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From: Randolph Fritz <randolph@xxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 11:41:15 -0700
Kees Lau cites Koolhaas (maybe someday I'll actually have a copy of his
book, hey):
>
>The chapter is called Bigness or the problem of Large. I can't find a place
>where he talks about the end of architecture. On p. 500 he writes: ...."The
>elevator - with its potential to establish mechanical rather than
>architectural connections - and its family of related inventions render null
>and void the classical repertoire of architecture. Issues of composition,
>scale, proportion, detail are now moot. The "art" of architecture is useless
>in Bigness." ...........Rem Koolhaas writes that he is trying to have a say
>in the 30 to 40 % of a building that is designed by installation-engineers
>(and they usually are not interested at all in everything we think about).
>About the constructions of his buildings: he works with Ove Arup and Cecil
>Balmond and that seems to have a verry stimulating influence.
>
Honestly, I fail to see the reasoning; the response to visual impact has
hardly changed. Indeed, is not one of the chief responses to much of a
modern city exactly a kind of horror at the loss of human scale? And one
of the chief aesthetic reasons for such designs exactly that they signify a
power beyond human? It is a lie, to be sure, but a very strongly stated
one! Or perhaps it would be fair, and honest, to call them signs of the
power of society over the individual. And attention to those issues remain
the signs of social groups willing to treat the people they deal with
fairly.
It would probably be fairer to say that innovations transport and
communications *alter* the way in which people design and respond to
designs. And have for a long time: the wheel had its undoubted impact.
Based on your comments, it sounds like Koolhaas has a productive approach
to the problem: one has to respond to technologies by making the best
architectural use of them; anything else risks marginalization and, perhaps
more importantly, the whole failure of the human side of design.
Randolph Fritz, who's still incredibly busy & not writing much these days
Portland, Oregon