THE PATTERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION

 

11/24/2004

Say, I was lucky enough to get a hold of Nikos Salingaros' new book "Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction" (publisher: Umbau-Verlag). This is an interesting compilation of some of the important roots and evolutions of modernism and its latest development, the "Deconstruction" style.

Salingaros is one of Alexander's buddies, credited by Alexander as being essential to the development and completion of the "Nature of Order" series. There are important contributions by Alexander in Salingaros' work as well.

This new work  ... is a fascinating exploration of the history and psychology of modernism, post modernism and deconstruction. It is a revealing glimpse behind the curtain of the contemporary high-end architectural establishment, and the underlying human motivations and misapprehensions which have brought us to our present disoriented way point.

A lot of psychology, and some remarkable philosophy can be found here, as should be the case in any kind of good architectural soul searching. There is also a wonderful and thought-provoking thematic presentation by Salingaros himself of a "viral metaphor", which has far-reaching implications, not only for architecture but human endeavor in any and all pursuits.

To go a step further, one could say that deconstruction -- by its very primitive, crystalline, Godless character -- marks the end of innocence for the human; the end of the control and dominance of  biological and genetically determined order. In the earth's history the Deconstructionist Style may well mark the stark requirement of the beginning of an acknowledgment of human power, and the resulting imperative of responsibility for what we make of ourselves and our world.

At some point it must be acknowledged that Alexander's words are true and do apply at the highest levels. Creations, including, and especially, buildings that we live and work in, are things that eventually have a big hand in not only framing, but actually forming and defining us. And the way they do it is  ... through generating emotion and feeling.  The outrage that Salingaros and others feel for the sales and purchase of the modernist and post modernist styles of the past 75 years or so stems from feelings, first and foremost ... but it does not end there.

These intuitions, and the overriding conviction that all is not well if people lose contact with their traditional, deeply rooted, hand built, and human-scale styles, has led to a rigorous and provocative scientific and psychological investigation into what lies behind the successes and failures of the most recent 100 years of architectural history.

 

Dirk Visser

 

Original sources: PatternLanguage.com & SimplyBuilding.net