one of twelve images from (a special on the question of regionalism from) last Friday's (28 October 2005) eye candy...
I've been thinking quite a bit about vernacular architecture for sometime now -- or perhaps even regionalism.
Not that the firms in today's eye candy represents a vernacular - they quite possibly represent the demise of a vernacular... They represent an international collaboration that is becoming more and more the norm today. These three firms have collaborated on multiple projects - several of which are represented below. (Though they also compete against one another on international competitions.) Two of these firms are in Korea the third in NYC. The collaborations have primarily been in one general area in Korea - Are they creating their own regionalism?
I suppose that there has been a cross pollination of ideas in architecture for more than a hundred years now... it's not really a new phenomenon. Though with the current world market, international design competitions, books and periodicals (from anywhere you like) and the advent of the internet (and even e-mails like this one) is it accelerating? Does anyone else feel that we are perhaps destroying any sense of place that we once had?
I'm now working in an office that's located in the heart of a faceless, sprawling, car dominated, suburb... it's the poster child for 'the place that has no sense of place'. We've been discussing the fact that the suburbs are now obviously a given and they're not going away. So how do we address them in our work? ...how do we change them? Can we create a 'New Suburban Vernacular'? These are simply some ideas and questions that we're posing.
So I'm interested -- What does it mean to practice architecture in your local region? ...in your city? ...in your country?
-- send your thoughts and I'll compose them (anonymously of course) and send them out in the next week or two.
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the following web sites were accompanied by several images of their work:
http://www.choslade.com/ Cho Slade was an eye candy... way back (I can't even find it in the archives).
http://www.choslade.com/marketing_pdf/pixel_booklet.pdf
http://www.massstudies.com/
http://www.gaa-arch.com/
