I was looking forward to the results of the White House Redux competition for quite some time. Basically, the competition asked architects to redesign a presidential home / symbol of national power. The guy that won threw together what looks to be the CAD equivalent of animated gifs. Check out his crappy video.
I am fine with whacko art. I really am. I just thought that architects, even crazy ones, would actually design a structure. As far as I can tell, the grand prize is part 1990s webpage, part anime, part malformed and misinformed politcal commentary, and completely useless self-indulgent computer doodles. Where do architects get off thinking they are 1) artists and 2) legitimate critics of anything?
Friday, September 26, 2008
When Did Architects Stop Designing Buildings?
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2 comments:
In architecture school (at least the two I've been in), the main "skill" taught is abstraction. Nowhere else have I seen anything like it - the instructor gives an assignment with several requirements/restrictions, and invariably the projects from those who simply ignore the parameters/purpose and abstract it beyond recognition are given highest marks. Multiple times at MIT we were asked to answer a few specific questions using fewer than x amount of words. I'd show up with a single page that answered the questions in order, only to find that everyone else made a 20-minute powerpoint presentation filled with architecture buzzwords (bifurcation, stochastic, tectonics, etc) that answered no questions at all, let alone the ones asked. Our main group instructor told us on multiple occassions "we're here to find the questions to ask, not necessarily to answer them."
I have a sneaking suspicion that their math department doesn't operate that way...
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