Friday, 2 October 2009

Session 2nd Oct

When we were looking at Jonathan Meades on Zaha today, the ten points were:

1. The structure of working practice
2. The use of the computer beyond being a tool
3. The importance or not of physical context
4. Historicism vs ambition
5. Gender
6. Jargon as language
7.    Time; the dispensable and the eternal
8.    Britain
9.    The refusal of simile
10. Mortality

I hope you will set up your blog and for next weeks session have something to say on it about what you have learnt from today. I want you to do this each week as part of your assessment for this module. I'm suggesting you write blog sized and blog style comfortable pieces, below 200 words each time. I am hoping you will enjoy it also.  

13 comments:

  1. Let me start by saying haha! I get to take the Blog's virginity!

    I have no idea how this is going to turn out. I'm not going to respond to anything specific, just give my thoughts as they flow through my fingers into the keyboard. Maybe I'll cover one point, maybe all 10. Here goes....

    I can see Zaha's problem with historicism. I don't think the attitudes of Krier and his ilk are easy for her to comprehend; she is totally and only expressive, bold, emotional. To look back is to restrict her creative 'soul'.
    However, Zaha talks of doing a city "without looking backwards" and try as she might I don't believe this would ever truly be possible. There is no darkness without light, there is no forwards without backwards.
    In addition, Meades describes each of her buildings as being "sensitive to its context". I can totally believe this, even if "it's not a question of taking a cue from her immediate surroundings". It's more abstract than that.
    It's this abstraction that she is reluctant to talk about, a stubbornness that leads to her apparent lack of architectural eloquence. As Paul mentioned in class, she's being very clever. I bet she could explain every nook and cranny of her buildings and why a surface bends this way or that, but she is being secretive, she doesn't want us to know her methods. I would go so far as to say she likes, even loves playing the architectural enigma.

    I do like her though.

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  2. The structure of the working environment of Hadid’s staff seems hostile and unpleasant. They work in an unsociable environment like machines with the only connection between them being intense concentration. Hadid likes such an environment as she sees it as the way of the digital industry. However, I believe people/ work benefit from the spirit of an organisation, which is one thing Hadid’s office lacks. Hadid believes her staff are connected through digital knowledge; she believes the computer is more than a tool as it increases knowledge and resources and opens a connection to everyone. In my opinion though it is a tool, just as a pencil is; if one does not have the knowledge to use them they will not be connected and achieve their standards.

    Hadid doesn’t like to relate to the context of historicism yet lives and works in quite a historic part of London. It seems to me she is quite comfortable with her location because she doesn’t acknowledge the old, she doesn’t look upon history to influence her work as this would restrict ones design. Hadid is not one to share her processes of work as she believes it would jeopardise them. If she doesn’t pass the knowledge on it will evidently die and the immortality will be lost.

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  3. So my thoughts on Zaha...

    Her office and working environment sounds like a place I would never want to work. It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie; All the employees hook up to computers, connected together digitally as one giant CAD organism, working in silence, fixed to their screen as if in some weird trance. But obviously it works since Zaha has created, from this giant organism, some of the most recognisable architecture in the world today.

    Regarding physical location, she appears in the article not to be engaged with her surroundings in London. This is reflected in her architecture around the globe that turns its back on the historicism of their locations.

    I respect the way that throughout the interview with Meades, as well as in the rest of her life, she plays her cards very close to her chest. It is clear in this piece that this woman is very clever; of course, she knows why her buildings appear as they do. She rightly doesn't give away any trade secrets to the ways in which she designs her architecture, why should she? Zaha knows the second she does copycat designs will spring up all over the place. Cheap knock offs of Zaha's style, like knock off Rolexes (half the price, looks similar from afar, but will develop problems fairly quickly), which means she will possibly lose out on commissions. I can see in the future she may write a book which will explain all her secrets, but until that time why not keep making her mark, unchallenged, on the architectural landscape of cities that can be recognised as unmistakably Zaha.

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  4. If Zaha Hadid’s office feels more like a factory than an office, it remains difficult for me to imagine it as a happy working experience. I would be bored to death if there were no talking at all. As a student doing my year out, it was through constant questions that allowed me to progress. Hence, in Zaha’s office there is probably no exchange of knowledge but only orders from the dictator herself. Besides, if architecture is about bringing people together for social interaction, then Zaha Office is not doing that.

