Response 1
Thursday, February 1, 2007
reading response
Usually modernism comes with industrialization. After industrialization, every goods needed to change simple for the undeveloped mechanical process. At that time mechanics couldn’t make ornaments like avant-garde period. Also, in the market, splendor ornaments became uselessly expensive. This change of society affects to philosophy and it requests architecture to change together. Living life became practical and it went to use of space in people’s living life. This homework in architecture was successful by Le Corbusier, Mies van der rohe etc.
Modern means something new and against the previous tradition or ancient period at first. However, sometimes modern became old language in architecture because people don’t need to worry about technology and architect made formed space which sometimes doesn’t need to have function. Purified function and system was the key point of primary modern architecture.
However, after the late 1980’s something was changed. People started criticizing ‘modern’ and they said this period become ‘postmodern’. Systemized space brought too much regulation and people thought creative and natural way of space was taken because of modernism. So between 1980’s-2000’s many architects thought modern is a kind of bad aspect from mechanical society.
Currently when I sometimes read another articles, some critics debated about contemporary culture. People still refuse to excessive ornament like modernist, but we also want to test the development of new technology from human friendly sides. It’s so hard to deny we totally refuse to use modern language currently. When we named some period from previous time, almost every paradigm should have changed like from avant-garde to modern. What I am so interested in is people criticize modernism but they still use modern language. Modern is used for regular but sometimes, for a good meaning, it is used for simple, clear and not distorted. And in this between concepts, current architecture time is in between post-modernity and second-modernity.
cindy
Modern means something new and against the previous tradition or ancient period at first. However, sometimes modern became old language in architecture because people don’t need to worry about technology and architect made formed space which sometimes doesn’t need to have function. Purified function and system was the key point of primary modern architecture.
However, after the late 1980’s something was changed. People started criticizing ‘modern’ and they said this period become ‘postmodern’. Systemized space brought too much regulation and people thought creative and natural way of space was taken because of modernism. So between 1980’s-2000’s many architects thought modern is a kind of bad aspect from mechanical society.
Currently when I sometimes read another articles, some critics debated about contemporary culture. People still refuse to excessive ornament like modernist, but we also want to test the development of new technology from human friendly sides. It’s so hard to deny we totally refuse to use modern language currently. When we named some period from previous time, almost every paradigm should have changed like from avant-garde to modern. What I am so interested in is people criticize modernism but they still use modern language. Modern is used for regular but sometimes, for a good meaning, it is used for simple, clear and not distorted. And in this between concepts, current architecture time is in between post-modernity and second-modernity.
cindy
pomo post
Modernism causes an interesting struggle with its title and its cause. Much of my understanding of modernism lies in its desire to be essential, to be pure, and to be exactly what the word modern is not. Modern is the now, and the now is new, idiosyncratic, and ultimately, mortal. The religious nature of Modernism is well covered in the Protestant Crusade article, crafting a sort of pious aura around the architects of the time, an inquisitor-like purposefulness. If Modernists disregard history and nature in favor of a fundamental truth that is timeless, then Postmodernists embrace the mortality of the present, celebrating the trash as truth, or, the death of truth.
[actually, a quick google search of "death of truth" reveals mostly christian or postmodern pages, but also strange combinations:
"The new onslaught against truth is coming under the general heading of "postmodernism." ... As with Darwinism, postmodernism has its origin in intellectual and academic circles. This is why average Christians are unaware, or at least unclear, about what postmodernism is."]
When the sacred or pure or truth is no longer the desired, what happens? Modernism sets up a series of rigid qualities to create essentialized pieces of work, but in a postmodern world disgusted by high-culture, where does the avant-garde exist? In an essay in Emigre on postmodernism and graphic design [most Emigre issues], Keedy writes, "Perhaps the Internet will simply co-opt graphic design, incorporating it into its operating system. Maybe graphic design will cease to exist as a discreet practice and just become another set of options on the menu." Postmodernism, as much a movement as a nonmovement, generates a series of nondesigners or nondesigns. We can see the use of the rejection of the 'pure' in things like Bush's terrible signage or myspace pages. Ze Frank, on his nondesigned video blog, comments on myspace, remarking that "as consumer-created media engulfs the other kind, it's possible that completely new norms develop around the notions of talent and artistic ability."
Anyways.
