Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Wenhao Sun Arc 6989
Wenhao Sun Arc 6989
ARC 6989
MAAD
Wenhao Sun
08/05/2011
Introduction
When I was standing in front of the Villa Savoye, which is a classical building in the last
century, and watching it carefully, I thought this White House has totally become a delicate
exhibits for everyone to visit and worship. Villa Savoye,as same as the Versailles and the
Notre Dame de Paris, has a souvenir shop, which selling something about itself. Villa Savoye
seems to use less than a hundred years to make itself turn into a building with classical
temperament, which is much more quick than those gothic architecture. This is probably the
characteristic of our age. The development and blending of economy, technology, media, and
other various elements accelerated our paces, architecture is also changing rapidly in a
critical process. Georges pompidou art center has already become a life container: different
people with different background arriving, leaving or passing the square, entering or going out
of the building, where their life and personality happened. It is difficult for us to describ its
state because of that it changing all the time. The previous controversy with its form now has
completely disappeared in human activities. Obviously, the building has no definite
completion status, just like consumer goods from our impression: transition, expansion and
collapse.
Therefore, the evaluation criterion architecture has become quite different from that of before,
more and more ways of study came out and various trends of thought and theory collided and
gave us different shock and inspired. Need less to say, Archigram is one of the most unique
group is last 50 years. It rose in the early 1960s. they were based in London, and the main
stage for their activities was the magazine that shared their name, Archigram. Published from
1961 to 1974, its avant-garde architectural designs and urban plans, combined with an
experimental editing style, ran counter to the main- stream architectural magazines of the era,
a unique phenomenon. Although their bold, utopian proposals were rarely brought to fruition
at the time, the ideas they championed greatly expanded the vision of architecture, directly or
indirectly influencing the architectural perspectives and spatial concepts that were to follow.
There is no doubt that now all areas of status, compared with last century from the 1960s to
1970s, had undergone tremendous changes, all sorts of social problems and contradictions
forced architectural schools frantically diversification, architecture have no longer led by one
or two authority anymore, the worldwide architecture activities unprecedentedly impetuous
and uncontrollable. Against this background, we can easily find that Archigram's numerous
proposals still have strong forward-looking and guidance today. Archigram owned a huge
number of proposals and concepts. I will try mt best to analyzing and exploring their design
and thinking method in this essay, researching the significance and influence of their projects,
and then contacting with this current society, talking about their roles and enlightenments for
us.
Design methodology
"Drawing is to architects whit writing is to authors." In Archigram's active period, they
published many theory articles in their magazines , in addition with plenty of pictures and
posters, to express their unique architectural ideas and concepts. First of all, drawing can be
motive of design and theoretical. As we all know that building will develop in retorts and
criticism, so the new theory really need a powerful way to vent, as peter cook said, to insist,
awaken, and reveal. Archigram often used some distinctive and exaggerated drawings,which
are filled with pop culture, to show to the world their thoughts, this method gave people a
great impact.
the coming of Consumption Period: almost without realising it, we have absorbed into our
lives the first generation of expendables...foodbags, paper tissues, polythene wrappers,
ballpens, EPs...so many things about which we don't have to think. We throw them away
always as soon as acquire them. It is a sophisticated cosumer society, rather than a stagnant
society. Archigram define building as consumer products which can satisfy human
needs,such as politics, economy, science, technology, art, movies, pop music, fashion and so
on, and these things effect and control with each other. This forward-looking ideas gave us a
lot of inspiration and guidance.
It is probably of interest that whereas Archigram tried to make what is essentially an inert
object, a building, into something fluid the formal evolution of a contemporary building such as
the Guggenheim at Bilbao is an insert object.
- Mike Webb
The pace of change in the contemporary society is very rapid, many problems constantly be
produced, we have to response and conform to these changes as soon as possible.
Archigram always concentrated on a series of design which have ability to comply with these
changes, and try to predict possible problems in the future. In their proposals, city and
building were not passive objects, they have self-development, mobile or updated ability. In
Ron Herron's project - Walking City, he proposed building massive mobile robotic structures,
with their own intelligence, that could freely roam the world, moving to wherever their
resources or manufacturing abilities were needed. Various walking cities could interconnect
with each other to form larger 'walking metropolises' when needed, and then disperse when
their concentrated power was no longer necessary. Individual buildings or structures could
also be mobile, moving wherever their owner wanted or needs dictated.
daylighting, ventilating, heating and so on. but these buildings will remain inactive when finish,
their contribution is mainly subverting the traditional architectural form, becoming landmarks,
satisfying investors' business requirements, etc. Archigram advocated use change to cope
with change decades ago, they did not care about to overturn all the frames, send their voices
in a new political, cultural, management environment.
Arata isozaki mentioned that Japan's Metabolism Group, in contrast to Archigram, lacked the
perspective on the necessity of discovering counter-cultural values. As a result. It made the
easy identification with the ideas of managerial planning in the rapidly expanding city
economy, and ultinately found it self being manipulated in the interests of the government's
meretricious policies. We still remember that The Nakagin Capsule Tower designed by Kisho
Kurokawa never expected replacement and renewal since it built up, and in his old age, in
order to meet the existing system and various new demands, this building, which is his
masterwork, also faced to be demolished. Jean Nouvel had spent a lot of money in the Arab
culture center's south facade, trying to use a series of aperture - like equipments for improving
the architecture daylighting, it seems more like archigram's idea , but because of the technical
limitation, management and budget problems, It is no longer work well.
Archigram use various drawing attract our eyes on kinetic potential. In their scheme, the huge
urban can deformation, walking, fly, or update and architecture has become the industrial or
consumer goods completely. They explored their thought in these ways because of the
background which lead by western philosophy. conceited people get some benefit from
developt technology and material thing,but they also lost some original skills and put
themselves on a wrong status in the nature, it is absolutely a spiritual deterioration.
Today, human society have entered a self-examination stage from a high-speed development
stage,the eastern philosophy which emphasizing the natural point seems to receive more
attention. In traditional Chinese natural point, People affiliated with everything in an equal
status of the nature, and the building should also be a modest attitude thing, which is attached
to human. This point of view seems to be more sustainable. Japan contemporary artist
Susumu Shingu use a very simple art equipment to capture the wind, which stimulate us to
feel the subtle change of nature. In this view, the advantage of technology is no longer the
main topic. Sometimes designers may try to arouse people's pristine thinking with a kind of
'inconvenient' design. The roll toilet paper, designed by a Japanese architect - SHIGERU
BAN,have a square column core, not a cylinder core, when we use it, we may feel that it is
really inconvenient, but the designer's 'environmental protection concept' has been conveyed
very well.
Bibliography
Peter Cook, Drawing, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2008
Taipei Fine Arts Museum ARCHIGRAM ARCHIVES, A Guide to Archigram, Taiwan: Garden
city Publishing Ltd, 2003
Simon Sadler, Archigram: architecture without architecture, USA: MIT Press, 2005
Peter Cook, Archigram, USA: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999
Kenyahara, Design of design, China: Shandong people Press, 2006
Susumu Shingu, Wind Traveler, Japan: Fuso Publishing Inc, 2001
MAD, http://www.i-mad.com