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| Torre David - Caracas, Venezuela. Photo: Iwan Baan |
How political can a typology be? Can typology of cities or buildings, their strictly formal attributes have an impact on the politics of space? I question myself that, trying to understand on a deeper level if architecture has (allegedly) the power to change society. The tower type is a socialist model: concentration, standardization and the free-space around were made possible by the increase of density. It is socialist by means of the idea of sharing (functions, spaces) but it has been translated literally to the capitalist realm (why do architects rely on copy-pasting of images!?).
Is it working? Is the tower-type successful in its capitalist state? Or is it possible to come to an adaptation that transforms the capitalist aspects of society in assets for the architecture? The same can be seen in the urban morphologies. Linear city, grid city, green belt, de-urbanization. We often discuss those terms but we are not really going deep into the political/economical aspects of them as formal-entities. How can a linear-city type behave? Is it as straightforward as a Ford-production-line?
I feel that when copying types we tend to forget their implications, or to question their validities. Today's post is not about answers, but about questions. Architecture should do the same, to question.
I strongly believe that each time an architect considers to copy-paste an idea from another architect (especially an older idea) should first consider the different parameters that each case has. We cannot design today the Ville Contemporaine, which Le Corbusier proposed. Now the problems of design have different parameters, differences in environment, population and activities.
ReplyDeleteIn order to perform a complete renovation first of all we have to consider and analyze the individual as an organism. We have to analyze the needs of a human being today from a physiological, psychological and sociological perspective, by doing so we will be able to rethink the quality of life that the architecture needs to provide in the people. As David Harvey said about the current lifestyle: Quality of life has become a commodity, as has the city itself, in a world where consumerism, tourism, cultural and knowledge – based industries have become major aspects of the urban political economy.