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Agents of Transformation and the "Death" of Urbanism Preeminence of the Decorated Shed Staging Uncertainty |
[2S3] DEATH OF THE FAÇADE.
As the
‘trauma of the new interior’ would suggest, the façade is no longer a
predominant issue of architectural concern. The decorated shed has become
irrelevant; the mechanisms and operations of the interior take precedence. The
traditional, institutional models for architecture (best represented by Ledoux’s or
Rossi’s typologies) have broken down in the wake of this globalized interior. As
geopolitical boundaries become irrelevant, our former monuments and symbols of power are
questioned. With mass distribution of digital networks, the very idea of a
building-as-object representing a particular function is dead. Where, for example, is
the library now ‘housed’ when the internet is one giant card-catalog for an
ever-increasing world of digital information? Where is the stock market located if not
within every Bloomberg Box in every airport lounge in the world? Where is the university
or office or hospital embodied, if not in the remote-access tools used by the
telecommuting student, employee, or doctor? I am not suggesting with these examples
that architecture has become irrelevant; nothing could be further from the truth. However,
our comfortable notion that the skin of a building conveys a particular symbolic,
functional representation is outmoded. William Mitchell corroborates:
At
an urban scale, [buildings] make vivid social distinctions by creating readily
identifiable, physically discrete domains. But categories lose their clarity, and rites of
passage require redefinition, when the uses of built space are no longer permanently
assigned and depend from minute to minute on software and the fleeting flow of bits.
Thus there will be profound ideological significance in the architectural recombinations that follow from electronic dissolution of traditional building types and of spatial and temporal patterns... [a transformation which will] alter the basic fabric of our lives.101 Today, architects’ perpetual assertion of the façade as the predominant design issue is a failure. While the skin of a building is obviously important, the mechanics of the interior take precedence. Yet, architects fail to recognize this issue, and continue to design shells which are later filled with generic, poorly functioning spaces. With the advent of the interior city, we are spending more time indoors than ever before. Yet architects largely concentrate on aspects of a building which are further and further removed from our realm of experience. The job of many architects is now reduced to placing the corporate logo on the side of a tilt-up concrete box facing the highway, to be viewed only by the passing commuter. Meanwhile, our experience of the new interior is one of sheer ennui; without the understanding and enhancement of operational diversity and complexity, as well as the various potential innovative and legible forms which these qualities inspire, the interior will remain a vast, homogeneous wasteland. We live in an age of recombinant architecture. This architecture must be designed from the inside. 101Mitchell, William J., City of Bits (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1995) p. 101-103 Images: 1. International Exhibition Hall, Kinjo Pier, Nagoya |
A Master's Thesis in Architecture at Rice University by Blaine Brownell. Copyright © 1998 by Blaine Brownell. All rights reserved. |
