Junk for Code

postmodern architecture

As I've noted before the built form of the city of Adelaide is a mixture of heritage nineteenth century and boring modernist. Our city fathers are into carparks, or more imaginatively, car parks sitting on top of shops and apartments. We need cars to shop. For them function is everything, design nothing.

There's is a world of system and regulated production; a world of exchange, use and expenditure. They live utility in a restricted economy. They are about controlling the space through commodifying it to make a profit. They desire to colonize or territorialize space.

Hell, we need an architecture of excess; one that takes us beyond mere functionality.

Here is a suggestion for a regional architecture:

(Un)plug

Now that would stir things up. You can imagine the city fathers saying, it's excremental!

How about architectural excess instead?

Excess does not have to be as Bataille imagined it: the remainder as dirt, disorder, contagion, filth, shit-----the accursed share.

The commission brief for the above building was to develop a building that gains its energy from the sun. The architecture of R&Sie...François Roche/Stephanie Lavaux.

An architecture that is positively connected to its environment is just right for Adelaide.

Link courtesy of BeverlyTang (check out the cool weblog design) via Abstract Dynamics

The gift of architecture, if you like, is to go beyond the functional: to be in excess of functionality.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at September 25, 2003 10:07 PM | TrackBack