[off topic and late, but here are the links]
death of truth
Emigre
Typography
Ugly Myspace
sha
[actually, a quick google search of "death of truth" reveals mostly christian or postmodern pages, but also strange combinations:
"The new onslaught against truth is coming under the general heading of "postmodernism." ... As with Darwinism, postmodernism has its origin in intellectual and academic circles. This is why average Christians are unaware, or at least unclear, about what postmodernism is."]
When the sacred or pure or truth is no longer the desired, what happens? Modernism sets up a series of rigid qualities to create essentialized pieces of work, but in a postmodern world disgusted by high-culture, where does the avant-garde exist? In an essay in Emigre on postmodernism and graphic design [most Emigre issues], Keedy writes, "Perhaps the Internet will simply co-opt graphic design, incorporating it into its operating system. Maybe graphic design will cease to exist as a discreet practice and just become another set of options on the menu." Postmodernism, as much a movement as a nonmovement, generates a series of nondesigners or nondesigns. We can see the use of the rejection of the 'pure' in things like Bush's terrible signage or myspace pages. Ze Frank, on his nondesigned video blog, comments on myspace, remarking that "as consumer-created media engulfs the other kind, it's possible that completely new norms develop around the notions of talent and artistic ability."
Anyways.
[off topic and late, but here are the links]
death of truth
Emigre
Typography
Ugly Myspace
sha
Paradigm Shift
All of the ingredients of merging modernist principles and architecture were already in place at the turn of the century, however it took the “service of a new conception of space” that Le Corbusier was able to see that made the paradigm of modern architecture formally come to be. “Space Time Architecture,” by Siegfried Giedion, focuses on modern architecture and it’s ability to move beyond the sole perception of our eyes and into a collective understanding of our senses. This paradigm shift, according to Giedion, could have only happened through the imagination of Cubism and through the technological insights of the engineer. Le Corbusier’s five points were set up to dismantle the intellectual surface understanding of a building and it’s facade to a new full experience through a multitude of spatial stimuli and unique vantages.
Modernism was concerned with the masses, and often the avant guard thought of themselves as healers coming to aid a diseased society. A new term “Postmodernism” comes to be in the late 1950’s and is a reaction to the extreme stances that modernism holds. Fredric Jameson describes in “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” that it is dangerous to divide these two ideologies by periodising the end of modernism and beginning of Postmodernism, in which it name begets. There is often a reaction and conflict between the two philosophies that still continues to play out unlike what the name “post” modern infers.
Postmodernism has reanalyzed the modernist avant guards philanthropic roots who have now become the elitist serving the elitist multinational companies. He seems to see this as natural as to the nature of the new economics of real estate and the wealth of multi-national companies. The reaction of the Postmodernist is to find the sublime in the everyday and to encourage diversity. The well know Estonian, Lois Khan, began to emphasize this in “Order Is” stating that the higher the order the, the higher the diversity of design. His very roots began to mark a change in the cannon of architecture as with the understanding of getting back to a more diverse human regional architecture.
Modernism was concerned with the masses, and often the avant guard thought of themselves as healers coming to aid a diseased society. A new term “Postmodernism” comes to be in the late 1950’s and is a reaction to the extreme stances that modernism holds. Fredric Jameson describes in “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” that it is dangerous to divide these two ideologies by periodising the end of modernism and beginning of Postmodernism, in which it name begets. There is often a reaction and conflict between the two philosophies that still continues to play out unlike what the name “post” modern infers.
Postmodernism has reanalyzed the modernist avant guards philanthropic roots who have now become the elitist serving the elitist multinational companies. He seems to see this as natural as to the nature of the new economics of real estate and the wealth of multi-national companies. The reaction of the Postmodernist is to find the sublime in the everyday and to encourage diversity. The well know Estonian, Lois Khan, began to emphasize this in “Order Is” stating that the higher the order the, the higher the diversity of design. His very roots began to mark a change in the cannon of architecture as with the understanding of getting back to a more diverse human regional architecture.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Liwen's response on modernism
Liwen Zhang
Arch 209X – reading response, week 2
Modern
Architectural Modernism has always concerned itself with progress and the idea
of sanitation and the rational mechanical progress advancement of society. What
is interesting in Jencks’ articles is the connection between the artistic realm and
the socialist realm, where as Henri de Saint Simon said that artists have this
“common drive and a general idea”.
During times of social crisis, the very idea of having ‘common drives’ through an
aesthetic and socialist background is a very appealing one, upon which
revolutionary ideals of social stability can easily become influential. Thus it is no
surprise that Modernism became a ‘shared religion’ according to Jencks. The
cities at the turn of the 20th century were viewed by its elite inhabitants to be
overly decorated, corrupt and polluted. Thus the Modernism ideals of cleansing
and anti-ornamentation fit the needs directly. Le Corbusier labeled this the
“vacuum cleaning period”.
