Team 10 and Aldo van Eyck

Team 10 was seeking to solve social and form problems. As time passed, their thoughts changed and this quest for solutions made them start to loose their vigor.

One of the members of Team 10 was Aldo van Eyck. I have come to deeply respect van Eyck for his activist movements.

As Aldo van Eyck put it in his essay The Interior of Time “each case is a special case and can only be understood in its own terms.” He also makes the point that “each culture constitutes a very special case. That surely is a wonderful thing – wonderful in a different way for each different case!”

The people and place make a culture. Aldo van Eyck put it best in his collective thoughts titled Place and Occasion when he said ‘city implies “the people that live there” – not population.’ The best way to make real architecture is by letting a building evolve out of the place and culture. The design of buildings could be like the Dogon Basket in the sense that they are functional and satisfying the initial need of the structure but then go on to tell the story where the person or group was in the past, who they are now, and their ideas and goals; where they are going.

I love learning about different cultures and I fear that globalization is diminishing the diversity of cultures around the world. Although I will admit that the integration of the culture of an area fused with modernity can produce very interesting buildings so long as the structure is functional, like Mr. Willoughby mentioned in class Tuesday “art can be absurd, but architecture can’t.”

All of these images are homes in the Philippines.  I think they begin to show the change between the traditional nepa hut to the "modern design" and then the beginning of a sort of fusion between the traditional and "modern."

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

I find it interesting that Alan Colquhoun mentions in his essay entitled Postmodernism and Structuralism: A Retrospective Glace, states that the ainti-modernist reaction was a reaction against a movement that emphasized conservativism, professionalism, and an arrogance that had developed in the profession of architecture.  Although this argument could possibly be used to agitate disapprovement of the present 'starchitect' system it is interesting that these ideas were on the minds of the structuralist generation of architects. 

The structuralist became enamoured by theorist Roland Barthes and an anthropologist named Claude Levi-Strauss.  They began to look at the relationship between things or their function, rather than the objects themselves. 

 http://www.designkink.co.za/

The post-structionalists, however, felt that the architect was no longer responsible to the audience and viewed architecture to be individualistic and an exception to any rules.


Do some architects still cling to a post-structionalist view today?

Concept, Diagram, and Parti

Concept

The definition of concept, in my opinion, is that it is the philosophical, psychological, and symbolic meaning that the architect wants to portray through his or her building.  These ideals come from the architect's world-view, the program, and the client's goals, history, or character.

Diagram and Parti

I have always sort of seen a diagram and parti to basically be the same thing - as a broken down basic geometery behind the building.  Diagrams can then show functions and progressions ect.