THEORY OF UGLY AND ORDINARY
WHICH TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION?
It is significant that the “advanced technology” favored by progressive Modern architecture continues to even today that of mass production and industrialization, nineteenth-century style. Even Archigram’s structural visions are Jules Verne versions of the Industrial Revolution with an appliqué of Pop-aerospace terminology (Fig. 141). However the American aerospace industry itself, the chosen model of latterday architectural megastructuralist, is facing its own trauma of extinction owing to oversize and overspecialization. As Peter Barnes in the New Republic 〖suggests,〗^17
“From a purely economic standpoint,” the aerospace giant have become more of a burden to the nation than an asset. Despite the myriad promises that science hold in store, America does not no need any great new strides forward in technology, least in the aerospace field. What it need is breathing space, a chance to evaluate the impact of current technology and to distribute the fruits of progress more equitably. It needs to think small. Not big,”
According to Barnes, Boeing’s “Operation Breakthrough” housing project required $7,750 per house unit in site-management costs alone, excluding costs of architectural services or construction.
The relevant revolution today is the current electronic one. Architecturally, the symbol systems that electronic purveys so well are more important than its engineering content. The most urgent technological problem facing us is thehumane meshing of advanced scientific and technical systems with our imperfect and exploited human systems, a problem worthy of the best attention of architecture’s scientific ideologues and visionaries.
For us the most boring pavilions at Expo ’67 were those that corresponded to the progressive structures of nineteenth-century world’s fairs celebrated by Sigfried Giedion ; while the Czech Pavilion-an architectural and structural nonentity, but tattooed with symbols and moving pictures-was by far the most interesting. It also had the longest lines of spectators ; the show, not the building, drew the crowd. The Czech Pavilion was almost a decorate shed.
PREINDUSTRAIL IMAGERY FOR A POST TINDUSTRAIL ERA
A language of preindustrial forms complemented that of industrial forms in late Modern architecture. Le Corbusier’s early sketches of Mediterranean villages probably initiated the preoccupation of Modern
17. Peter Barnes, “Aerospace Dinosaurs,” The New Republic, Marchc27, 1971, p.19.