tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004767258734318262.post6183846794502812115..comments2022-11-10T06:31:35.614-05:00Comments on EMULATION: Emulatiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11773405982717176805noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004767258734318262.post-26383200428506860372010-03-14T22:42:37.947-04:002010-03-14T22:42:37.947-04:00Dear Matthew,
I fully acknowledge "tradition...Dear Matthew,<br /><br />I fully acknowledge "traditional"'s marketing appeal, but I was speaking more about its value as a set of critical standards--which, I maintain, it simply doesn't have apart from distinguishing itself from "modernism." It simply means too many different things to too many different people. "Classical," too, is a bit of a loose, baggy monster, but by appending "humanist" I hope to make clearer a more specific, broader, and deeper cultural context: one that sees the rhetorical aspect of language, rather than mundane tectonics, as the motivator and measure of architecture's cultural (as opposed to market) aspirations.<br /><br />Ciao,<br /><br />DavidEmulatiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11773405982717176805noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4004767258734318262.post-85018665806315137122010-03-13T08:42:54.078-05:002010-03-13T08:42:54.078-05:00Hi David,
I have to disagree. When we were setting...Hi David,<br />I have to disagree. When we were setting up INTBAU we found that the idea of tradition was a crucial watershed that found a resonance in people around the world, who see their own traditions being run over by globalising modernism. <br />It's all very well for Ibelings to dismiss tradition in a series of sound bites about Europe and new Urbanism, but what of our members in Nigeria, who see their millennium-old tradition of earth architecture being swept away by bland international modernism? <br />The idea of tradition allows us to view history not as something that is past and that we are copying, but as something we have inherited that lives through us and lives by iteration, that we can pass on in turn to our inheritors. <br />Tradition today is in its infancy as a built architecture. Ibeling's complaints are as if the Gothic Revival was to be abandoned in 1790 because the results weren't good enough. We will improve over time, and criticism and debate like this will help our current practitioners to improve, and for the next generation to surpass this. It's not true to claim - as Ibelings appears to - that there was nothing for our current generation to inherit: that is to accept modernism's false claim to have eliminated all traditions everywhere. They did survive, weakened, but the majority of all building has usually owed something to tradition. We need to restore tradition to life, and nurture it with care and a bit cross-breeding for hybrid vigour, to again take its place as a mature series of practices in building.<br />I would argue that classicism is always simply a refinement of a local tradition. Thus classical it is not a style, but an adjective, representing a refinement and crystallisation of the principals of any traditional architecture. One may speak therefore of a classical period in any style of architecture. But it is always a high-style development of a tradition, and it risks becoming an irrelevant affectation in the absence of a strong tradition of building.<br />Cheers,<br />Matthew.matthewhardyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13274454754071819508noreply@blogger.com