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The movements within the term of architecture, Modern innovation aimed to extend the boundary of the clients to non-bourgeois while Post-modern innovation was aimed for higher architectural studies.
The modern architecture were founded by an organization which was influenced from the poverty after the world war. The idea of designing to suit the poor has occurred. The architects removed all the ornamental decorations and all the unessential oversized structure, because some structures like joints can refer to be too ornamental. Certainly an excessively non-ornament architecture produced an unaffordable geometric and oversized glass-and-steel structure.
After the failure of designing low-cost architecture, Modernism moved to somewhere new, inexperienced, and more open-minded like the United States of America where the Post-modernism later emerged. Americans are one of the war victims, they were colonized by British Empire and later became independence two hundred years ago. However the oppression done by the British empire has caused all the Americans to be highly believe in democracy and the capacity of mankind. They believed that everything can be done by themselves. Each natural material has its own speciality which all architect should know, but to use the material to it greatest content the architect must use his own intelligence. Their engrossing and inventiveness intensified the Post-Modernism.
Comparing both of the movements within the term of architecture, Modern innovation aimed to extend the boundary of the clients to non-bourgeois while Post-modern innovation was aimed for higher architectural studies.
The Post-modernism surely didn't aim to suit non-bourgeois clients which we can observe this hypothesis from Daniel Libeskind's work, The Villa, where its design breaks the record of the most expensive prefabricated resident. Libeskind is a very strong-minded person in whatever he believes which we can see from his appearance. As same as the other New Yorkers who believe in the capacity of mankind. In the past the Greek-Roman Empire shared same belief as the American now but the different is the Greek believed human's strength while the New Yorkers believe in the human's intelligence. Libeskind got down to only architectural studies, lifting up to higher standards of design, and threw away the financial problem, seeing from The Villa. This ambitious man chose various of premium materials with very challenging structure. It is turn-and-twist architecture having nothing in parallel or cubic. And of course he didn't consider only on its outlook but also added the sustainable functions. His design consisted of thermal insulations, noise reductions, weather resistance for passiveness, and also underground office, big glass walls, jacuzzi, sauna, and swimming pool. The Villa is inbetween Modernism and Post-modernism in terms of wasting of gigantic material, none of the forms follow the functions, but it is also multi-function breaking through the common form. However Libeskind Villa is just a signature series to build upon the owner decision, it's a prototype.
The inbetween Modernism and Post-modernism was a long obscure period. The reason of an obscuration is that the Modern architecture was officially found and run by Walter Gropius and his organization, the Bauhaus school in Germany while the Post-Modern architecture didn't have any official founder, it is widely spread by a few works of architects. Therefore the Post-modernism wasn't immensely well-known in the first place but it slowly and thoroughly grew up. This obscure period was when Daniel Libeskind was born. The Post-modern style was booming and ready to serve his graduation, he was in between these two movements.
What if we inconsider on the affordability of the clients because Libeskind looked more further. He didn't consider only on the architectural design but totally on its context and functionality that suits his clients while the funding considers as another personal condition.
During the Modern movement, there was only a few of the individual study on abstract of architecture because they were focusing on the big change of architectural design, anyway the study kept increasing till the Post-modernism. Here is one of the Daniel Libeskind's study.
The municipality of Groningen is the town boundaries in Netherlands and another war victim, full of walls and fortifications. Once the town was demolished and lost their traditional visibility which seems to be interesting to Libeskind. He studied this invisible city, and called it The Book of Groningen. Libeskind made historical abstract and informative diagram about nine cities in Groningen, its culture, politics, economic, its past, its present, and its future. He categorized his diagram into thirteen topics; the beginning of diagram, the book, the leaf, the angle, the measurement, the ray, the spiral, the muse, the technique, the time, the heartbeat, the material, the inner organ.
Libeskind produced his masterplans and diagrams with his own hands, without help from the computer. It wasn't because he lack the ability to use technology but he gave the viewpoint that we shouldn't let the computer controlled our hand, we should use these two hands to control them. His diagrams did not only give information and conclusions but it also provides a space, a 'silent space'. The silence does not mean less or nothing, moreover the silent space is not the same as a junkspace or an endspace. They are totally difference. We all have an experience as the users of the buildings. When the users were somewhere for a day and didn’t notice any architecture and surroundings. That area is called the junkspace or the endspace. It seems to be a wasting of time for architects to design. Some theaters, malls, stadiums, and other public spaces are all junkspaces. We may had been to the mall once a week, and we did not even notice the colour of the ceilings. All of these elements are out of the path of the user. The part that architects designed doesn't bring anybody to be present, but the context inside. The users come to the theater to watch the movie in the big dark room where they don't even see the stair steps or the colours of the armchair they are sitting.
From his style of drawings, Libeskind may be inspired by Rem Koolhaas who also study in architectural abstraction. Koolhaas focuses on the point of 'forms follow functions' more than Libeskind does because Libeskind is more iconic Post-modernist. Koolhaas wrote a book of Delirious New York which he was focusing on Manhattan. He studied all about whatever becomes Manhattan why the city didn't emerge with tradition but the man-making. He claims that Manhattan revels in 'hyper density' and fuelled by the spendours and miseries (Canniffe, Eamonn 2010). Therefore the book is like a blueprint of a culture of congestion. It was first published in 1978 which Micromegas the work of Libeskind was published in 1979.
The next step is his silent space on this junkspace and he called it Micromegas, his another abstract diagram. It looks so complicated because Libeskind tried to explain all the detail of the large space into one sheet of paper. It is about an intense relationship between perception on geomatric structure and the possibility of formalization. The perception of geomatric structure manifests itself in a pre-objective sphere of experience. And the formalization, he tried to overtake the information realm. It categorizes the abstract movement in the space, giving the impression of discontinuity and unpredictability in circulations that the circulations may be predictable but different and reciprocal in the same time. Libeskind believes that public space has desired to create more forward, backward, sideway, or around. The diagram should be meticulous because when we look at the drawing, listening to music, or reading a book, your mind flitters over single detail we have experienced in our life. The meticulous space or architecture will amaze people more than other common buildings, like music or books you keep listening to it or reading it, or the space you keep going to visit.
At the end both Modern and Post-modern architecture cannot reach the aim of non-bourgeios clients because poor people cannot afford to hire the architects in the first place. They would pay for a normal house, not a designed house. When we cut out the funding problem then we can extend the boundary to architectural studies.
"It's not like big beautiful building where people cannot give any opinion, they should be able to speak, do, and fold it." said, Libeskind who believes that an architecture is a story teller. From this statement it shows that each design has its own idea and this idea express memories. These memories are important because without them the architecture will become lost, blank, having nowhere to go. But with the memory, these memories will constitute what becomes us (the users),it effected on our way of thinking and It effects people both who have been to that space and who have never been but experienced it by some narrations like stories or pictures.
For example, Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany which its procedure was after Libeskind's study of Micromegas. Jewish Museum consists of two architectures, one is a geometric U-shaped courthouse called the old Kollegienhaus built in the 18th century. And another is Libeskind's masterpiece, designed after German reunification constructed in 1992. The years weren't important, this place collects loads of memories which are both historical and architectural. For those who have visited, this place effected them, gave them the feeling of Holocaust in the past. For those who have seen just the overall picture would say that this is so stunning architecture. Here it comes, the different constitution of ourselves.
Citation
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