Saturday 19 December 2009

Decline and Fall


Decline and Fall

“The problem of architecture as I see it is the problem of all art- the elimination of the human elements from the consideration of form. The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is build to house machines, not men. “
As an architectural student who has worked on endless life projects and designed many structures in education, I find the above quote to be extremely difficult to agree with. The reason for this is that, for a designer to state such a strong thought on the need for design and what it is designed for is extremely suppressing. We as designers, design to accommodate the comfortable limits of space for its occupier; it being humans, “monkey” or machines.
I believe this character in the book is a depressed designer and wants the easy way out. Any designer knows, designing for people are hard and designing a house is the hardest. This is only due to the fact that clients talk back and question ones design where machines do not. It is because of this I do not like this idea of factories being the most beautiful designed structures true. Anyone can design a factory due to its required space for it to be functional. People who are not architects have been designing houses for centuries, how hard can it be to put a roof for machines?

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