In 1926 coco chanel announced her 'little black dress' which was described as 'chanel's ford' by Vogue, as if it was the Model T in the fashion field. It was not only about the outstanding style in fashion in the time, but most importantly the desire of liberty that frees people from the constricting lifestyle. However at the same time, it was so personal.
Today, fashion is an everyday life practice for people, while the breakthrough in 1920s was merely mentioned or remembered. It seems the desire of escaping the current construct through understanding humanity or present issues are overwhelmed by visual exaggeration.
It sounds the same to us in architecture circle, or out in the real practice. Since the 50s modernism rules almost everywhere on the earth, even there were groups like Team X who tried to drag the trend back to a way of concerning humanity, or simply lives of individuals. Sadly they did not end with great success. Nowadays in any different magazines or blogs, 'photography architecture' becomes more and more popular, as they can be captured in just a second and the photos are then being published through the excessive information exchange. This is unlike the classic master pieces and undoubtedly many other architecture by unknown architects, where you could get the other layer of experiences by visiting those constructions even after looking at the photos.
Putting everything into clean and white setting becomes one of the most popular or easy ways to handle architecture. By doing this you can ignore the cultural and historical background of the locations and the individuals' uniqueness. They will present the construction as a background that allows people to express themselves with the most efficient way, like most of the pure white gallery space.
For our generations, architecture does not mean only the construction from a ground-zero setting, but also about transforming the existing environment through the adaptation of time. While the excessive materials world and constructional gestures overwhelmed our natural human behavior and fundamental desires, we are blinded by architecture. Minimization maybe one answer, or we should say it's more a comment on the current situation. Subtraction and distortion of familiarity and everyday perception would reduce the unnecessary gestures of life, and the conscious additives of individual behaivors.
Um.. what could actually help a bit on this situation? Maybe this is also something we would like to figure out in the fall.
