I was wrong.
Previously, I’ve suggested that the architecture of the last decade (the decade of the Bilbao-effect) did little to embody network culture and I thought it peculiar that the best examples of architecture that fits network culture are from the 1990s.
Over at Strangeharvest, Sam Jacob suggests otherwise and he is right.
I was wrong. The emptiness of the last decade perfectly embodies the period.
The punch-line (but do read the article):
Tomorrows visitors to todays (or yesterdays) iconic buildings will feel the swoosh of volumes, the cranked out impossibility of structure, the lightheadedness of refection and translucencies. They will marvel at buildings that hardly touch the ground, which swoop into the air as though drawn up by the jet stream. They will feel stretched by elongated angles that seem sucked into vanishing points that confound perspective, and will be seduced by curves of such overblown sensuality. And in this litany of affects they will find the most permanent record of the heady liquid state of mind of millennial abstract-boom economics. We might rechristen these freakish sites as museums of late capitalist experience, monuments to a never to be repeated faith in the global market.
Well said.
This is going to take a lot of unpleasant work to unpack from a historical perspective, but it’s part of this year’s book project.
I was wrong.
Previously, I’ve suggested that the architecture of the last decade (the decade of the Bilbao-effect) did little to embody network culture and I thought it peculiar that the best examples of architecture that fits network culture are from the 1990s.
Over at Strangeharvest, Sam Jacob suggests otherwise and he is right.
I was wrong. The emptiness of the last decade perfectly embodies the period.
The punch-line (but do read the article):
Tomorrows visitors to todays (or yesterdays) iconic buildings will feel the swoosh of volumes, the cranked out impossibility of structure, the lightheadedness of refection and translucencies. They will marvel at buildings that hardly touch the ground, which swoop into the air as though drawn up by the jet stream. They will feel stretched by elongated angles that seem sucked into vanishing points that confound perspective, and will be seduced by curves of such overblown sensuality. And in this litany of affects they will find the most permanent record of the heady liquid state of mind of millennial abstract-boom economics. We might rechristen these freakish sites as museums of late capitalist experience, monuments to a never to be repeated faith in the global market.
Well said.
This is going to take a lot of unpleasant work to unpack from a historical perspective, but it’s part of this year’s book project.