Arch4822_Ololade T Owolabi_Assignment 3 Deconstructivism

Ololade T Owolabi

Theory 2

Assignment 3 Deconstructivism

Prof Aptekar

Spring 2021

Questions to consider while reading these texts.

Is Deconstructivist architecture relationship to Russian Constructivism?

Yes, there is a strong relationship between Deconstructivist architecture and Russian Constructivism.

In Deconstructivist architecture does “form follows function”?

No function follows deformation.

Is this type of architecture a purely formal exercise with little social significance and ambiguous meaning?
Does a deconstructivist architect successfully comment on unbridled consumer culture and Suburban and Public Space?
Think back to your reading of Derrida ’ (theory I) is the ‘metaphysics of presence’ expressed in this architecture?

Keywords/ Concepts

Manhattanism:- Manhattan as the product of an unformulated theory, whose program - to exist in a world totally fabricated by man, i.e., to live inside fantasy-was so ambitious that to be realized, it could never be openly stated.

A Simulacrum of Manhattan's Grid: a collection of blocks whose proximity and juxtaposition reinforce their separate meanings.

The Appendix - is a sequence of architectural projects that solidifies Manhattanism into an explicit doctrine and negotiates the transition from Manhattanism's unconscious architectural production to a conscious phase.

Woods, Lebbeus. “Manifesto: Lebbeus Woods.” Edited by Edwin Heathcote, R / D, Reading Design, 2013, www.readingdesign.org/manifesto-lebbeus-woods.

The first reading on the list for me was Manifesto by Lebbeus Woods and I have to say from The first line I was intensely interested in what the reading was about When woods stated that architecture is war and war is the architecture I perceive myself asking how and why. In resolving the questions, I had I came to a realization that with architecture most things looked upon to be easy on my outside are actually not easy in any aspect of it. Architecture typically causes a person with a deep interest in it to be at a constant war with time which is one of the most significant problems because even as a student and someone who is unintegrated into the work-life there is always not enough time but this is something that everybody in the field of architecture deals with as it cannot be escaped from. Next, there is the topic of its history and how it ordinarily has no beginning or known end just that architecture has existed since the beginning of time primarily referred to as vernacular architecture as it was the need for humans to make the shelter as a form of protection against harsh weather conditions and animals. In quoting Woods who said “I declare war on all icons and finalities” this was translated to me as a war being declared on past styles of architecture as the architectural idea is to be sprung from something new and not constant recycling of the past styles. As past styles of architecture disappear just as quickly as they appear. An architect is additionally a person who tends to have to conform to their ideologies or their style even if it is just a little bit to work with their client to deliver a city that is always under construction like New York.

Koolhaas, Rem. 1994. (originally published 1978) Delirious New York: A Retrospective Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: The Monacelli Press. Pp.9-12

A manifesto according to Merriam Webster is a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer. A manifesto can be written by the viewer using evidence or no evidence as a manifesto represent someone's view about the past, the present but it can also be about the future. So Rem Koolhaas states that manhattans problem had to do with the fact that they did not have a manifesto is a statement that I cannot truly get behind because in some cases a manifesto helps lead the state forward or in order cases, it could cause a delay as people tend to have their own opinions about the future even though they have nothing envisioned.

According to Rem Manhattan has been used as a testing ground or as a place of fascination to test certain things like for example central park with the met museum-style on it, the skyscraper, utopian fragments like the shed, Rockefeller Center, the UN Building, and also the Irrational phenomena of Radio City Music Hall. The island of Manhattan has existed since the beginning of New York and as such the majority of the buildings have been renovated, adaptive reuse, extended, or rebuilt. As a result of this led to each manhattan block being covered with several layers of phantom architecture as past occupancies which have previously existed and recorded became aborted projects, or even served as popular fantasies that without them the present New York would not be what it is. The statement of Manhattan is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone is a statement I agree with because it is true over the years most architectural styles have come and gone but there is always a built version of the style in Manhattan even though some of the styles have become architectural mutations.

By the time machine age was totally realized inventors and architects have started to use the entire city and not just manhattan as an experiment ground to test out as much manufactured style as possible and due to the amount of different zoning located in manhattan alone this was totally possible to archive but the more was built the more anything natural was removed from the equation. To exist in a world totally fabricated by man was so ambitious that to be realized it could never be openly stated. The minds of people at that time lacked the ability to comprehend that which needed to be done and because of that would have dragged everyone else back.

