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The
architectural debates were organised around the paradoxical antinomy between
the realisation of modernism and the departure from modernism; they go beyond
a certain globalisation of industrial construction which has witnessed the
very same business districts being built, along with the same airports and
the same high-density urban housing developments. More than an affirmation
of the principles of modernism, it is a full-blown time-space economy identifying
itself as the common fabric comprising a trans-cultural, trans-national,
and global culture which has ultimately standardised and restricted the
architect's role. Although Modern, little is left of the initial spirit
of the Moderns except a form of rationalism which has rapidly lost sight
of the source defining its human scale. The issue is whether we can still
determine the stakes involved in future architecture in this continually
renewed "post-phase" of modernism. Whether neo-modern, in search of specific
spatial qualifications, or post-modern awaiting a rediscovery of lost origins,
or whether a new form of classicism versus a controlled disorder of a reified
city laying down the rules for a more human economy through a dismantling
intent on interrupting the standardisation process of an architecture which
is still becoming ‹ all are striving to renew architecture's unilateral
order, ultimate truth, and destiny. Nonetheless, it is this Kantian urge
‹ arising from a logic peculiar to architectural practises ‹ that modernism
satisfies and which now seems to be losing its substantiating principles
for lack of references points. Archilab
will thus undertake an open-ended inventory of the current situation, observing
the diversity of practises which are part of current architectural research.
This pragmatic approach seems to be desired by a number of architects who
no longer demand an aesthetic definition or a critical field determining
the ethical code regulating architectural practises. Having been through
highly-diversified formal experiences, from research into geometric fields
enabled by digital technology, to social constraints imposing an emergency
logic, as well as generic relationships to the ecosystem, the complex answers
and projects offered by the architects nevertheless seem to be pointing
to a new field of architectural competence. Archilab
will focus on determining what, beyond a straightforward formal understanding,
is common to an entire generation of architects. |
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