DECONSTRUCTIVISM-an architecture for the real man

How do we define ‘enough’? As much as it can go, or as much as necessary. That is what any good explanatory document would define it to mean. If that is the case, or there be any other way you choose to define it, ‘Enough’ cannot define the creative power of the mind. As simple as that may sound, many do not subconsciously accept it. What makes this statement real to us is the consistency of surprises we are assured to meet everywhere we go, just passing by a street, right in the middle of the city, just across the road, all you know is that a surprise is close. 

Just when you think you have seen or experienced ‘enough’, steel and bricks, wood and mortar just begin to align, coexisting together in such a beautiful manner, like you have never seen before. A structure conceived in the mind of a person and brought to reality by the hands of some others. The word ‘enough’ becomes insufficient of itself to dare define that moment of extra gaze, that moment of extra attention, that moment of extra inspiration. If there were to be a war of words to define the mind of that Architect, ‘enough’ will cry out surrender before it gets to the ring to meet ‘extra’.

Like thread passing through fabric, anchored beneath a sharp needle piercing its way through, so is the voice of art, the rhythm of lines and dots connecting themselves together in different forms, speaking out the content of man’s power house. Marvel you may at the wonders that men of skilled hands put on display, working tirelessly the strokes on paper birthed from the intrinsic canal of a man’s imagination to reality.

That is the sound that communes with us without saying a word, the feelings that touch our deep desires without stretching an arm to us. How static and non-living they may seem, with dynamism and life that cannot be seen, they do more to us than the closest pedestrian on the streets.

How we personify the these structures, calling one dancing house, yet no matter the genre played within, it makes no move to the rhythm. If there be a day it moves, we will all be alarmed for an emergency. You see, it is not the actual things that we see that moves us, but the connection that those things make with the unending crave of our soul. We are moved by the possibility of achieving the unlikely.

Deconstructivism, better known as deconstructivist architecture is described in the Dictionary of Architecture and Construction as Architecture that seeks to arrive at new forms of expression by turning away from structural restraints and functional and thematic hierarchies, and toward often nonrectangular, fantastic, and seemingly disjointed designs. Such work often represents an application of the philosophical theories of Jacques Derrida in France, who sought to arrive at new insights in literature by breaking apart literary texts into their contradictory and hidden components of meaning; this philosophy has been applied in the late 20th century to architectural structures usually called deconstructivist architecture.

Deconstructivism is a style of architecture that revolutionized the building industry of the 20th century… It opened portals to the ‘godliness’ of human thoughts and imagination, and displayed the possibility of the breaking the norm. It became more than a style, it became a language that many did not understand, yet admired, and others criticized it. One thing that this style has not failed to do is seize the attention of as many as come across it. This is one style I believe does a good job of marrying the unlimited or rather unhindered possibilities of an artist with the principled domain of an architect.

It is natural to believe that as long as the artist can mentally conceive it, he can spread it on canvas; but having to sneak into the world of architecture, though some may refer to architects as artists, they are also scientist. In this fact, it is safe to convulse that thinking it does not give an architect license to produce it. For an architect, thinking it gives a concept that will lead to an eventual workable design. Though an architect has the freedom to think like an artist, the architect must be as principled as a scientist.

Deconstructivism, looking from an aerial holism, may doubt the science of the style. What principles guide its development? Though many question may spring from this style, one thing we cannot deny is the impact it has had and is still having on many societies.

When we hear of names like  Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi, and  Coop Himmelb(l)au , what we think of is that amazing, thought defying structure you saw. This people not only rewrote the history of architecture, they changed the faces of cities around the world. The dared to remove 'enough' from their design vocabulary.