Contemporary Architecture Spectacular Panorama Zaha Hadid Norman Foster – Weeks ago, Babelia-cultural supplement of El País, celebrated its thousandth weekly appearance with a library of proven interventions people in the world of global culture. There appeared the reflections of two significant members of the spectacular panorama of contemporary architecture: Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster.
The first entitled his contribution, written together with Patrick Schumacher-like buildings adaptable, while the second was deliberating on the future of architecture, in a lengthy personal. Somehow, both reflected there diametrically opposed ways of understanding the work of architects and their contribution to collective progress.
While Zaha Hadid shows a way to understand architecture as one of the Fine Arts, focusing mainly on aesthetic expression, Norman Foster architectural style has been characterized throughout its long history and a deep confidence in the ability of technology to overcome the problems of humanity.
Hadid and Schumacher organized their discourse on architecture necessary from a selective reflection on the issues that currently threaten us and demand a collective response immediately. Are based on the finding of evidence of the finitude and fragility of the planet and throwing a celebration of innovation as a tool for ecological sustainability.
Following the argument of the text would shed its commitment to the development of cities and those areas that offer the best conditions for the development of culture and life in common. Propose stimulating productivity, creativity and innovation as a mechanism to promote the advancement of humanity. Arguments to frame a bid essentially communicative conception of the architecture of collective institutions and places.
In the article discussed, led by the architect, the speech then goes on to make a presentation on economic developments in Western societies, from production practices that advocate the mass production of undifferentiated goods to the enhancement of the contemporary organization that adjective as postfordist following certain ideologues of contemporary economics that follow Schumpeter. Hadid has post-Fordism as a positive argument to provide flexibility and constructive space, specialized forms of architecture.
Another ideological resources in the text for a particular architecture appoggiatura-evidently his own, is the appropriation of scientific language linked to the complexity and the mechanisms that regulate the interaction of organizational structures. Something similar happens with references to techniques and systems for information processing in situations unintelligible or difficult to understand.
But all the arguments drawn from other subjects near or far down in the fraud when Hadid and Schumacher make the leap in proposing a final artistic movement, the ultimate solution for the advancement of architecture, which called Parametric. A new architectural style that would replace the outdated and postmodernism and deconstruction of the 80 and 90 of the twentieth century.
According to them, postfordism spatial patterns require new, adaptable, diverse and integrated in the new economy that could be resolved from that parametric is advocated. This new formalism argues that all the elements of architecture and urbanism integrate different linguistic construction to be able to adapt and be flexible to the changing environment. Faced with rigid geometric forms and simplistic, the new aesthetic parametric support is advertised is malleable and dynamic designs adapted to changing contexts. The variation and uncertainty would be formal and compositional resources essential for a new style that presents itself as universal.
Finally, the text entitled Building adaptive going to make a direct apology for the very architecture of their authors. Adequate representation of these ideas at the forefront of the evolution of architecture. You remember to do some work already planned and carried out in Spain, as the call for Barcelona Spiral Tower Bridge Pavilion at Expo Zaragoza 2008.
Over time, I had the opportunity to visit some buildings of the architect, attracted by the brilliance of his imagery, and accompanied by other colleagues also captivated by a photo spread endlessly by professional journals. In particular, several years ago we were going around the famous furniture company Vitra in Weil am Rhein, where he built the first building designed by Zaha Hadid, an alleged fire station to the factory. Walking along the distorted space and extremely difficult in its execution, we see the injustice of an architecture conceived as a mere sculpture visited and whose usefulness is questionable if not merely impossible. I think this building has never shown actually used. A clear example of the absurdity of this architecture based solely on the absurd and arbitrary imagery.
Something similar happens with the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion, a trademark claim, which, in turn, contained a spectacular exhibition on water and that communicated nothing. Currently, this work over and whimsically in the formalization of complex structure, is in a state of abandonment and exhaustion that led to City Council to hold a competition of ideas to establish a functionality which may be appropriate for a waste container, use feasible for that space impracticable and covered over the river Ebro
This is spectacular and the architecture design advertising coincides with marketing strategies, dedicated to the dissemination of corporate brands and urban, very much in vogue in the last decade, starkly reflecting the sale of the unnecessary and thus extends a unacceptable waste of scarce financial resources groups.
In my opinion, Norman Foster’s architectural style approach is radically different as part of a more humanistic ideological position in search of broad collective benefit, trust in technology research to solve technical problems arising from the threats contemporary. Foster in his article on the Future of Architecture wants to do a prospective on more solid foundations.
Like previous attempts to explain the contemporary context by removing those issues related to the crisis of resources that constitute a major challenge to the survival of humanity in the coming decades. His social vision is reflected in its argument for the elimination of the gap between countries that have goods and those who suffer from poverty. To do this in one of the first paragraphs of his article suggests, wrongly in my view, a massive increase in production and consumption.
Is that a first important question which states, that referred to a dwindling energy supply, which the architect is to emphasize and which strives to direct the weight of his argument for a necessary transformation of architecture. Too bad they are swindled or circumvent other relevant issues are also related to the increasing scarcity of raw materials, the recurrent food shortages and the unfairness of the distribution systems and tax expertise. All factors that are stimulated from the current organization of global economic system.
The central idea that Foster gives in this text is that a global review of architecture and urbanism allow greater savings and energy efficiency. One area of reflection that their professional team has devoted much thought and effort, together with the engineers who work with them. The proposed revolutionary ways to use solar energy and the study of the environmental conditions for the best available cooling and insulation of the building, led to Foster and partners to innovate on the spatiality of architecture on the basis stronger than those of the Iraqi architect. Other considerations associated with proposed and have their interest focus on water management and waste, always bet the maximum intensity, efficiency and recyclability.
Foster is a successful alternative against the powerful British engineering consultancies, and an evolution from traditional studies of small-scale architecture, which over the years has been consolidated with a large team, very well structured and efficient, producing architecture with high technical and aesthetic formalization acceptable based on the direct expression of the related technology. But then, beyond the organization and procedures, the philosophical foundations of Foster and Partners would be better aligned with the positive developments that need to be undertaken in the field of the built environment. At least in the advanced countries.
Another interesting reflection is included in this article about the future is referred to the prospects of the development. Considers necessary to act in the transformation of the current organization of cities, correcting the problems caused by the uncontrolled and unsustainable growth in individual car use. For him the most appropriate mobility would be related to the stimulation of greater density and compactness in urbanized areas and the promotion of the retrieved surfaces for pedestrians.
The current bid for the construction of the new city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi, would be a group response to these concerns Foster on how to achieve a more responsible planning and resource consumption. The slogan used, zero consumption of coal, an idea reflected in the building energy self-sufficiency and mobility that is very respectable.
Although it is clear that only from the architecture can not be resolved in its entirety the serious threats that plague humankind, especially I think it has become clear that I value more positively, the intellectual effort of Norma Foster formal pyrotechnics that Zaha Hadid.