    I think she is right in saying that the computer is not a tool because it contributes to the whole creation of the design. Computers influence heavily on the way designers even think about their project apart from being just a ‘pencil’.

    Meades also comments on the fact that Zaha Hadid lives in “neglected pockets of the mid 20th century utopianism” while her office in Clerkenwell is compared to "scents of Dickens”. Similarly, Le Corbusier preferred to work in an old office rather than in his modernist buildings. He believed that only his clients should have the exclusivity and privilege of his own designs and not him. Zaha probably expresses the same kind of branding exclusivity which her design has become over time.

    I think a good mixture of old and new buildings definitely creates a unique architectural experience in a city. However, to constantly design buildings that glorifies the past is ridiculous and probably a bad influence for society. Zaha’s ambition to a new style will only help to influence society to look forward and embrace progress.

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  5. All companies have‘accepted’ office behaviour and yet we are surprised that Zaha’s is different to the norm? Is it Zaha’s control that is reflected in the youthful employees eager to be a part of the phenomenon that is Zaha? Perhaps this behaviour is a symptom of the staff being ‘connected by digital knowledge’, they are mentally inside a digital parallel world, explaining why so little shows on the surface. Meades implies that Zaha’s buildings responded to their context by adding something missing, in juxtaposition to the existing diverse fabric enhanced by the input of the new, not just in form. As Zaha lives and works in a part of London that is such a mishmash of styles it could be that this fits with her view that buildings are disposable in the path of progress. In this article Zaha is portrayed to be obsessed with the future, synonymous with modernity. Does this make Zaha a beacon of progress, or is she just something different? Meades relates Zaha’s buildings to eternal processes, to give them timelessness, or is this a metaphor that they must in turn make way for the next wave of progress, eroded by time?

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  6. Theory, as I understand it to be, not subjected to individual opinion or knowledge, though perhaps common grounds of engagement. The truth is out there. Personal gain through understanding, rather challenging theory, we don’t agree. The two sides of a coin, one mathematical, one romantic. Black/White. Up/Down.

    As Jonathan Meades agrees to this critical analysis of Zaha, he agrees to making of an example of the world of architecture. As a student of architecture, I don’t believe Zaha is in any kind of league of architects. To the average Londoner, without evidence, there is nothing. So to say that London has not embraced her is true, but only because they haven’t been allowed to yet. The only architect Londoners know is Foster, maybe Wren, maybe Rogers, but not Zaha. And whilst she has made London her home, it doesn’t mean that her architecture is in any way less important, location and architecture is important.

    The mystifying experience of trying to understand Zaha and her art, I can only suppose that Zaha’s reluctance to explain her architecture a mystifying experience. I wonder, has she lost control? I understand that business and architecture go hand in hand, Meades talks about the 200 or so factory workers, I see myself as part of, not for Zaha but perhaps, many of us working for, something else, not something for.

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  7. Her practice is not the friendliest environment on the world to work in, but her employees should have a part of creating it, or is she responsible for this kind of atmosphere, maybe…Thank God I have not experienced place like that before. I think connection and communication is really important to design a building and it is really hard to imagine a silent office. Well, that is sure that Zaha would not get the “Year of the Employer” prize or award. But she gets other type of awards like the Pritzker prize the architectural Nobel. Her “team” on the factory floor had a hard time to produce (create) that bridge. Or did they? She says the computer is just a tool, I am not sure how their building/form production happens, but she clearly does it with success. I guess lot of young people inspired by Zaha’s work and she has and will have a lot of followers. I think a city need old and new as well, she does not look back, She just wants to push the architectural boundaries, this is her style and we can see her success. I think London is the prime location for her and for the practice and this is the place where from she can communicate with the world.

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  8. I think Zaha Hadid’s Architecture is beautiful. However, I am not sure whether the employees working with her at her office had a lot of fun in assisting her to design her beautiful works of architecture. While “they are connected via digital knowledge” most/all the time, it seems highly unlikely that not even an ounce of excitement would not have passed this prisoner like office. Maybe they thought they’d get fired for talking to each other at work! An office where you hardly communicate freely is not my idea of a pleasant working environment.

