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The Power of Contemporary Architecture
A collection of lectures by architects involved in the 1996-97 Frank Lowe Lecture Series. The contributors to this book include Enric Miralles, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas. It compares and contrasts the fashions and concept developments of architects from around the world in order to debate the influence of contemporary architecture. The book also introduces new architects such as Vlachslav Kirpicher and his work in Moscow.
125 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1999
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Peter Cook
35 books6 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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December 29, 2022
The Bartlett’s Peter Cook says we must "redefine a true intellectual base for architecture without the impediment of physical objects" (by which he seems to mean "real buildings" and, by "true intellectual", up there in the ivory tower with him). He seems to believe that the rough and tough processes of procurement and construction get in the way of the development of "true" architecture; but any architect who thought that would be dead, and Palladio would never have worked.
Cook wrings his hands in anguish as he watches students "plunged out of graduate school into an air-conditioned machine for making well-sealed sheds”. Hmm, so that's how it looks from the Bartlett: either you have a life (intellectually speaking) or you're hanging out at the pub with the builders.
To sustain his contention, Cook has compiled images and photographs of the work of some 35 practitioners he invited to speak at the Bartlett. In general it's a compendium that tends to play up his perceived hostility between drawn architecture (exciting) and real buildings (less exciting) or to suggest that having an attitude is more important than building.
In truth, an architect leads an active, critical, theoretical and cultural life and has an equally good mastery of construction: running projects, following technical developments, getting successful results from complex organisations. At the interface between these two sides of what might be termed “Cook's dichotomy" we find the real architects: those whose built work is the embodiment of noble ideals and sensibility which, far from being diminished by the constraints of the building process (regulations, client requirements, cost, a poorly qualified workforce, etc) comes into its own at just that point, and everybody wins. That's where we find Kathryn Gustafson, whose Shell Headquarters in Paris is a fine achievement that brings together all of the architect’s skills and makes them sing, resolving Cook’s antagonisms in a work of art that, to this reviewer at least, seems to attain something like perfection.
But when architectural drawings become more interesting than buildings, then we're in trouble. Here is the other side of Cook’s dichotomy: away from the computer screen, one suspects that many brilliant theoretical designers like Lebbeus Woods or Neil Spiller, whose graphical researches are certainly arresting, have given no thought to the human condition, to urban form, to the man in the street. That must be somebody else's business. These theoretical, drawn or modelled contributions, many of them fascinating, are accompanied by a somewhat excessive amount of hermetic gobbledygook about layers, imploded formalisms, and rabid Cartesian angularities that seems written to make sure there's always an abyss of mystification separating formal and theoretical research from the generalised cultural situation - that real world of sprawl and pollution, filled with other people who could use some input from architects and perhaps a less elitist attitude.
A telling contribution comes from Kyong Park through his engagement with the twin Petronas Towers, a conjoined pair of identical buildings that now say "Kuala Lumpur" as powerfully as the Eiffel Tower says “Paris". Park says "cities are sites of violence. We keep on building and destroying them” and if Cook wants one, there’s a "truly intellectual" idea - a complex statement about urban mythology and the image of the city that says things about globalisation, consumer madness and social and cultural transformation.. Whether Cook considers it so or not, that's not only a constructed reality; it’s culture; and it’s statements like that from somebody who knows what he's talking about (Park) that actually give us something worth chewing on.
Cook wrings his hands in anguish as he watches students "plunged out of graduate school into an air-conditioned machine for making well-sealed sheds”. Hmm, so that's how it looks from the Bartlett: either you have a life (intellectually speaking) or you're hanging out at the pub with the builders.
To sustain his contention, Cook has compiled images and photographs of the work of some 35 practitioners he invited to speak at the Bartlett. In general it's a compendium that tends to play up his perceived hostility between drawn architecture (exciting) and real buildings (less exciting) or to suggest that having an attitude is more important than building.
In truth, an architect leads an active, critical, theoretical and cultural life and has an equally good mastery of construction: running projects, following technical developments, getting successful results from complex organisations. At the interface between these two sides of what might be termed “Cook's dichotomy" we find the real architects: those whose built work is the embodiment of noble ideals and sensibility which, far from being diminished by the constraints of the building process (regulations, client requirements, cost, a poorly qualified workforce, etc) comes into its own at just that point, and everybody wins. That's where we find Kathryn Gustafson, whose Shell Headquarters in Paris is a fine achievement that brings together all of the architect’s skills and makes them sing, resolving Cook’s antagonisms in a work of art that, to this reviewer at least, seems to attain something like perfection.
But when architectural drawings become more interesting than buildings, then we're in trouble. Here is the other side of Cook’s dichotomy: away from the computer screen, one suspects that many brilliant theoretical designers like Lebbeus Woods or Neil Spiller, whose graphical researches are certainly arresting, have given no thought to the human condition, to urban form, to the man in the street. That must be somebody else's business. These theoretical, drawn or modelled contributions, many of them fascinating, are accompanied by a somewhat excessive amount of hermetic gobbledygook about layers, imploded formalisms, and rabid Cartesian angularities that seems written to make sure there's always an abyss of mystification separating formal and theoretical research from the generalised cultural situation - that real world of sprawl and pollution, filled with other people who could use some input from architects and perhaps a less elitist attitude.
A telling contribution comes from Kyong Park through his engagement with the twin Petronas Towers, a conjoined pair of identical buildings that now say "Kuala Lumpur" as powerfully as the Eiffel Tower says “Paris". Park says "cities are sites of violence. We keep on building and destroying them” and if Cook wants one, there’s a "truly intellectual" idea - a complex statement about urban mythology and the image of the city that says things about globalisation, consumer madness and social and cultural transformation.. Whether Cook considers it so or not, that's not only a constructed reality; it’s culture; and it’s statements like that from somebody who knows what he's talking about (Park) that actually give us something worth chewing on.
Displaying 1 of 1 review