Reading Response Week 12

An argument that I found to be repeatedly mentioned in this week’s readings was the idea that the printed word destroyed the art or architecture. Neil Levine, who writes about Victor Hugo’s piece quotes him as saying “Architecture was ‘dead, dead beyond recall’. Buildings had forever lost the power to express human thought and had relinquished that power to the printed word”. Hugo sees architecture in the first 6,000 years of the world as the “handwriting of the human race”. Once the printed word is invented that importance of expression of thoughts and beliefs is transferred from architecture to books. Leaving architecture vulnerable to standardized styles as Mumford discusses and shopping styles as discussed in Hal Foster’s piece. As Levine mentions Frank Lloyd Wright had understood, Hugo prophesied about the return of great architecture. This is where I see the piece “Bigness” tying in with the readings. Foster discusses through the analysis of Koolhaas’ writings, the return of big architecture in skyscrapers. He also discusses, what is almost a mirror in Hugo’s thoughts on architecture, the rise of the shopping center. The transformation that consumerism had on architecture could be compared to the changes the printed word had on it. It is interesting to see that Foster’s talks about how the internet is now changing the structure of shopping – again a repetition of the effects the printed word had. The internet has allowed consumers to shop from home, making the shopping mall obsolete. As Foster says “…the victory of the mega-store may spell it’s eventual defeat, for like its products it is ‘always almost obsolete’, and by 2010 more than half of all retail is projected to be either mail-order or online: if the shopper won’t come to the store, the store must got to the shopper”.

One comment

  1. Thanks, Vanessa! This is your sixth and final response!
    I’m glad you found some parallels between Foster’s discussion of shopping (as it’s discussed in Koolhaas’s writings) — but I wonder what you make of the fact that one of the primary things Koolhaas *does* as an architect is write big books about shopping…and the Pearl River Delta…and other things that might seem to stretch our understandings of what count as “architectural” subjects. Could this maybe be an attempt to redefine the “terrain” or function of architecture — since, as Hugo and Levine suggest — its job is no longer to embody the voice of humanity?

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