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From Estrangement to Event
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This paper discusses the progression from estrangement to event in Archigram member Ron Herron's ...... More...
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Paper Abstract:
This paper discusses the progression from estrangement to event in Archigram member Ron Herron's Walking City and architect Rem Koolhaas' Generic City. Postmodernism and existentialism are discussed as the basis for the detachment these architectural concepts illustrate, and photos are included.
Paper Introduction:
From Estrangement to Event Archigram\'s Walking City and Rem Koolhaas\'s Generic City areconceptual models of modern society\'s transition from estrangement toevent In the evolution of modern thought the progression fromestrangement to event has been synchronized with a parallel and relatedprogression from individuality to detachment At the heart of thisdevelopment has been a shift from reliance upon traditional values longheralded as standards in society such as religion morality and culture to new self-generated standards that answer to no other authority but theindividual who
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The pods could move independently but could also plug in to way stations to exchange occupants or restock supplies ("Archigram," Answers.com). "Archigram." Architects (1961-1974). The grid speaksof millions of identical, undifferentiated squares that are there simply todo a job. Linda Krause & Patrice Petro. The individualhas succeeded in detaching himself not only from traditions and moralconstraints but also from life's meaning and purpose. [pic] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/feature/ ,1169,662929, .html) In a sense, the Walking City was not much different from an RV, exceptthat instead of traveling sedately on the highways and byways, it could goanywhere at will. Ultimately, the Walking City's disadvantages would likelyoutweigh its strengths. The individual has departed from honoring God,government, and other authorities above himself and has become his ownauthority and the final arbiter of any concept he chooses to embrace. Eds. From this perspective postmodernism is itself a false theology offering nothing more than repackaged cynicism and nihilism ("Postmodernism"). If it gets too small it just expands. My life has no meaning." Although the Walking City and the Generic City have ostensibleutilitarian purpose and adaptability, they have no soul. In the evolution of modern thought, the progression fromestrangement to event has been synchronized with a parallel and relatedprogression from individuality to detachment. The business and civic centercontains Koolhaas's "Lille Grand Palais." The photos below show the insideand outside of the structure. As theold city became vacant and faded, the new Walking City would become theplace to be. It is big enough for everybody. In the Walking City and the Generic City, then, we can see more thanthe creative designs of innovative architects. It is the city without history. "From Bauhaus to Koolhaas." 4. Existentialism, while not synonymous withpostmodernism, reflects the same departure from established standards and afocus upon the individual as the central source of meaning: The philosophy generally reflects a belief in freedom and accepts the consequences of individual actions, while acknowledging the responsibility attendant to the making of choices. He has lost everything that was personalabout himself. Works Cited"Archigram." Answers.com. By designing homes that are neither stable norenduring, the architects make indirect comment on the value of the personswho inhabit those homes: they are inconsequential. Archigram's innovation is that it questions urbanism itself and opensthe way for a redefinition of cities, houses, and "other archetypal formsof architecture" ("Royal Gold Medal 2 2"). Christiane Crasemann Collins, George R. People who learn how to get somewhere bymemorizing the landscape would be lost. From Estrangement to Event Archigram's Walking City and Rem Koolhaas's Generic City areconceptual models of modern society's transition from estrangement toevent. Like ancient mothers that still nourish titanic embryos, whole cities are built on colonial infrastructures of which the oppressors took the blueprints back home. The surface of the city explodes, the economy accelerates, slows down, bursts, collapses. The only thing thatmatters is what is useful for the moment. Archigram's architecture promoted consumerchoice and centered on the mobility and malleability that they believedcould set people free. