Bigness or the Problem of Large- Rem Koolhaas

The growth of population, the higher demand, and the more advance of technologies - these perhaps are the main factors that help with the contribution of the bigness. The main problem occurring is perchance the lost sense of controlling through the process of expanding and adding of programs. The design becomes scarce. There is a change of the idea.Teamwork becomes an important word. The scale of the building is very big--so big that one can no longer does it alone as Koolhaas mentioned that "Bigness means surrender to technologies; to engineers, contractors, manufactures; to politics; to others.

From my point of view, the bigness idea when looking at it economically, it answers the need of the people. It provides space, the quantity that architecture cannot do (if architecture being the uniqueness in this case). There is no way that everyone is going to get one's own unit of living on the Earth surface. Not only the land price becomes way too high to afford (because small groups of rich people are holding the power), it in fact is just not possible. Quantity as a whole may then be the good answer for this push driven by the economic forces that causes the city to loose its control. But where is the value or merit of architecture? There are no longer homes for ones' own but a city within a city for ones to share. The individuality as well as the stardom perhaps can be seen as the inevitable victims who are being killed brutally.

"Bigness no longer needs the city: it competes with the city; it represents the city; it preempts the city; or better still, it is the city."

Frank Gehry and Expressionism

Flying through the architecture history timeline, our class has now landed on expressionist postmodernism where unusual massing, distortion of forms and symbolism are encouraged to create emotional effect and convey multiple meanings. The new movement also plays the same idea of forms follow function (modernism) but in a different sense. This time, the eyes of the beholders are not the architects but ordinary people (e.g. The Big Duck building is designed to be in a duck shape following its purpose of a duck selling house).

Among the famous expressionist postmodern architects, one very unique figure ,who interested me the most, was Frank Gehry. Personally, his fish series are distinctive and notable in term of the invention of idea and belief. His buildings stand out from their surroundings and draw people's attention.

http://www.eikongraphia.com/?p=50

However, in some project like "the Fish dance restaurant in Kobe, Japan" the 'too fishy' shape of it makes it look nothing more than an enlarged version of a well carved sculpture. It is just one big fish or in another word, it is unique but not intriguing. When compared to modernist buildings, it seems to have less thought and maybe too well-defined. If possible, I would rather prefer the new peculiar idea and concern of functions of Frank Gehry but the more abstract and logical forms of modernism plus the ambiguous meanings with numerous ways of understandings from post modernism.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/03/video-frank-geh.html

Above is another Gehry's fish called the Vila Olimpica (Barcelona,Spain). This installation appears to be more attracting than the restaurant. I like the idea of how the fish is abstracted and becomes more open to interpretation. The form is more expressive, emotionally movable as it is subjective for the architect and also to the eye of viewers and it would be nice if this fish can actually becomes a living space.

‘It was by accident that I got into the fish image,’ said Gehry. ‘[In the Eighties] my colleagues were starting to replay Greek temples. That was hot, everybody was re-doing the past. I said, y’know, “Greek temples are anthropomorphic. And three hundred million years before man was fish. If you wanna, if you gotta go back, if you’re insecure about going forward, dammit, go back three hundred million years. Why are you stopping at the Greeks?” So I started drawing fish in my sketchbook. and then I started to realize that there was something in it.’

-Frank Gehry

Post modernism

"Actual lie is the suggestion of truth."

The last two weeks we have been studying about high modernism and post-modernism. Personally I kind of like the idea of post-modernism more. Derived from a criticism of modern movement in architecture, it attacks the idea of how modernists believe in the definite forms and how they do not borrow anything from the past. Post-modernism somewhat presents a smarter thought. The fact that it has a more complex, open-ended meanings -which can be understood in many different ways -plus the assembling of the present, the past and the future united together. perhaps help to endure and lengthen its life on the fashion road. With this idea, it isn't in favour of one specific customer or one small group of people nor is it fixed in time and one interpretation. Since people's ways of understanding can change through time and according to their experiences, Post-modernism architecture then doesn't age with time. The creativity runs wider with the appearance of ornament and decoration, the play with pure forms and the obscure and uncertain meanings embedded behind it.

Michael Graves' work for example, it rejects the notion of the 'perfect' architectonic detail and play with all colors, methods, forms, materials available to architects. It does not have to be symmetrical which this gives interesting composition and shapes, making his buildings look unique and interesting than just following fixed forms.

NCAA Hall of champions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NCAA_Hall_of_Champions.JPG

PlayTime

One aspect of modernism viewed by the movie Playtime is the idea of conformity and dehumanization. Buildings and each unit in the buildings are shown to be indistinguishable with cubic shapes and straight lines, built with glass and steel.

wikipedia.com

People are conformed with similar kind of clothes, also with limited colour choice and tones. Shades of grey, blue, black and grayish white are predominant. Not only it homogenizes the people, it gives a dull machine look. In the movie, there's a scene showing that people look too much alike that they get called for wrong names

sensesofcinema.com

The dehumanization idea is shown mostly by the people's behaviours, for example, how they respond to time and the relationship between one another. In one beginning scene, people walk straight lines and turn on right angle. This robot manner presents how people are becoming less human like. Only construction workers and music lovers in the movie walk freely and naturally. This perhaps raises another discussion for class and rural v.s. urban (free v.s. conformed).

One of the main character, Monsieur Hulet is possibly the representation of the rural and 'us' the audience at that period of time. His character helps us see the futuristic world and the coming changes in a wider perspective as an outsider who steps back a bit and watch what was actually going on. Anything new or unnecessary in the modern society is seen as obstacles. Others (modernist people) are portrayed in a weird sense and lifelessly, noting that the freedom, the living are the noncomformity, the messiness and the human nature.