Three unrelated things of note today...
- Placeopedia, the marriage of Google Maps and Wikipedia, where information gains a third dimension and mapping becomes more complex.
- Peter Eisenman declares in a lecture to Cornell students that the age of imagery in architecture ended on September 11th, 2001, with its symbolic attacks on architectural icons of power and wealth.
To Eisenman, architects’ and artists’ search for a new language became all the more important after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. In fact, he wondered if architecture itself had to be fundamentally reconsidered and reinvented.
Eisenman recalled how, in the wake of World War II, eminent literary theorist George Steiner questioned whether there could be poetry penned in the German language after the Holocaust. Eisenman wonders if architects are at a similar turning point. “It may be impossible to continue with the existing language of architecture now,” Eisenman said.
To Eisenman, the latest paradigm shift in architectural modes of thought occurred on Sept. 11, 2001. “[Sept. 11, 2001] was the last great spectacle,” Eisenman said. “And I don’t think that anything that architecture could do could equal this.”
Eisenman's latest work, the recently unveiled Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, seeks to evoke feeling without any narrative or image, to great controversy:
The opacity of Eisenman's memorial is a conscious choice, rooted in his sense of the enormity of the Holocaust, and of his suspicion of, as it were, graven images. As he has said, "The Holocaust is of such magnitude that it cannot be represented without such representation becoming kitsch, sentimental and hollow." It's almost as if he made a work that defies visual representation precisely in order to avoid such pitfalls. And since the memorial embodies nothing that belongs to what is conventionally understood to be the imagery of the Holocaust, it is radically abstract--a regimented complex of Minimalist monoliths that refuse to name what they are intended to commemorate.
- Meanwhile, Martha Stewart, lifestyle doyenne and cultural force, has announced plans to lend her name to a collaboration with a national homebuilder for a new community of 650 homes to be built in Cary, North Carolina. The exterior architecture of each home will be loosely based on the homes Stewart owns in New York and New England:
There are plans for another community, outside Houston, and possibly a third, near Atlanta. If they sell as rapidly as KB hopes, there will be a number of Martha-inspired subdivisions across the country. "It is not Martha Stewart's home," Mr. Karatz said. "It is a home inspired by one of Martha's homes. At the same time, we didn't just grab her and throw her name on some houses that we built."
There will be two or three versions, of varying sizes, of each of the Stewart residences. These were actually designed by KB's architectural division, and they will have interior floor plans similar to the thousands of other homes KB has built. But Mr. Karatz and Ms. Stewart insisted that Ms. Stewart had played a significant personal role in shaping the look of the exterior of the homes, the look of the landscaping that will be offered to buyers and the style and feel of the interiors. For example, a dining room with doors opening onto a garden, a first for a KB Home, came from a suggestion by Ms. Stewart, Mr. Karatz said.
Cary, NC is an interesting choice for the first "Marthatown." Nicknamed the "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees," it is an affluent city located next door to Research Triangle Park that claims to have the highest concentration of PhDs in the country. Clearly Stewart is being marketed to an upscale and educated clientele. Last year Cary was also chosen as the "Hottest City on the East Coast" by Money Magazine.
Seeing this, I first thought about the popularity of Anne of Green Gables in Japan, where builders offer a thoroughly Japanese version of the story's namesake house. Second, I thought about the utopian industrial communities of the 19th century. Marthatown: Prescription for better living, or escapist fantasy? Both?
Personally I wonder which Martha-inspired style will be the most popular:
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