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living (Heron). The limits of itsinvestigation were the relationship between cities and the new technologiesof information, movement and perception. Just so, modern man has forgedin his own individuality a burning singleness, a solitary life that isdetached from everything familiar, anonymous, and he is therefore set up asa stranger to everyone and everything. Thisnew identity forged in self has precipitated the estrangement thatdifferentiates the individual from his culture, his fellows, and hishistory and has manifested in an event, detachment, that is the outworkingof the inner estrangement. This estrangement and event, manifested as individuality anddetachment, can be traced to the rise of postmodernism and existentialism.Postmodernist thought rejects conventional thought and organizes culturallife around a variety of more local and subcultural ideologies that can beoverturned at will whenever any contradicting evidence is presented. In the 195 's and 196 's, existentialist literature such as thewritings of Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets emphasized the freedom ofexistentialism, while those of Albert Camus and Kierkegaard emphasized thedespair associated with trying to make choices with only oneself to relyon. And then, just as in so many centuries before, therewould be another type of class conflict: the old traditional city with itsstationary buildings and permanent neighborhoods would become the slum thatno one wants to live in, and the new Walking City would become the"happening" place to be. Archigram's surrealistic projects included such amazing concepts asPeter Cook's Plug-in City assembled from cranes, pods, Zeppelins, andflashing signs that could "roll into town, bolt together and plug itself inovernight" (Jacob). Instead, both visions are significant only to theindividuals they are adapted for, useful only for the moment they areemployed, and immediately give way to a new configuration the moment theyare no longer serviceable. In his soul, he knows "I am no one. 7 (1996). http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/cook.html"Postmodernism." Wikipedia. Collins. "Generic City." Infratecture. And what results from this dialogue can be termed architecture-as a product and as a discipline ("Architecture"). Were suchcities actually to exist, their inhabitants would live in a continual stateof insecurity, not knowing from moment to moment when their home would moveor cease to exist. The Walking City also appeared to be a multi-familydwelling, more like an apartment house than a one-family house. Fun, play and pleasure were therationale for archigrams projects, not as recreation, the pause thatrefreshes, between stretches of productive labour,but as an epistemology and an end in itself ("Peter Cook"). The detachment of individualswith no internal anchor would become the event where individuals detachedfrom their location and became nomads without any permanent address. Sterile,functional, and aimless, they exist...and then they don't. Koolhaaslooks at urban life in this century: as a fluid, largely chaotic "culture of congestion" over which architects can assert virtually no lasting control. One of the more feasible concepts was Ron Herron's Walking City, a collection of robot-like intelligent buildings in the form of giant pods that could roam the cities. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/saturday/stories/s1351558.htm"The Station Not the Airport." The Architectural Review 2 7.124 (2 ): 44."The Archigram Vision." From the Environmental Communications Archives. Further, absolute anti-rational perspectives comprise a profound worldview but are so general and limited as to offer little to satisfy man's search for truth, meaning and purpose. Not Koolhaas. The Walking City by Archigram and the Generic City depicted by RemKoolhaas represent somewhat utopian conceptual models that demonstrate howthe transition from estrangement to event would be carried over fromphilosophy into actual life. In a Wired interview, Koolhaas discusses his concept of anonymity,holding up Singapore as a city that has removed all traces of authenticityfrom itself and describes 4 -story buildings in China designed in threedays with three people on Macs. 22.Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age. Although he hascapitalized on his individuality, bending his environment to suit hisimmediate need, he has lost the unique identity that colored thatindividuality and has become as faceless as the Generic City and asrootless as the Walking City. Keeping in touch with friends andacquaintances or finding someone who keeps moving would be a job fordetectives. They work - that is all (Brownell). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2 3. Their cities built on individualityhave achieved the detachment from tradition, other people, and identitythat characterized buildings of other eras. The progression from estrangement to event is played out in manyaspects of modern society; one of these is architecture. The lonely, unwanted stationary buildings wouldbecome the rejects of the current society. [pic] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rem_Koolhaas) His design for the Seattle Central Library, below, echoes the gridpattern that is evident in the CCTV building above. "ARCHITECTURE." WIKIPEDIA. All it proves is that there are infinite hidden margins, colossal reservoirs of slack, a perpetual, organic process of adjustment, standards, behavior; expectations change with the biological intelligence of the most alert animal. Everything else must bow itsknee to that utility and be sacrificed when utility ceases. [pic] (http://www.archigram.net/projects_pages/walking_city.html) Herron's concept presents an alternative that allows people to move their house any time they need a better location to live in, a