This is a very interesting notion, as it now implies that artists and namely,
architects are now in a way directly responsible for the cleansing and purification
of our cities, not just on a formal level, but also on a social and more importantly
psychological level. Also the idea of religion playing a decisive role in terms of
what constitutes to what Jencks refers to as either “good avant-garde” or
“diseased society” fits in well with this new set of responsibilities placed upon
artists and architects alike. This idea of the pure, clean and modern is what
eventually gives rise to the ‘international style’ and thus back the what Henri de
Saint Simon referred to as the “common drive and a general idea”. What is
perhaps not surprising is that once this so called common drive and vision is
shared and adopted, modernism then gives birth to the need for efficiency, mass
production and ultimately consumerism, and along with that comes a while new
string of problems.
Arch 209X – reading response, week 2
Modern
Architectural Modernism has always concerned itself with progress and the idea
of sanitation and the rational mechanical progress advancement of society. What
is interesting in Jencks’ articles is the connection between the artistic realm and
the socialist realm, where as Henri de Saint Simon said that artists have this
“common drive and a general idea”.
During times of social crisis, the very idea of having ‘common drives’ through an
aesthetic and socialist background is a very appealing one, upon which
revolutionary ideals of social stability can easily become influential. Thus it is no
surprise that Modernism became a ‘shared religion’ according to Jencks. The
cities at the turn of the 20th century were viewed by its elite inhabitants to be
overly decorated, corrupt and polluted. Thus the Modernism ideals of cleansing
and anti-ornamentation fit the needs directly. Le Corbusier labeled this the
“vacuum cleaning period”.
This is a very interesting notion, as it now implies that artists and namely,
architects are now in a way directly responsible for the cleansing and purification
of our cities, not just on a formal level, but also on a social and more importantly
psychological level. Also the idea of religion playing a decisive role in terms of
what constitutes to what Jencks refers to as either “good avant-garde” or
“diseased society” fits in well with this new set of responsibilities placed upon
artists and architects alike. This idea of the pure, clean and modern is what
eventually gives rise to the ‘international style’ and thus back the what Henri de
Saint Simon referred to as the “common drive and a general idea”. What is
perhaps not surprising is that once this so called common drive and vision is
shared and adopted, modernism then gives birth to the need for efficiency, mass
production and ultimately consumerism, and along with that comes a while new
string of problems.
The role of nature in modernity:
“The Idea of industrialization causing a pathological condition was most clearly development in Le Corbusier’s descriptions of the unreformed industrial city…He probably found it easier to apply this image to cities that to society as a whole because of an established practice among French geographers and sociologist of viewing cities as biological entities. The precedent no doubt confirmed him independent interest in biology and encouraged him to use biological entities” (Walden, Rusell. The Open hand Essay on le Corbusier, pg. 222).
Rational city: The role of technology and biology in the design of city.
Corbu’s point in his
Religion and Modernity.
“As defined by its high American priest, Clement Greenberg, Modernism always had a irreducible goal; to focus on the essence of each art language. By doing this, he argues, standards are kept high in an age of secularization, where there are few shared values and little left of a common symbolic system” (Jenks, 23).
“In this sense, Modernism is the first ideological response to social crisis and the breakdown of a shared religion”. Thus as argued by Jenks, the modernist architect found his religion in the purity and the rational found in nature and in order. By simplifying architecture and eradicating ornament once favored by religious patrons, the modern architect was able to restablish that faith, in a vocabulary that resonated to the masses that found themselves in an “agnostic age of consumer pluralism”.
Jenks further argues that the idealism once at the roots of modern architecture, was displaced by a translation to the popular. “A social shift had occurred which only became apparent in the seventies. Instead of the avant-grarde being the minority, as it had been for one hundred and sixty years, it was- hard to believe- the reigning taste!” (pg.26). Modern architecture, I would argue, was stripped of its morality and converted to a populism of high culture and desire, very much indifferent to the beginning ideals of Corbusier and Modernism.
Jameson’s on Postmodernism – is Architecture functioning as an entity in an epigenetic landscape?
