what is it about the permanence of architecture that frightens us so much? is it its inherent stability that is difficult to shift- the making of boundaries that is its inherent nature? the urge to transgress them leads to construct complicated formal operations.
we are too afraid of immobility. with a culture of 5 second attention spans fostered by television we get anxious when we are confronted with stillness. we are afraid of being boring- not entertaining enough to command attention. complicated maneuvers are performed. folds, blurs, twists and turns- because one can. i do realize the overtly proselytizing tone of this post but these acrobatics seem like distractions created to hide the shallowness of our concerns. experience and habitation seem to be relegated to a lower status than the projection of seductive form. ‘the soft pornography of the rosebud’, i have said this somewhere else.
the problem is the urge to be ‘interesting’: as in unusual, odd, eye catching in magazines and drawings. the represented space is far more important than the lived. and that is the bind of architecture- because it is about represented space- only. architecture naturally then, to survive and flourish, must consign to a lower rung the non-pretty- the domestic, the body, the deformed, the ordinary, the mundane and elevate what is ‘interesting’.
assumed in this situation is that everyday life cannot be exhilarating. experience, unless it is mediated through formal operations cannot bring joy. within these operations, if experience has a part to play then it is the active body performing antics that is considered (like in an amusement park or playground). otherwise form must play with itself. turn, twist, swirl. when the body is still it is form that must dance.
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