Under the subtopic of Ecstasy, it states that if Manhattan is still in search of a theory, Meanwhile I do not think that manhattan should be in search as it does not really need a theory which is why it is so diverse in the first place. The sentence Manhattan has generated a shameless architecture is a sentence that I find to be interesting as why is known as shameless architecture would this be considered as the NYCHA brick buildings or the skyscrapers. Because no matter what is built it tends to grow on people with the idea so no matter how crazy or drastic the design is Manhattan finds a way to stay ahead.

The topic of density in Manhattan has consistently been a big one because for the beginning it was the first place of settlement for New York and it being an island with natural harbors has a part to play. As time went by Manhattan grew from density to hyperdensity which was attributed to modern culture. But Manhattan is recognized for hiking the prices of every area more than it is worth. The first thing that came to mind on the topic of blueprints was how grids and lots helped provided Manhattan its major shape but that does not mean that everything built was based on that as it is true that A blueprint does not predict the cracks that will develop In the future; it describes an ideal state that can only be approximated. This is the case when we think about battery park City that was built in the 21st century this could not have existed in the blueprint as it was done based on pure need and want of the people to sell something that they do not possess, so they developed it as a result of Desiree as they ran out of space. According to Rem, it was stated Manhattan represents the capital of perpetual crisis. Although there are frequently things in Manhattan that need to be fixed this does not mean it is in perpetual crisis as there are advantages and disadvantages.

One of the critical issues of Manhattan in the subtopic of Blocks is Manhattans' determination to remove its territory as far from the natural as humanly possible which is something that I accept as the part of the city doesn’t seem to consider nature as an important aspect in buildings.

Crawford, Margaret. 2003 “Suburban Life and Public Space” in Sprawl and Public Space Redressing the Mall Edited by David Smiley, Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 21-30

My approach to this reading started from the definition of a suburb which is a mixed-use or residential area that exists either as part of a city or urban area or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city according to Wikipedia. The topic of the reading Suburban Life and Public Space was based solely on the dull and ordinary lives of the people in connection to American shopping malls which were created based on three dominant narratives the first stating it has to be a building type that was rigid and highly inflexible built based on real estate economies, marketing research, and architectural behaviorism. The image that comes to mind for this first narrative is a rectangle-shaped building with box stores located at both ends and stores lining up between them with one central hallway. The second narrative portrays more of the main street mainly occupied by shops rather than an actual building which is why is represented as an anti-urban force, fostering the growth of what is commonly known as sprawl, and is incapable of providing a genuine urban experience. Meanwhile, the third narrative sees the mall as a continuous process of commodification, through which a broad range of social and communal experiences and public spaces are swallowed up by commerce. This translates to when the mall was being designed with the intention of establishing communal and public spaces but as time went on those places were rented out to business people.

Over the years malls have functioned by continuously adjusting, reinventing, and retooling themselves in response to multiple economic and social changes. Another function of the mall is how it has functioned not as agents of urban disorder but as agents of planning and order, where the mall provided a community focus and a centralizing element. As a result of this, the mall was seen as a positive force in shaping suburban life but work has to be done on the commerce aspect alongside commodification to shift the mindset of the developers and provide a strategy of decommodification. Public space is all about the experience and how it is being used. There is no unique type of public space. Just as public space is a term where everyone recognizes the functions but has the ability to be designed in any shape or form so should the mall be designed and can be done with the help of picking a pattern that chooses to involve public policy, regulation, financing, ownership, and management, as well as physical form and design and as time went on other uses were attached to the building of the mall.

Something that was noted was how back then malls were owned by one single person or a real-estate developer who rented out different sections of the mall not intended for rent even the hallways but were referred to as community centers as they hosted Christmas celebrations, art fairs, and dog shows. During the 1930s and 1940s, urban planners got the idea to utilize the shopping center as a fundamental element in their strategies for decentralization. As they argued that mixing the commercial services necessary for new development with civic and recreational spaces, would provide a new type of small-town life. I believe their idea on this front worked because it did.

One of the major people who I think altered the game is an architect called Victor Gruen who took the time to realize what people wanted and liked versus what was needed. He figured out that if commercial activities were integrated with the cultural environment and relaxation it would be more successful and this was accurate. Over the next two decades, as the enclosed mall grew tremendously in size and expanded into regional, super-regional, and megamall sizes, it generated its own activities and forms of social life. That was also extremely significant as it produced jobs. As time went by older malls were renovated and enclosed which led to better customer service through a broader range of more specialized and flexible forms, which allowed for a more precise match between goods and consumers.

