Opus Project/ 12th Week Prompts
Action Verbs
Speculate.
The Modern Movement was about being simple and functional. Many architects had many interpretations of what exactly being “simple” and “functional” meant. In the general view the main concern was the “development of an industrialized architecture, and social responsiveness to housing needs” (Roth 525). History changes and parallel to history, architecture changes with it. Heinrich Wolfflin said, “Architecture expresses the attitude to life of an epoch”. Architects speculated many things about this idea of the new Modern Movement in where machines, technology, art, and desing were all starting to play a distinct role in this new movement. Many architects had their own ideas and speculated over many different theories. Some architects decided to go for the industrialized architecture and some other decided to take over the social needs. Mies van der Rohe, for example, had chosen the industrialized architecture; he said, “I see in industrialization the central problem of building in our time. If we succeed in carrying out this industrialization, the social, economic, technical, and also artistic problems will be readily solved”. Furthermore, one must understand that the speculation of an architect does not mean that that was the right choice for the Modern Movement.
Speculation can be a sensitive when its taken to human behavior. When someone studies human behavior it requires a lot of meditation and understanding from the action of that particular person in order to understand the personality or a particular behavior. There are hundreds of research programs that do this kind of studies. One of them is called PREPARE which consists in the study of a couple measuring very detail, that is, heart rate, pressure, and more. This kind of programs have a almost 100% accuracy to tell you if one is subject to divorce or not. These programs not only give you information of how is your marriage going to work out but also provides the best ways to prevent that your relation falls apart.
Stretch
Having in mind what the architects and people had to speculate, one must understand the stretch that the Modern Movement faced. I see the Modern Movement as a rubber band that is being stretched and stretched to its maximum physical ability. What I mean with this is that, from the Modern Movement so many other movement and styles emerged, such as, the Purist Movement, Constructivism Movement, Expressionist Movement, International Style, etc. And by doing so we have a mix of many different movement but still pertaining to the same essence that the “authentic” Modern Architecture provides, that is, to be functional and simple. After all, the theorists of the Modern Movement were inspired by the concepts of rationalization and standardization.
Compose
From the same idea of stretching architecture to its maximum level, we can take as an example the Bauhaus which is probably the main responsible factor of many of the changes in the Modern Movement. The Bauhaus was a school that combined arts and crafts and it was well known for doing so. But the school itself had a constant change of venues and leadership that resulted a constant change in focus, technique, instructors, and politics. This was not to be necessarily bad, but it was certainly an interesting way to do things. The idea of the Bauhaus was, Massey describes, “The school aimed to teach the arts and crafts in tandem and to bridge the veer-widening gulf between art and industry”. Therefore the idea of the school was to compose in particular for the arts and crafts but later evolves into many things and it becomes an international meeting place for the development of the Modern Movement.
In photography class the way pictures are developed is with a series of chemicals that enables the paper to show the image. One of the chemicals is composed by miniature pieces of silver. This chemical cannot be thrown down the sink because it contaminates the water and people could be subject to drink from this contaminated water which contains silver. This chemical is reused several times but there is a point where the chemical has to go to waste. The process is taken care of in Alaska. When the chemical is expired some special company comes to UNCG and picks the container and then is taken up to Alaska and is treated. The process mainly is to separate the silver form the chemical.
Energize
The idea of energizing the buildings and houses was an important factor for the Modern Movement. Le Corbusier said that the best designs were the simplest. But one wonders how can one energize a place while the best way to desing something is to have it simple. The idea was to create practical spaces where one could have flexible internal space and avoiding applied decorations. Something very interesting is the celebration of technology included as parts of desing within the structure. The idea of celebrating the air conditioning systems, or the water pipes, and other technology system as a desing component was also considered as simple but energizing.
In my weight lifting class, throughout the week, we have to keep ourselves energized so that when we lift the heavy wights our muscles are ready to lift one hundred and twenty five pounds at most. After class the trick to keep our muscles in shape is to eat an energy bar just after doing exercises. The reason for that is because when one finishes lifting weights, the muscles are asking for all the protein available in their bodies, but if your are able to provide more with an energy bar, they will have more protein to suck and as a result your muscles become stronger and stay bigger.
Shape
Le Corbusier had came up with “Five Points of Architecture”. First, that every building must be supported above the ground level by columns (pilotis). Second, the interior must have a free plan, without the need for supporting the walls. Third, the windows should be large forming a continuous exterior wall. Fourth, the roof must be flat, some kind of terrace. Fifth, the façade should consist in a smooth surface. Basically the shape looks like a big glass box. This shape was taken as an interesting idea for large-scale buildings. These kinds of glass-box buildings had a great shape for the incoming light and are able to illuminate the inside very successfully. This buildings became very much useful for companies and such, but not very popular for houses.
In my Design Perspective class we have learned that depending of the sizes and shape of objects, buildings, mountains, etc. one can determine how much life has each object. Normally when a building has different levels of scales with different shapes it is more likely that it will have more life that a building that has no levels of scale and it has a monotonous shape. The idea is that every living structure must have a particular shape in proportions, looks, repetitions, positive space, symmetry, ambiguity, contrast, etc. These aspects mentioned, Christopher Alexander calls it "the fifteen fundamental properties".
The Modern Movement is a clear example of the exploration of the new ways architecture, art, craft, technology should be approached. Most people have different ideas and theories but almost everyone focuses in the same idea of functionality and practicality. I believe that all this Modern Movement is about the exploration of discovering new things. The creation of the new diverse architecture and the free ability to seek new ideas and styles to its maximum potential .
Labels: Opus Project
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