The Framework for Our Society

Today’s buildings are more like evolving landscapes than classical temples in which nothing can be added and nothing can be removed. Open ended, adaptable frameworks with large, well-serviced and well-lit floors all to encourage a long lifespan for the building. Architects are constantly presented with the challenge of creating durable buildings that respond to a changing environment. Comprehensible facades and logical form, relate directly to both the user, and passers-by, and tell us how they are constructed, their relationship with their context, and what they are used for, and bring a new dimension to the way people interact with the built environment.

Cities are the physical framework of our society, the generator of civil values, the engine of our economy and the heart of our culture.  However, several urban centers are not sustainable. Large areas of neglect, poverty and empty quarters, destroy the sense of community and vitality, and urban sprawl erodes our countryside. Compact polycentric cities are the only sustainable form of development and should be designed to attract people. If we don’t get urban regeneration right then all our work on cities – buildings and public spaces, education, health, employment, social inclusion and economic growth – will be undermined.

We [as architects] promote social change, we act in our own historical time, while at the same time linking past, present, and future in our attempts to create a better world (Loeb 316).  Now is the galvanizing moment in which, clearly, we have to make a change (Mau).

It is up to architects to face the question, “how do we embrace the world without being consumed by it?” (Blackwell).  The ‘architect’ has transformed and the practice of architecture today employs new technologies that sustain rather than pollute and that are durable rather than replaceable.  Today, in our post-industrial society, the city has once more become man’s natural habitat. Compact polycentric cities are the only sustainable form of development and should be designed to attract people.  A strong social vision is critical for the development of a sustainable civil society. Sustainable urban development is dependent on three factors; the quality of architecture, social well-being and environmental responsibility.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RU(M)INATIONS: THE HAUNTS OF CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE – JOHN MCMORROUGH

In this short essay, John McMorrough, architect, historian, theorist and educator, voices the faults of contemporary design include treatments of super-graphics.  McMorrough advocates his theory that ‘architects nourished by the intelligence of previous generations’ and therefore the era of contemporary architecture has been a failed continuation for years and years.  This cycle of pitiful architecture was names ‘ru(m)inations’ by McMorrough.  Unfortunately there have been years and years of ru(m)inations in the world of architecture, primarily in the United States.  One my theories why this happened was due to the ‘American Dream’.  Yes, everyone at one point longed for a private yard with a white picket fence and the lifestyle that this style of living brings.  This link describes how the idea of suburbia has kept the ru(m)ination cycle going.  However, this in one reason why architecture has failed to leap forward.  Housing created a type of development which had no need for architects.  This market has created a downward cycle in architecture.  Housing has been a problem in the states for the past 5 or 10 years for the architecture profession.  When architects take charge and front a change architect as a whole will begin to make the leap.  Architects design for people, and people unconsciously are affected by the spaces and experiences around them, it is to ‘us’ to create this change and architecture will lead.

WORKING GRASSHOPPER MODEL

Lately, I have been working to better develop a little bit more complex grasshopper definition.  Below in the photos is the model which is both set up as a ratio between the ingredients used while making wine and the byproducts that the wine making process produces.