Hegemony of the R.E.M Era

After queuing for some time to get the tickets to watch Rem in action in a sardine packed lecture hall, I was afraid that he’ll be talking about politics and architecture again from his Content book or an update on his projects. Well, my fears came true, indeed he gave a lecture on his current projects, but I must say that he made some interesting points of contention.

First, he showed a sketch of the idea of how the fame of mainstream star personalities can attain an exponential increase in fame, while star architect has an asymptote, with Fosters and Gehry as the cap. This reminds me of the lecture where Nasrine Seraji compared the fame of Mick Jagger with Rem, while Rem is perhaps the most famous in the architectural realm, but his influence – though great through his buildings – is no where near Mick Jagger who influenced a whole generation of rock music. So, what is the hype over an architect’s fame? I guess it’s not so much an issue with pride and ego, but more towards making the public understand architecture to a greater extent and keeping them more informed, rather than just accepting what is being designed. This criticality is important, if not the public might just be at the mercy of developers and architects who are sometimes disconnected with the society and community at large. I guess this was particular true in architecture education too, it’s always easier to do well and impress with a project that is heavily form and structurally and ‘assumed-program’ driven, rather than socially program driven. Comparing Unit 10, which focuses on creating social organisation, with other units in the intermediate level, it is quite apparent that the students’ simple and mundane structures pale in comparison with other fantastic and attractive form produced in other units. However, they are dealing with very real issues, issues that concern and engage the public directly. In this respect, I would say that their architectural education seems to have more value than the other units. However, how much value is placed on such education? I guess sometimes we might be too caught up with parametric modelling, generating crazy forms and subscribing to a certain style that we lose the intuition and human touch with the reality. No doubt these techniques do generate a certain language and theoretical programs, but when a whole lot of buildings designed with these methods are put together, it seems to lose its relevance.

Comparsion of heights of world tallest buildings (Taken from www.oma.nl)

Collage of world iconic buildings (Taken from www.oma.nl)

Simplicity amongst iconism (Taken from www.oma.nl)

'Death Star' lurking ove the city (Taken from www.oma.nl)

Rem further elaborated on the relevance of star-architects, when nearly all the buildings in the Middle East, in Dubai especially are of sophisticated forms and structure and they are produced by mammoth sized commercial firms like Atkins. To a certain extent, this may render the role of the star-architect useless as any commercial firm is able to produce equally Gehry or Foster type of buildings. It seems absurd but that’s the reality that we’re facing, mammoth buildings with lofty ambitions. However, the traditional notion of pride of a city being defined by the height of building isn’t very relevant anymore with an array of them placed together. Furthermore, with iconic buildings sprouting out everywhere in the city, their iconism seems to be devalued. In his Dubai Renaissance project, Rem proposed having a simple flat monolithic building standing amidst an assortment of ‘iconic’ buildings, in order to overshadow the other buildings with its simplicity. Looking at his other projects, like RAK Convention Centre which consist of a ‘death star’ and a floating ‘cardboard’, it just seems that Rem is still subscribing to iconism, which makes no difference from other commercial firms.

At the end of the lecture, I had only one conclusion to make. The sad reality of star-architecture seems to be constant inventing a certain set of styles or trends which serve to increase its fame. As much as I want to believe that their research are of great importance, but it seems that these research serve their hegemonic ambitions through their design.