• The Current Situation
• How does the profession come to be this way?
• TECHNOLOGY logos of the techne

The Post-Modern Dilemma or The Post-Post-Modern Dilemma or the Decon Dilemma

The reference to Post-Modern may throw some people at Syracuse, since most students, and Faculty, seem to resent being labeled Post-Moderns, particularly when PM is, at least in academic circles, considered rather dead. That resentment may have more to do with our resistance to being labeled anything at all than with the particular tag. (Perhaps Post-Modern here means being associated with the likes of Michael Graves or Robert Stern or perhaps there is a very heavy hangover of modernism lingering in the studios of Syracuse).

For whatever the label or the argument, we could safely say that we are definitely in a Post-Modernist Era

Consider some of the following aspects of the modern(ist) style or ethic or era:

1. Societal concerns.

The building of a new society. The Athens Charter was written aboard the ship "Pratis II". In the forward: "Pratis II was a one class boat". A small clue. The Modernists were clearly c9ncerned with building for the entire population. No project was too humble. L~rbusier: the farm buildings including all the outbuildings.

2. Political background, particularly post W.W.l

Political implications are not part of the American architect's vocabulary, but in many other countries, especially Italy and Germany, political ideas and architecture are considered inseparable.

3. Economic objectives

Linked to societal concerns, the concern for building low cost buildings or buildings that provide benefits for all classes. The concern to use material in a conservative manner.

4. Role of the Architect

Vision of the architect as the hero, perhaps one of the saviors of society.
Probably a very patronizing and moralistic viewpoint.
Ruskin, Pugin, even Howard Roark (Ayn Rand), Frank Lloyd Wright

5. Attitude towards technology

Note that the Ecole had essentially ignored the industrial revolution.
The modernists saw the industrial era as liberating: new materials, cheaper construction generating new possibilities not linked to historical precedents, particularly the shift from craft to machine production which was thought to be a solution to societal, political and economic problems which placing the architect in control.

6. Gropius: pleads for fresh thinking

• of current materials and tools, tools which have become elaborated into machines.

• he asks that what the past did for stone and brick, the present should do for steel, concrete and glass.

• claims that only out of such fresh input can a true architecture be produced.

Le Corbusier: Towards a New Architecture

• shows: the Telephone Co. Building NYC (large photo) vs. the Belvedere by Bramante (small photo)

• opening chapter: "The Engineers Aesthetic and Architecture" Athens Charter Book cover:

• -the engineer and architect as complimentary relationships, two parts of a whole, with linked hands

Wright: the Hull House Lecture, 1901 I

a hope has grown stronger with the experience of each year, amounting now to a gradually deepening conviction that in the Machine lies the only future of art and craft."

Eisenman claims that it does (Oppositions)

Suggested reading:

• Vidler, "The Third Typology", Oppositions 7

• Venturi, "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture"

• Le Corbusier, "Vers Une Architecture"

• Kenneth Frampton, "Industrialization and the Crises in Architecture", Oppositions 1

One finds:

Little mention of social or economic concerns Little mention of construction or technology

Doesn't mean their concerns are invalid, but

are we in danger of replacing one set of concerns with another rather than adding a new set of concerns?

Q. Can the architect respond to the challenge of PostModernism (or NeoRationlism or Deconstructivism or whateverism) while still acknowledging the positive contributions of modernism?

The state of modern Architectural Technology Sophisticated, efficient, demanding, predictive

Q. Are Architects succeeding in coping with it let alone mastering it?

Ex. The failure of architects to control costs leads to a new profession of

Project Management. PM's are now even selecting Architects on behalf of the owner and their fees rival those of the Architect.

Ex. Facilities Management is a field that did not even exist five years ago. Ex. The Computer, which should be one the greatest tools on behalf of the architect, is viewed with considerable skepticism.

Q. Have Architects divided themselves into two camps, the Architect/artist and the Architect/technocrat?

Brunelleschi

Traditional Architect (before the 16th Cent)
well versed in both -practical knowledge (art)

NATURAL SCIENCE
physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy

purpose WAS: reasoning that characterizes the theory of the skill of building

today IS EITHER:

• application of principles of natural science (engineering as applied science) or
• assemblage of tools and processes that intervene between the builder and the building

Q. Must technology be either:

• applied science (engineering)
• applied art (craft)

Early 19th and 2Oth Century attempts to seek reconciliation