Under the subtopic of Contesting Publicness just because a mall was created with the sole purpose of housing, commercial space does not mean that is the only thing it should be used for as it is a form of public space just enclosed. But just assigning everything in a mall a defined space takes away some aspect of its publicness because that just means that there would be restricted areas. Meanwhile, stealth malls as the name implies are done through integration and the practice of adaptive reuse that has the ability to provide social gathering spaces and walkways that draw people in.De- and Re- malling can be done by various methods through Adaptive reuse that allows reconfiguration and addition of more programs, renovations of the physical architectural form, Extension, and Restoration. The New Mall types grant a lot of freedom and are the method more people need to adopt as for example once the mall is built mall shops are sold to owners who decide what they would like to do with their space. Therefore, without centralized control, there is a contrast in these spaces. This would be considered as a mixed-use setting and zoning requirement which would end up looking like a present borough in New York called Manhattan.

Wigley, Mark and Philip Johnson. 1988. Deconstructivism Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art. (Catalogue of 6/23/88-8/30/88 show)

Stability and order are important factors when it comes to the topic of architecture but this is not always the case in every style of architecture like, for example, Deconstructivist architecture. This is because in order to achieve stability and order it was stated that this had to do with geometric purity what means the primary shapes like Cubes, Cylinders, Spheres, and the rest had to remain the same with the addition of formal composition but it could be undistorted. In past styles of architecture before deconstructivism geometric structures became the physical structure of the building which became formal purity and a guarantee of having structural stability but deconstructivist architecture is archived when the pure form has been disturbed. Pure forms were used to produce impure forms, so no form was generated out of thin air.

The term deconstruction has been referred to as taking apart structure whether through the simple breaking of an object or the complex dissimulation of an object into a collage. This is always unconsidered to be deconstructivist architecture as it does not explore the unique condition of the architectural project. The flaws in deconstructivist architecture do not lead to structural collapse. A building does not have to be a classic box to be considered structurally stable instead deconstructivist architecture proposes a different view on the structure which tends to produce interesting-looking buildings.

Tatlin practiced deconstructivist architecture through the placement of simple geometric forms in an unstable and restless way that they create conflict this was the case that is still been practiced today by some notable architects like Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhas, Peter Eiseman, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau, Bernard Tschumi and so much more. Architecture has always been seen as functional art that has to deal with society, although it is grounded in function does not always mean that form follows function. Russian avant-garde and constructivist architecture was a stepping stone as it is the reason we have deconstructivist architecture today but Russian avant-garde was unbuilt because at that time they were structurally unable to so it was viewed as failed architecture. The Russian avant-garde was corrupted by the purity of the modern movement because the modern movement was all about functionality rather than ornamentation. In the modern movement, it was all about form follows function and the machine aesthetic helped produce a functionalist style. The aesthetic was made available by avant-garde but was not made use of, just because something new was discovered during the process does not mean it is to be incorporated immediately into the existing concepts or designs. Irregular geometry was understood as a structural condition rather than as a dynamic formal aesthetic because not only was this produced by creating conflict between two pure forms but it was equally made to disturb the forms from within.

The distortion of the form does not mean the destruction of form this is why deconstructivist architecture can be defined as an architecture of disruption, dislocation deflection, deviation, and distortion rather than one of the demolitions, dismantling, decay, decomposition, or disintegration as it displaces structure rather than destroy it. From the beginning of time and architectural styles, pure forms have always been distorted in one way or another the only major thing is that was they regarded as ornamentation or how far does not distortion go and in what sense was it done. Although a lot of architecture today imitates itself deconstructivist architecture is not one that can be easily imitated as it demands a lot of knowledge bases on the topic.

Deconstructivist architecture always aims at been built, so it is designed to work as essential things like function and structure are being taught about from the start. So, therefore, although they do no look structurally sound they are even though they look like they are on the verge of collapse which was caused by the displacement of the traditional thinking of structure which led to the displacement of the traditional thinking of function. So the modernist believed that form follows function meanwhile in deconstructivist architecture function follows deformation.

I constantly thought that deconstructivist architecture was a form of expressionism but based on the reading there is a thorough explanation on how it is not. In addition just because the architecture has been practiced in one direction from the beginning of time doesn't mean it is unable to take another direction away from traditional architecture to produce shocking architecture as it is not what people are used to and takes away the purpose and meaning of pure form.