There are two places one could look- in the spot where reason tells them they probably lost it, or in the spot where the light is better to look at. All sorts of interesting bizarre and dusty things could be discovered, but only intuition and critical reason can help us find what we are looking for. Architectural education is about overcoming natural tendencies, arbitrary decisions, and spawned ideas. Its about throwing all your pennies at those who react to aesthetic ideas and not the intellectual ideas ignoring the importance of their legitimacy and compatibility. The debate between reason and objective reality will continue to take president in our design decisions and needs to be further considered in the debacle of demolishing the Union Carbide building.
Matt Shaw’s argument for tearing down Union Carbide in New York is an attempt to remind designers of some of the fundamentals; namely, that ideas are more important than arbitrary purposes that lean towards aesthetic appeals. I agree that we should not protect styles that have become capitalist products. Architecture would then become a collective, totaling, repetitive industrial design operation that chases the market around in its hamster wheel. Style is a triggered word that needs to hold significant distinction from the autonomous identities architect’s seek. We are on a critical design path that must be concerned with truth, instead of replacing styles for compatibility comforts. Saving this building without saving the fundamentals would be tragic. Even more tragic than watching a heap of waste pile up and a hole open up in one of our beloved cities. Tragic mostly because it would teach us to be sentimental instead of attentive and we would be caught right back in Jevon’s Paradox of capitalizing styles. However, tearing down the building would be nothing to cheer about.
Demolishing the building is not “the only logical conclusion.” It’s the lazy one. Its saying, ‘Oh! well I dropped a penny but I'm not going to look for it because it holds little worth to me.’ And that instinct to just “let it die” is exactly the attitude that got us into this mess of lazy responses and poor intentions. We need an attentive transition from service design and a reliance on the market to a design approach that emphasizes the fundamental influences that enrich architecture. I agree with everyone who is yelling that tearing down this building would be a wasteful practice. However, the argument commonly and gut-wrenchingly ignores the green washing techniques that are toying with the market. Green building rating systems commodify design into standardized check lists and fuel socially progressive agendas in the name of environmentalist. The argument believes sentimentalism elevates our education and morality, instead of our judgement. It depends on technological aides that have made us wasteful and has made energy efficiency a fuel in of itself. It creates ambiguities and inconsistencies in pertinent views about the life expectancy of buildings. And it needs to be dismantled.
Industrialization, political upheavals, and increasing urbanization changed living conditions in the nineteenth century. This break with tradition is described as “modernity,” “the modernist movement,” and “modern,” but ideologically these terms hold very distinct meanings. The term modernization is used to describe the process of social development, the rise of bureaucracy, national states, democratization, and an expanding capitalist world market. The term Modernist refers to the attitude towards evolution and transformation. Usually associated with responses muddled in cultural and traditional orientations, these theoretical ideas influenced social dynamics and shaped aesthetic concepts. As a movement, modernism is characterized by a rupture from a repudiation of accepted or traditional styles and values. It first emerged when architects such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe were seeking to solve design problems with progressive ambitions towards social responsibility. Associated with strong aesthetics, prosperity and progress, this style swept over social housing schemes, public building projects, and approaches to design development. Thus, becoming a style itself. Modernity is radicalized and is constantly changing meaning. It thus becomes an aesthetic of change for the sake of change. It coincides with fashion and the market’s latest desires. In the races to create modernist design solutions for all, corners were cut and substitutions made that could not stabilize development. For example, The Pruitt Igoe urban housing building (1955) that was developed from Le Corbusier’s modernist principles had to be demolished for its poor build quality. Pruitt Igoe states that they capitalized on the national exposure of the project and blame the building’s failure on the fragmented political culture and declining urban core. However, the decay of the building speaks for itself and the ways in which modernist’s intentions run contrary to real-world social development. The concepts we attach to architecture are by no means neutral or innocent, they imply certain perspectives that place too much emphasis on theories and concepts and too little on the material aspects of architecture and its generation.
Some perceive these questions of modernity as unrelated. Others however, understand that a dialectical relationship is at stake in which modernism consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively effects capitalist development. Thus, making architecture not an experience, but a language that corresponds to experiences- private vs public, interior vs exterior, intimate vs public…etc. According to architects such as Loos, these ideas about modernism generate “ a poverty of genuine experiences.” The disconnect between experiencing personal stimulation verse nostalgia is what stifles design and threatens to destroy our personal development. The word Experience is closely related to the word Experiment- or the essence of origin. The differentiation between the German definitions for experience, Erlebnis and Erfahrung explains the drastic way in which mimesis and the reproduction of architecture as a commodity has re-structured our immersion in the built environment. Erfahrung defines the wisdom one gains from life experiences and the principles extracted. This includes sensations, information, and events. It’s the ability to perceive correspondences and react. Erlebnis, however refers to sensations that are related to our censored experiences. They are superficial sensations that leave no sensory content or impressions. This is the act of synthesizing and unifying information. Adopting this quasi-realistic attitude in design approaches will decay the influence of traditions of the significance of experience. Modernist introduced the first crack in the continuity of tradition in relation to the past. Mimetic strategies have inevitably transformed architecture into a cultural commodity. In doing so it has denied the contradictions, dissonances, and tensions that are specific to modern problems. What gets lost in mimesis and reproduction is the uniqueness to authenticity and stimulation.
The question we are facing in this argument is how to critique and respond to the tension that exists between modernity, meaningful experiences, and traditional discourses. Matt Shaw’s response is a non-response. Tearing down Union Carbide is still in itself a compulsive return to the demands of the cycle of consumption and production. Its the very idea of the “new” of modernity that dangles like a charm in constant appeal. The “new,” holds a promise for a different future in false semblance of fleeting things and kills our senses. We need to acknowledge the conflicts and ambiguities that are particular to modernity without dismissing their implications with noncommittal answers. If we want to truly break the cycles of banal approaches we must employ techniques and methods of incorporating contemporary experiences into our existing systems, criticisms, and oppositions. Adorno once said, “If one wants to resist repression and exploitation, one should not ignore them but recognize them as the actual condition of existence; only by doing so can one take action against them.” This is a chance to truly respond. Architects need to involve this building in design intentions that seek to identify the extent to what they are revolting against in order to genuinely critique the issue. The knowledge they will gain from trying to regenerate this building is critical because its capable of highlighting aspects and connecting critical relations with our reality that would otherwise be destroyed in our paradigm shift. Our buildings would continue to fill ARCH Daily with cookie cutter fashions that are disconnected from tradition, personal intention, artistic commitment, and out current socio-political ecology.