    It doesn’t make much sense to me why she would work in an old, former school in Clerkenwell erected in 1870, when she could design her own office that somehow reflects that of the architecture she produces.

    In London, one of the few projects she has ever produced is the temporary Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park but apart from that she has not yet produced any iconic buildings such as those by Richard Rogers or say Norman Foster.

    Meades is right to say that ‘Zaha has style all right, but not a style’ and I believe its about time Zaha, a former student from AA and a Pritzker prize winner, leave one of her architectural footprints on the soil of Britain.

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  9. http://kariskina.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-jonathan-meades-zaha-hadid-first.html

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  10. A few thoughts on loud voice :

    Architectural practice has inevitably been constrained by tradition and convention, constantly confining itself to the artificial codes and regulations of the techne.
    In this regard, Zaha´s work is of merit, as her approach to architecture appears
    to be far more vitalist and open minded than the norm would imply, while still engaging in practice with a strong theoretical background.

    However one feels about her work, we must not forget that we are talking about the work of a talented single individual.
    What is intriguing to my eyes is the drift many architecture schools worldwide are taking with their architectural education, as many seem to be replicating (and promoting) this very same type of (an)aesthetic in an effort to create the perfect gentleman architect:
    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_wWUfJqVcGLI/SsWrGkNQNVI/AAAAAAAAAow/CDjGsEkQlso/s1600-h/1.jpg

    Humanity has still many challenges to face: global warming, rise in sea levels, end of the oil age, the role of the city and agricultural production, low cost housing for the poor, etc etc etc
    I believe that it is our task to investigate new (and better) possible paths for architecture to develop. I just hope that in the process of doing so we don´t forget about the true agenda of Architecture.

    ________________________________________________

    “Architecture embraces the consideration of the whole external surroundings of the life of man; we cannot escape from it if we would so long as we are part of civilisation, for it means the moulding and altering to human needs of the very face of the earth itself, except in the outermost desert”
    William Morris, 1881(The prospects of architecture in civilization)

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  11. Thoughts on Zaha
    -The importance or not of physical context
    Jonathan Meades interprets the lack of context in most of Zaha’s buildings is because that ‘contextual might be synonymous with compromised’. That in my opinion only explains the general attitude of Zaha towards the visual presence of vernacular surroundings. By disregarding the existing visual conditions and superimposing her way of design, a new and mostly contradictory architectural language is added. I would argue that it is through the use of visual contradiction (lack of context), her buildings stand out from the pre-existing conditions and that is what makes her stand out as an architect.
    On the other hand, Meades mentions that ‘each of her building is sensitive to its context’. As if her buildings have sensed the surrounding elements (i.e. traffic flow, pedestrian flow, natural elements) and responded to them. In fact, she and her design team has to carefully study the dynamic context in order to achieve the ‘ground, layering, fragmentation’ interventions and geometry.
    Although Zaha refuses to analyze her own way of design, the essence of design strategy is apparent. The visual contextual contradiction masks over the carefully studied and manipulated functional contextual tradition.

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  12. “The awkward struggle to describe the products of her capacious imagination is hampered by
    her disinclination to employ simile, which, though it might clarify, would undermine her
    achievement.” Intelligent life-Jonathan Meades.

    Does architecture need to be described or explained? Zaha has become a starachitect because of her creative pieces of architecture which are innovative and push the boundaries of architecture, but she chooses not to define the architecture that she creates. She does
    not base her work on an architectural theory like Bernard Tshumi or Le Corbusier neither does she aim to constantly reference her work to the past such as the likes of Robert Venturi. This in my opinion is a clever ploy and one of her greatest marketing tools. The work cannot be defined so she can easily adapt her style and appeal to the masses.

    Architects who choose to put a theory or style to their architecture soon become out of fashion and start to be viewed as architects who replace their theories for a style that is lacquered with pastiche and parody. Zaha does not impose any sort of theory of how architecture should become a machine for living or pay homage to the past. Zaha provides architecture which could easily be something else, a vase, a shoe, a chair or building. The beauty of ambiguity is that neither supporter nor opponent can be certain of your true position.

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  13. http://melisavillar.blogspot.com/2009/10/use-of-words-2nd-oct-09-zaha-hadid.html

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