mundane, un-inventive, uncreative) is The Absolute Best thing to
do in all cases". That sort of idea is one reason that energy efficiency
is still so underused - to some people, fiberglass batting seems to be
some sort of strange new alien technology.
>
> I don't mean to be on a soap box here (or maybe I do), but I haven't
> gotten more than "We're smart, they're stupid" and "It's reactionary"
> from even my smartest colleagues and ex-professors.
Personally, I loathe pseudo-neo-"Colonial" stuff - OTOH, as people who
move frequently, we were well aware, when we bought the house in our area
Massachusetts, that a neo-Colonial was the *only* thing that we'd be able
to resell when we moved again, because the average buyer thre is
habituated to that style and sees other styles (except for perhaps
Victorian) as weird, ugly, freakish, or otherwise undesireable.
And your exaggerated overgeneralization that *ALL* companies use
"freakish" architecture is patently wrong.
>
> Don't architects have a responsibility to the public to create a
> recognizable, understandable (familiar), and beautiful built public
> envirinment through which to navigate and safely live their lives?
Just churn out the "same old same-old" as the saying goes? Not at all.
And if it were, well, there'd be no point in having architects at all -
all you'd need is people who could finagle the engineeringto add or
subtract more rooms/subunits.
Was the Empire State Building the building-style that the common people
used for their dwellings? The Arch in St. Louis? Were the cathedrals
and plazas and so on of Rennaissance Europe? Of course not. They
embodied the *aspirations* of people, not the tedious, unchanging
routines of the Daily Grind. They were revolutionalry for their times.
Yet your implications is that they therefore ought not to have been built
at all.
Architecture is more than just Yet Another Bowl of Gruel that people
don't even have to chew, never mind think about. If/when it does become
that, it will have died, and something else will have taken its place.
Yes, people need to have a sense of continuity with the past, but they
also have to have a sense of the promise of the future.
The Artist (and yes, Architecture is, at least sometimes, *still* one of
th eArts) persents people with ideas, views, perceptions of, and about,
the world that they otherwise would not have thought about.
I would not want to live in a world where all one ever saw was the past.
Too many people are stuck in ht epast, or at least, some idealized
version of it that people mistake for being the past.
And here is ahuge problem with what gets passed off as being
"traditional" - it seldom *is*. If one is going to blither about
"traditional", then do that which is *actually* so. None of this
nonsense of slapping Victorian gingerbread onto a pseudo-
Mediterranian/Pueblo/Haciena Frankenstein monster. None of this BS with
gluing a few boards onto a basic Monopoly game-piece structure and
calling it "Tudor". Lose all of that BS. IF you're going to do
traditional Tuscan, then DO traditional Tuscan - same for all the rest.
No more mixing metaphors, because all that does is *destroy* the things
that truely *are* traditional, that truely *are* links to the past.
As with all things, the sword cuts both ways. Pasting froufrou onto a
box does not turn it into a work of woodworking artisanship.
>
> FYI, I have no qualms with avant-garde architecture for personal use
> when it's removed from public context.
So anyone who likes the fact that any "public context" which includes
innovation is, what?
Maybe not everyone thinks the way you do. Maybe some like to have both.
>
> I hope to learn a thing or two from this large group of practitioners,
> teachers, and afficianados.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> GFS
> GrandTradition.net webmaster
>
>
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