New Modern

1976 Peter Eisenmen; Post Functionalism.

Eisenman discusses the critical theory of postmodernism, comparing it to the modernist period. One by “Architerrura Razional” at the Milan Trienale, and a “Ecole des Beaux Arts” exhibition at the museum of modern art in 1975. He notes that “modern architecture was an outmoded functionalism,” and sees “modern architecture as an obsessional formalism,” . He argues that although the two exhibitions use a different treatment of form and function, they have the same definition of Architecture as function and type.

He recount the form (or type) and function (or program) debate, tracing it back to the humanism that began in the Renaissance. He suggests that in pre-industrial humanist practice, a balance between form and function could be maintained “because both type and function were invested with idealist view of man’s relationship to his object world,”. This balance, was fundamentally disrupted with the rise of industrialization, and architecture became a social art.

He said that architects have been stuck following an oversimplified “form follows function” formula, and further suggests that “functionalism is really no more than a late phase of humanism, rather than an alternative to it,”. In other words, humanism is all about buildings and structures are largely inspired by human body, human is the center of everything, while functionalism allows structures to have forms that is perfectly tailored to the function program. As such, because the program is based on human needs and activities, functionalism can truly be seen as simply a later phase of humanism.

Overview:

Eisenmen ends by mentioning the form over function debate, saying that instead we should seeing the two factors not as opposed, but as in a dialectic relationship in the evolution of form. When taken together, the two sides of the argument “begin to define the inherent nature of the object in and of itself and its capacity to be represented,”. I would want to think that whether it is form follows function or the vice-versa, these two factors were undoubtedly leaning on to each other , being reasons for each other to exist in a way to fit human needs and wants in period of time. Though human desires is inconsistent, but our needs will always surface to the obvious and I personally think, to the deepest core every movements shared the same value, and that is why in the first place we were excepting them. Thus we should allow them to evolve alongside each other defining the form of the built environment.

1993 Lebbeus Woods; Manifesto

“Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture.

I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms.

I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, nor firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no ‘sacred and primoridal site’.

I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears.

I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then ‘melt into air’.

I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor can you know mine.

Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.”

Woods’s most important legacy is his architectural thought—his appreciation of and devotion to the political, social, and urbanistic importance of the built world. In an era when architectural form often takes precedence over all other design issues, he reminds us of the consequences of our buildings.

Lebbeus Woods' blog was the last major work of his illustrious career before he passed away in 2012. He launched it back in 2007 to chronicle his ongoing projects, openly share his ideas, and spark discussions with anyone who was interested.

He is of course to be well known for what he never built, and for what he said about it afterwards. Like his reconstruction sketches of Sarajevo are perhaps his most compelling work. He offers the hopeful reconstruction of a city tragically torn apart by war. Rather than burning down and rebuild, he suggests the organic solution of intervening in the scarred architecture, inserting “ideology-free spaces” amidst the broken fragments of the former. He embraced, on the one hand, the skepticism of postmodernism, while, on the other, never abandoning modernism towards the future.

Overview:

Someone like Lebbeus Woods is as important as any other 'movement-nist'. Where instead playing out differences, he shared his hopes in his visions to others, by touching a common ground of pain and reassurance. Though he does not dismissed the bitter part of this architecture world, but it takes a steps higher to see beyond this and to know for better. Sometimes, we get ourselves into the past to learn about the future, just to become denser for what it has put us through. Architecture is a way of life, it's like a religion, and if there's no hopes in religion, then it isn't anymore.