architecture that blazed

"We are fed up with seeing Palladio and other historical masks, because we do not want to exclude everything in architecture that makes us uneasy.

We want architecture that has more to offer. Architecture that bleeds, exhausts, that turns and even breaks, as far as I am concerned.

Architecture that glows, that stabs, that tears and rips when stretched. Architecture must be precipitous, fiery, smooth, hard, angular, brutal, round, tender, colourful, obscene, randy, dreamy, en-nearing, distancing, wet, dry and heart-stopping. Dead or alive.

If it is cold, then cold as a block of ice. If it is hot, then as hot as a tongue of flame.

Architecture must burn."

--Coop Himmelblau, 1980.

In his essay, 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction', published in 1935/ 36, Walter Benjamin draws an analogy between film and architecture. He contends that both architecture and film are art that are viewed by the collectivity, through a mode of distraction. While watching a film, generally one does not contemplate the finer nuances of the various arts and techne that are employed in the production. Arts such as direction, editing and many times even acting is relegated to the background, as the narrative assumes a dominant role. Similarly, for Benjamin, as the flaneur moves about the city, consuming it, architecture is a backdrop against which life is played out. Even as one goes through one's daily life, and moves through Train stations, airports, public and private spaces, the architecture is consumed in an almost absent-minded, distracted mode. This, according to Benjamin, is in stark contrast to how one would view a painting, or a sculpture. Here, there is an active engagement with the work of art.

The famous 1980 manifesto of Coop Himmelblau can be seen as a reaction to this resignation of having to deal with architecture as an art often being consumed distractedly.

Architecture, more prominently since the '80's, has constantly tried to address this issue. Bernard Tschumi, during this same time, called for an architecture that was the equivalent of rock music, a spatial sensibility that tested the thin line between order and chaos, between noise and music.

There is a reason why rock music is not played in elevators and hotel lobbies - it cannot be consumed distractedly, it demands an active engagement. Similarly, an architecture that burns, that makes one un-easy, that makes one feel claustrophobic or even dizzy, refuses to be consumed absent mindedly, it seeks an active engagement.

Two buildings literally burned down in the recent past. Villa NM by Un studio and TVCC by OMA. Both were buildings that blazed, that defied being viewed distractedly. In their being burned down, they posed more difficult questions than they could by being built. They brought forth the notion of emphemerality of built space.

OMA's work, for instance, embraces emphemerality, as a necessary metropolitan condition. It conceives of buildings that are adaptive to change all around and also within, but even OMA coundnt have conceived of such a drastic overhaul to its CCTV/ TVCC scheme