The Nostalgic Architect - random thoughts.

I wanted to share my thoughts! This is the first article of what I hope to be a series of similar random rants about my architectural frustrations. Wonder if I am alone in this, but I doubt it.

These thoughts are the little voices in my brain that seem to work very closely with my gut! Funny enough my gut is the first to react, by knotting up uncomfortably, to the aspect of ugliness that is fast becoming a trend in our built environment. I fear that people will think that this is architecture and that is is how it is; 'ugly becomes the norm'. Whereas my belief is that the two words 'architecture' and 'ugly' simply do not mingle; should never cross paths.

Rummaging through some of my older writings, I came across this quote by architect Khalid Asfour, in an article titled 'Cultural Crisis' in the Architectural Review, edition 1213, March 1998. Here is an excerpt that I wanted to share:

... “the process involves cutting ideas from it’s original field, the European, and pasting them with their logic in the new field, the Arabian. In the process, there is the assumption that the new field has similar cultural predicaments and would yield similar results upon transfer of ideas. The process of cutting and pasting does not imply too much thinking, it implies too much imaging: image believing image selecting, image cloning, image recycling and so on. Associated with imaging is too much optimism: better life, better standards and higher cultivation. The power of imaging as Susan Sontag suggests, becomes very relevant: ‘there is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’ Perception in this case is twofold: engaging in the look to the extend of adopting it, while believing in its will to make something better out of the present. Hegemony of the image becomes a way of life, a criterion. Meaning becomes an intrinsic value of the form that does not change time or place.”....

I could find this link for more reading.