capability that radically alters the traditional view of architecture and transforms a city from streets with rows of houses to a backdrop for a dynamic, ever-changing panorama where the house that was on the corner yesterday is across town today. "Royal Gold Medal 2 2." "The Legacy of Archigram." Saturday Breakfast with Geraldine Doogue 23/ 4/2 5. The postmodernist's abandonment of absolutes affects man's morality,ethics, and spirituality. "The groupexperimented with clip-on technology, throwaway environment, space capsulesand mass-consumer imagery. it is nothing but a reflection of present need and present ability. Just as the Walking City adaptscontinually to the needs of the individuals and no longer has traditionaladdresses or a solid identity of its own, the Generic City adapts to thecurrent need and does not exist beyond it: Rem Koolhaas talks about the Generic City, which is liberated from the captivity of center, from the straitjacket of identity ... set itself the task not of revolutionizingarchitecture, but rather of the way of thinking about it. Responding to theinterviewer's comment that "It sounds like no one's in charge," Koolhaasanswers: Architecture can't do anything that the culture doesn't. [pic] The grid again shows up in his design for the Euralille the major high-speed train hub in the north of France. They are generic in the sense that they have no specificidentity of their own, like the generic city hall shown below, and there isa blankness about them. Their works offered a seductive vision of aglamorous future machine age, however social and environmental issues wereleft unaddressed" ("Archigram," Answers.com). Brownell, Blaine. Their designs were somewhat irreverent, ingeniousdevices that would fulfill the functions of traditional buildings but witha flexibility and ability to move that made them more like robotic devicesthan buildings ("Archigram," Architects (1961-1974)). New York: Frederick A. It is "superficial" -- like a Hollywood studio lot, it can produce a new identity every Monday morning'("The Station Not the Airport" 44). Radio National. At the heart of thisdevelopment has been a shift from reliance upon traditional values longheralded as standards in society, such as religion, morality, and culture,to new self-generated standards that answer to no other authority but theindividual who formed them. As such,it represented a community rather than an individual. [pic] (http://www.dreamstime.com/search.php?do_action=search&srh_field=generic+city+hall) Koohhaas' own architectural designs, such as the imposing, monolithicCCTV building in Beijing, China, below, are constructed in unorthodoxshapes with a strong geometric definition that belies the generic qualityhe envisions. These weremagnificently drawn projections and expertly assembled collages that"{instantly evoked a future of change and adaptability, flow and movement"("The Archigram Vision"). Whereas Archigram sees cities that pick themselves up and move,Koolhaas sees cities with a myriad of buildings that constantly change, socomplex that they become nondescript-cities without qualities (Krause &Petro 148). It is equally exciting -- or unexciting everywhere. Koolhaas has succeeded in conceptualizing and bringing to fruition anarchitecture that reflects the progression from individuality to detachmentthat has achieved the transition from estrangement to event. Estrangement inarchitecture begins with the impression it gives us of otherworldliness, anincongruous feeling that something is out of place: When architecture seems to leave the ground, reactions occur within us--not unlike those sensations of people tracking the orbital flight ofmanmade satellites--reactions which can be best described as feelings ofestrangement. The Archigram ... Nobody knows where, how, since when the sewers run, the exact location of the telephone lines, what the reason was for the position of the center, where monumental axes end. His love of the urban condition is surpassed only by his mania for the unknown, the untenable, the unmanageable, and the untried (Heron). Both Archigram and Rem Koolhaas use their architectural concepts todepict the inner life of modern man. In a recent interview,Archigram architect Peter Cook explained the premise of the Walking City:"You can have your city anywhere and the city will go to find where theaction is" ("The Legacy of Archigram"). It has been said of Archigram that "the young group aimed to convincestodgy city planners and architects to view change as 'the naturalcondition [in a city] instead of permanence'" (Dang). Eds. Thisstands in stark opposition to the absolute and unchangeable truths ofreligion and promotes the individual to the stature of self-god("Postmodernism"). The Architecture of Fantasy: Utopian Building and Planning in Modern Times. Networks become over-stretched, age, rot, become obsolescent; populations double, triple, quadruple, suddenly disappear. Design Museum British Council. We can see their vision ofwho we are as modern men, the worth they ascribe to our lives, and theirconcept of our connectedness-or lack thereof-to the rest of society: Many types of projects or examples of Architecture can be seen as cultural and political symbols.
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