aRchIDICULOUS

The following article was written as a part of an assignment to write and edit an architectural journal citing our own views and criticism.


Architecture has come a long way since, the time when man decided to construct a shelter to keep warm and safe from external unfriendly factors. During the past few decades there has been a significant distortion and transformation in the general ideology of architecture, after going through subsequent cycles of change and reinterpretations it has morphed from being a mere source of shelter into a consumer product, a commodity, whose packaging matters more important than the actual quality of its character, but all is not as bleak as it may seem it is a very fitting period for architecture and to be an architect. Architecture is born again as a medium to redefine societies, culture and way of living. The new identities of old cities are being laid on the very principles of architecture. The architects have taken the wheel in their own hands and are ready to steer in whichever direction they find most satisfying. Amongst this new found glory and status, the chances of exploitation of this medium has vastly increased. Architects have used this liberation to carry out experimentations at the cost of old traditions and norms.

As I mentioned earlier, the sky is not as spotless as it seems. The extreme functionalist ideas of modernism and the imitation of ornamentation of post-modernism have fallen prey to the deconstructivists, iconoclastic ideologies. The present day architects deny to follow any conventions or pre-formed notions of space, while this all seems to be the turning of a new page in the architectural time line, it has led to several exploitations and drawbacks. Architects have hidden behind these concepts of dislocation to play god with their subjective instincts and tastes. It has also led to an “elitist” form of architecture where all the glitter and the glam represents the preferences and tastes of a small yet powerful fragment of the general population. The reality remains the same, this form of “populist, progressive, radical” architecture may be eye catching and attractive, but it detaches itself from the real issues of politics, culture and society, is based on falsely implemented principles of aesthetics and beauty.

Some might say this transformation is a response to the “deterritorialization, mobility” of the modern society, where we are heading towards one global culture, but its one thing to accept or be inspired from other cultures but a totally different thing to follow personal tastes and self-constructed shallow ideas to implement them into a built environment that goes on to affect millions of others.

The reduction of architectural innovation to mere “premonitions and intuitions” is a sad reality.
Everything architectural is reduced to satisfy some visual and aesthetic instincts, sidelining the other much important factors.