Forrest on Modernism
As defined by the dictionary, the word modern has a simple and direct definition: “of or relating to modern times.” Taken at face value, this definition is rendered useless in the timeline of history; what was labeled “modern” twenty years ago is not today, making the very use of the word problematic in describing the history of architecture. However, despite its ineptitude, the word modern has come to define a period of architecture, and the foreseeable problems (or, for historians, opportunities) remain with us to this day. Jencks’ recognizes this in his “The Protestant Crusade,” an concedes the most definition: “modern architecture is the overpowering faith in industrial progressivism and its translation into the pure, white International Style (or at least the Machine Aesthetic) with the goal of transforming society both in its sensibility and social make-up.” What was once just a word that described temporal innovation suddenly assumes intense political and social implications. Jencks recognizes that the word “modern” to many architects represented transformation and upheaval locked in architectural form. They fixed the mutable word to define an abstract aesthetic that was meant to reflect a social transition where patronage of the arts and architecture had shifted from the church to an enlightened bourgeoisie—so much so that it absorbed social values.
The paradigmatic architects of this period relished in this language. Le Corbusier, in his Athens Charter, spoke of the spatial manifestations of social power, as “suburban townships…take on an unexpected and unforeseeable importance, either positive or negative, by becoming the seat of luxury residences.” Luxury was generally associated with corruption, and therefore the solution, by Le Corbusier’s argument, could be defined spatially. In other words, if the factors (or systems) that underlie the formation of elitism could be understood, they could be prevented spatially by inserting the egalitarian, “modern” architecture in its path. Thus, architecture and design could replace religion in influencing morality under the fixed definition of “modern.” A generation later, the meaning of “modern” as applied to architecture remained constant precisely because of the understood meaning and power the word had assumed. Louis Kahn’s talks on architecture were replete in religious rhetoric long before Jencks wrote “The Protestant Crusade,” stating “art is form-making life in order – psychic order is intangible…from order [the architect] will derive creative force and power of self-criticism to give form to the unfamiliar.” The notion of “modern” is almost god-like, with design being a “creative force” that can reveal mystical and intangible human emotions. Again, modernism came to mean a power social, cultural and even religious force that has a powerful role in shaping society.
Inevitably, time ushered in new ideas of architecture as it relates to society, replacing the productive idea of modernism with an architecture for a society that had shifted to consumerism. Constant consumption demands perpetual innovation, translating to new images and meanings in architecture (perhaps making it more modern than modernism, in the truest sense of the definition). However, the word “modern” was so fixed by previous generations’ usage that it was further fixed by labeling everything thereafter as “postmodern.” Not only did this cleverly recognize the fixed meaning of modernism, but it also allowed a broad and possibly ever-changing definition thereafter. In this way, PoMo has no fixed doctrine because one is not needed; where moderism (according to Jencks) replaced religion, consumerism replaced modernism.
The paradigmatic architects of this period relished in this language. Le Corbusier, in his Athens Charter, spoke of the spatial manifestations of social power, as “suburban townships…take on an unexpected and unforeseeable importance, either positive or negative, by becoming the seat of luxury residences.” Luxury was generally associated with corruption, and therefore the solution, by Le Corbusier’s argument, could be defined spatially. In other words, if the factors (or systems) that underlie the formation of elitism could be understood, they could be prevented spatially by inserting the egalitarian, “modern” architecture in its path. Thus, architecture and design could replace religion in influencing morality under the fixed definition of “modern.” A generation later, the meaning of “modern” as applied to architecture remained constant precisely because of the understood meaning and power the word had assumed. Louis Kahn’s talks on architecture were replete in religious rhetoric long before Jencks wrote “The Protestant Crusade,” stating “art is form-making life in order – psychic order is intangible…from order [the architect] will derive creative force and power of self-criticism to give form to the unfamiliar.” The notion of “modern” is almost god-like, with design being a “creative force” that can reveal mystical and intangible human emotions. Again, modernism came to mean a power social, cultural and even religious force that has a powerful role in shaping society.
Inevitably, time ushered in new ideas of architecture as it relates to society, replacing the productive idea of modernism with an architecture for a society that had shifted to consumerism. Constant consumption demands perpetual innovation, translating to new images and meanings in architecture (perhaps making it more modern than modernism, in the truest sense of the definition). However, the word “modern” was so fixed by previous generations’ usage that it was further fixed by labeling everything thereafter as “postmodern.” Not only did this cleverly recognize the fixed meaning of modernism, but it also allowed a broad and possibly ever-changing definition thereafter. In this way, PoMo has no fixed doctrine because one is not needed; where moderism (according to Jencks) replaced religion, consumerism replaced modernism.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
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