Pick-Me-Up

" Go confidently in
the direction of
your dreams.


Live the life
you've imagined "



- Henry David Thoreau

via my sister
circa jan.08.08
Rediscovered oct.19.09
Thanks sis.



Illustration from The Red Tree
- Shaun Tan

We are the Post-Modern (Part 1: Building Blues)

At 9:30 last thursday night, after a ridiculously energy draining stint at university, I found myself walking through the Circular Quay area with my older sister after we'd filled our bellies with Macdonalds. The trudge began when i'd mentioned that a task at uni required me to engage in a few feasibility studies of heritage buildings, so, she showed me her office, a heritage site, and took me on a tour.

We walked down a few quiet streets after that, craving some 30c cones (which ironically cost 50c), and managed to encounter a number of glorious building facades. Large stone walls flanking imposing wrought iron gates through which you could just glimpse a chandelier which could have easily appeared in the 'Phantom of the Opera'. Buildings whose stories and nature were told expressively through detail and design.

Once you turned into the more major roads however, the beautiful textures and intricacy were replaced by plain, large, blocks. What essentially were plain rectangles. It left me with a sour feeling in my mouth (and in more need of that soft serve).

I'm not saying that I don't respect modernist architecture. Art Deco is a style of modernism and I find myself incredibly drawn to it. It seems to be the 'International Style' which unnerves me so. I do respect the concepts behind it as well as the beauty inherent in the lines of a skyscraper's steel skeleton and the gleaming glass that acts as its skin. But seeing so much of it and thinking of what had to be destroyed to allow it to exists is a little heart breaking.

My favorite lecturer told us last week that it is just recently that the past has again been truly embraced by designers, and in turn, the world as a whole. He had said that during his time training as an architect, he'd been told that there was no past. All that existed was the present and the future. History hindered progress. Our generation, he said, were raised and taught in the school Post-Modernism. Told to value the past, incorporate its stories into our own.

Is that what it comes down to then? This odd dislike for things that are too sleek and 'modern'...A matter and product of my education and culture? Had I been born 50 years ago would I be one of those people cheering as a wrecking ball smashes into the facade of a Queen Anne structure? Reveling in the destruction of what I would have deemed as 'old' and eagerly anticipating the construction of something shiny and streamlined which meant 'progress'?

Or perhaps it all simply boils down to personal taste. Perhaps a bit of both.

Whatever it is. It's got me thinking. Every time I'm on my bus moving along York street I stare, more so that before, at the various structures to try to pin point what i like and don't. More than that.. i try to figure out why. It's made me question how i see the city I live in. I've always loved the city and I still do. But looking at it more closely in this manner has made me a little bit colder towards it. I question why, besides it's two obvious landmarks, it draws so many people. It's understandable that tourists come to 'feel' cities more so than 'see' them, I admit I crave to 'feel' London and New York and Paris and Amsterdam...But what does Sydney 'feel' like? Anyway. That's a question for another time.

For now my mind's too consumed with heritage vs Meis van der Rohe.

x
Cha

Listening to: Such Great Heights by Iron and wine

Reading: Rebuilding the Reichstag by Norman Foster

Feeling: just a bit blah.