Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The words of Kenneth Frampton

      The words of Kenneth Frampton really worry me as an architecture student.  Frampton says that the possibility of creating significant urban form has become extremely limited.  This statement worries me.  He says that technology has now directed design and we simply design based on "high-tech".  Being based on high tech gives us as architects very limited room for design freedom; we must create buildings that are focused solely on the production methods.  This to me shows that we must focus on function is our primary aim for design.
    The contrast to this high-tech design process is the "compensatory facade" approach.  This worries me as well because what Framton means by this is that we are only designing buildings to hide the truth of our universal system.  If we are limited to the designs of the compensatory facade, we do not have anything good to look forward to.
     I personally do not wish to be stuck with either being an architect dealing with the "high-tech" nor the "compensatory facade".  Even though I resent the thoughts of architecture coming to this point in time, I still look forward to the opportunity of resolving the issues that we are currently dealing with.  Every architect has had to deal with specific issues with architecture over a span of time.

Clyde's Pick-Up

In this reading, a perfect example of a closed system versus an open system is shown.  It is really cool how we see exactly how nature works through something like this.  Inside the truck, things age and become dust-covered, but nothing grows.  In contrast, outside in the bed, where there is a combination of sun, wind, and rain, plants such as poison ivy and albizia have begun to grow.  Leaves decomposed through natural process and is now the soil to these plants.
After I read this I was reminded how special the processes of our Earth were.  The process of growth and reproduction of plants is remarkable.  You can begin to understand the power of Nature and how special it is.  You can begin to see how nature works in each stage as well:  leaves that are blown into the truck from the wind along with seeds from nearby trees, rain and pigeon excretion begin to start the growth of the seeds into the decomposed leaves, and the sunlight gives the seeds energy needed to begin growing.  Seeing all of this take place in the bed of the truck is pretty awesome.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

     Upon reading the selected reading by William J. Mitchell called "Prologue:  Urban Requiem" I noticed one thing that seemed to remain constant in each mourner's eulogy.  What I noticed was that the advancement of technology, over the history we know and study, has caused us to lose touch with the fundamental principles of the human species.
     In the first mourner's eulogy, the development of a water supply made of pipes that supplied each individual house resulted in the decline of the "communal function" of the water well center.  This space was a gathering place of the people where business was done, along with daily socializing.  Once there was not a need for gathering water here, people lost touch the ways they once did.  This eulogy goes on to tell us how the need to "go" places had been lost due to the technology that brings our necessities to us.  Socialization/communication is a vital principle to all humans.
     Going along with this topic of lost socialization, I recently heard a man speak on behalf of the Boys and Girls Club of Ruston, Louisiana.  The man was speaking of the activities that he and his staff focused on, and the leading activities were social skills.  He has seen from year to year a decline in the social skills of the young kids. This is a prime example of our younger generations losing something that is important to our species.
     Continuing to the second mourner's eulogy, he talks about how the development of electrical wiring and centralized heating ducts had resulted in the loss of the family ties.  The fireplace was the previous source of heat and light, and the families used to gather around this fireplace to use the light and gain heat, all while communicating with one another.  Now, because of the technology advancement, we no longer depend on the fireplace as a gathering space for our families.
     Finishing up with the third mourner's eulogy, we see how technology advancements have eradicated the spread of literature by word of mouth.  Before paper, stories and knowledge was passed down through generations by word of mouth.  The creation of papyrus was only the beginning of what would be the demise of a need for word of mouth.  Now we see less and less books being printed because of the quick and easy access to words on text/e-mail/e-books.  Each and every day gets more and more advanced with the use of electronic sources.
     What I have mostly concluded from these eulogies is that we have completely lost our sense of communication.  We no longer depend on direct communication, but rather the communication through our electronic sources.  This will only continue to get worse and we will eventually have a world of people incapable of proper communication.