dave,
ok, so i respect your adherence to the postion:
"I do not refuse 'to consider architecture as a methodology to question
culture;' I just don't even think in such abstract terms. If an architect or
his/her client wishes to build a building to 'question culture' they are
free to spend their money any way they like"
sp: but Dave, you started out here by being discomforted enough to take a
crack a Zaha's work and its attempt at a meta-discourse. Further, to
engage the work of an other architect in such a forum as this is already
to think architecture as a discourse, as a context for the debate of
issues such as comfort, availablity, etc. By accident you might have even
sounded like a marxist there for a moment. So i will argue here that to
do architecture and to assume that one can make people/clients
comfortable is precisely the most abstact kind of thinking possible. You
simply have a mistaken view of what it means to think architecture. One
doesn't make buildings that question culture. Architects who are
interested in thinking culture through architecture don't look for
clients who want to pursue such questions. That is because architecture
is always already a cultural discourse. To pursue "comfort" as an
intention in architecture is already located in the context of possible
issues of architecture inasmuch as it speaks us. So dave, is this too
abstract? You can't escape this condition. You can only wake up INTO it.
welcome.
spn
ok, so i respect your adherence to the postion:
"I do not refuse 'to consider architecture as a methodology to question
culture;' I just don't even think in such abstract terms. If an architect or
his/her client wishes to build a building to 'question culture' they are
free to spend their money any way they like"
sp: but Dave, you started out here by being discomforted enough to take a
crack a Zaha's work and its attempt at a meta-discourse. Further, to
engage the work of an other architect in such a forum as this is already
to think architecture as a discourse, as a context for the debate of
issues such as comfort, availablity, etc. By accident you might have even
sounded like a marxist there for a moment. So i will argue here that to
do architecture and to assume that one can make people/clients
comfortable is precisely the most abstact kind of thinking possible. You
simply have a mistaken view of what it means to think architecture. One
doesn't make buildings that question culture. Architects who are
interested in thinking culture through architecture don't look for
clients who want to pursue such questions. That is because architecture
is always already a cultural discourse. To pursue "comfort" as an
intention in architecture is already located in the context of possible
issues of architecture inasmuch as it speaks us. So dave, is this too
abstract? You can't escape this condition. You can only wake up INTO it.
welcome.
spn