Black & White Illustration | 3333 | LEBBEUS WOODS | source
GESAMTKUNSTWERK
The idea of Gesamtkunstwerk—a German word for “total art-work”—has long since gone the way of all 19th century Romantic ideals, into the trash-heap of history. It began with the belief that art really mattered in human society, morally and politically. This belief was rooted in the great value the ruling classes had always given to art as a symbol of their wealth and power, but also to its place in religions important to European history. It was only natural, therefore, that at the beginning of the modern age, many believed that newly emerging industrialized democracies, both capitalist and socialist, needed not only their own new forms of art, but also new forms of integrating the arts, as had been done in the great cultures of the past. Architecture, painting, sculpture had indeed been brought together in the important buildings of most ancient civilizations, such as Egyptian and Greek temples, as well as in Medieval cathedrals, Renaissance palaces, and Baroque churches, and were combined there with music and both religious and secular rituals and performances. Total art-works. The most notable modernist attempts to accomplish the same were at the Bauhaus and the Russian Constructivists, though were each defeated by political forces—but that is another story.
Today, art is a commodity separated from itself, so to speak, in order to break it down into salable units. Modernism never found its Gesamtkunstwerk.
At a certain stage of my life, I fervently believed that architecture could sponsor a reunification of the arts, in the service of both public and private life, even though it would have to do so very much against all tendencies and trends. Vestiges of this have remained throughout the succeeding years—in System Wien, for example—but never in such an ambitious and hopeful a form as these drawings. Auf wiedersehen, old friend!
LW
(via iceflow332)
Argentine Industrial Union, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Competition, 1968
Manteola, Petchersky, Sanchez Gomez, Santos, Solsona, Viñoly.building wiki info
(via: not2cad)
(via alwaysunderconstruction)
James Wines/SITE, High Rise of Homes, Catalog of House Units, Major Urban Center, 1981
(Source: archiveofaffinities, via euphues)
Ground/artificial ground
Metabolism develops a deeply ambivalent attitude towards Japan’s ground, which is usually too densely populated, expensive, mountainous, flood-prone, beautiful, or seismically unstable to build on. So the Metabolist conceive “artificial ground” structures that hover over the ground on platforms or pilotis, still in a close relation with the topography even in its attempts at defiance, and occasionally lunging upwards, desperate for liberation. Kawazoe writes: “The very difficulty of obtaining land is actually unfolding a new possibility for housing…”___________________________________________________________________
Sakaide Artificial Ground
Otaka, Masato
With Sakaide’s tradition of salt production in decline and former farmers now living in slum conditions, Otaka attempts liberation from the chaotic, degraded urban plan by creating a housing complex on an urban platform raised six-nine meters. The platform stages social housing; below the platform, parking and shops. Otaka says: “Artificial ground is a means to create an artificial nature, using reinforced concrete. If carefully applied, reinforced concrete can last for more than 200 years, which allows us to use it just like natural ground. Artificial ground should be supplied to people for a very reasonable price as it should be built by infrastructural companies (gas, water, etc.). Artificial ground is … an alternative means of creating new land without reclaiming the sea.” The project grows in three more phases; the last is completed in 1986.
