Nomad Forms

Post-Systemism | Post-Post-Euclideanism -A morphogenesis into Nomad Forms- When we unlock the keys to jumping into parallel multiverses. When we can control our dreams, lucid dreams, and adapt them to our egoistic satisfactions, what if we divulge and metamorphose into Nomad Forms.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

The architectural atrocities of Lebanon's Neo-Architects (of those proclaiming to be architects)

It has been a time since i last posted, but here I am, though described by some as complexifying things, nevertheless, I am here to project unto you, fellow Rhizometects and Nomads, the current unacceptable atrocities and hegemonic unpropitious manipulations that are being daily deterritorializing the uncanny world of architecture, more to focus on the so-called "Lebanese Architecture".

"WE CREATE, WE DESIGN, WE ARE ARCHITECTS". These are the terms that sum up today's Lebanese so-called architects. They create, yet they fail to evolutionize a "form" from its embryologic state. They design yet fail to comprehend the origins of architecture itself. They admit of being eclectic, but what is eclecticism? is it the "copy-paste" of "elements" we "like"? what is copy-paste, the apogee of fraud itself. what are elements, the end result of profound theoretical and philosophical inquiries to reach certain assessments that reveal to the eyes as elements ornamenting today's architectural forms. And what are shapes we like and objects we dislike? Is architecture a matter of taste? can we sense the flavor of a certain building? do senses provide an objective criteria to criticize architectural designs?
Well, it seems there do exist people in lebanon and outside, presumably architects, who seem to taste architecture. They pretend to judge any design just in the first 3 seconds after peaking at it. They only need to say either one of the two words, i like , i don't like. Who are they to express such atrocities? They claim they can "create" the ultimate solutions for all problems, and they can go with it harmlessly. Design to them is to work with concrete. And what do they know ab out concrete? concrete and form work to them is metal beams and ribs poured with concrete mixture. To them architecture is to know how to realize a certain multi-story building will repetitive floors, yet still having that 1960's design techniques. To them architecture is opening Autocad, copying files, elements, drawing the detail of an aluminum window, projecting elevations whose grid would be nothing but cartesian. Tilted lines to them are innovations, heh, and they say they are deconstructing (funny no? ). Those are the so-called Lebanese architects. They are the pseudo-Palladians yet failing to realize who Andrea Palladio is. Creativity to them is to draft on Autocad and copy the exact details found in any of Palladio's villas. Hey, I like that colonnade, let's copy it. I like those window details, let's see if we can fit them inside that rectangular facade. HAVEN'T YOU HEARD OF GOLDEN SECTIONS??? And what about those colonnades, why a tripple column colonnade, why a logia... why this, why that? is it cause Palladio used them and we succeeded in copying them?
I can talk and talk till infinity pin-pointing current atrocities among Lebanese architects, yet the aim here is not to show defects, not to warn you clients of not investing in those Lebanese architects; but to shed some light on the local and global architectural knowledge, it's presuppositions and conceptions, its Raisons D'etres, the epistemology, and teleology in the uncanny world of design.
Having said that, in the coming posts I shall try to reflect some reversed procedural methodologies in how to initiate Lebanese to first eliminate subjective eclecticism from their intellectual dictionaries, then start providing teleological conceptions to amend the past atrocities in the Lebanese architectural heritage.