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Archiphobia: in the 3% Australian context
Love or hate it, this article makes you wonder about lots of things, including some definitions and quotes from some well-known architects - are they joking? Yes, some would insist that architecture should be fun and theatrical - hum, how many architectural jokes can a city with a mere 3% of housing designed by architects stand?
Good for a mix of here and there (local and international) in which both are taken out of context to support extremely general statements, including of course the obligatory Le Corbusier condemnation. Well, I give him something; at least he tried to house the masses.
How can we start talking about housing - oops, "a house/home" - without a city context? Do you think that the built environment require more than just visual literacy? Or perhaps less individualism? So we dont end up with supermarket shelves for streets - whether architecturally designed or not.
Good for a mix of here and there (local and international) in which both are taken out of context to support extremely general statements, including of course the obligatory Le Corbusier condemnation. Well, I give him something; at least he tried to house the masses.
How can we start talking about housing - oops, "a house/home" - without a city context? Do you think that the built environment require more than just visual literacy? Or perhaps less individualism? So we dont end up with supermarket shelves for streets - whether architecturally designed or not.
Archiphobia
Stephen Lacey, The Age, March 25 2006
So why is it that people happily spend thousands of dollars building a house, but not a zack on designing it? Are Australians afraid of architecture or is there something more, asks Stephen Lacey.
YOU MIGHTN'T HAVE realised, but two years ago we celebrated 'The Year of the Built Environment' (YBE 2004). For 365 days we were suppose to be debating about the world we construct around us, and hopefully arriving at a few solutions to actually improve it.
The highlight of YBE 2004 was apparently the House of the Future exhibit in the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House. (....)
Even former NSW premier Bob Carr charged into the debate, claiming: "I'm not sure that project homes have the best variety of design and quality of design commensurate with affordability which we should be capable of achieving. We need to demonstrate that the best home is not always the biggest home."
Blah, blah, blah.
Who - apart from the few already converted listeners - was taking any notice? BIS Shrapnel figures show that the average size of a new residential Australian home is now 221 square metres. In the 1950s it was about 115 square metres. So Mr Carr is right; our homes are bigger but they don't appear to be growing any better.
(....)
Architecture critic Elizabeth Farrelly believes that most people don't like architecture, they don't understand it and they don't want it. "You couldn't argue that architecture, even the entire body of architecture, has had any influence on popular culture," she says. "Craig Ellwood, Gordon Drake, Mies van der Rohe might not have happened as far as popular culture is concerned. People en masse have rejected architecture."
The reason, she says, is that architecture is about ideas and most people are not interested in ideas.
(....)
Glenn Murcutt believes our poor built environment is a product of what he calls "visual illiteracy".
(....)
Melbourne architect and set designer Peter Corrigan believes the theatrical potential of architecture has often gone unrealised.
He laments the fact that modernism, with its form follows function mantra, has erased architectural artifice or contrivance. He asks, where is the fun in architecture?
(....)
http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/archiphobia/2006/03/23/1143083899436.html?
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