by Saxon Sigerson, AIA
Disappointment and disgust are feelings that are simultaneously compatible in their negativity but divergent in that disappointment indicates some sense of hope and disgust is pretty hopeless. The January 2010 cover of Architectural Record left me scrolling my memory back through previous issues of this “magazine of our profession” and other buildings I have seen by Steven Holl. After this brief review I let the negative emotions have their way with me. Click here to read the rest…
Record is, and has been the last magazine I read (if at all) in the ones I receive for the very reasons you state here. I find it hard to relate to the projects or even to be inspired by them. The first magazines I read are Architecture Australia and Texas Architect. Oddly they seem to have, or celebrate, similar styles or architecture; scale, materiality, response to climate. I actually learn from these publications. For way too long we have celebrated the icon and taught students to do the same and have ended up with generations of people who can’t think for themselves, judge their work against these iconic designers and lose any sense of regionalism in their design response. It is no wonder the public thinks we don’t relate to their vision of place.
Happily I see that changing. More interaction between the public and the profession, embracing the idea that architecture is about places for people and how we make their lives better through our work, and the emergence of voices that sees value in substance over flash style, in permanence over provocation.
Well said Bruce … and of course well said, written and illustrated Saxon. At the last Monterey Design Conference I cringed when a highly awarded architect, showing a slide of his latest iconic hi-rise that loomed over a city in China declared ‘it’s not an icon’ … hmmm … words … images … and the disconnect between the two: one of the foundations it would seem of some of the architectural press and of many of our awards programs.