Genius Loci / From the Avant-garde to the Aesthetics — from the Revolution to the Poetics (original) (raw)

Preaching to the Perverted (Spaces); Perversion in Architecture - as an Art of Spatial Design

International Journal of Civil & Environmental Engineering IJCEE-IJENS, 2013

Considering architecture as a spatial art, the paper examines the nature of ongoing change in the design of architectural spaces, in accordance with the profound conversion in the nature of social existence on Earth. The study aims to tackle the issue mainly from a morphological standpoint with cross-references to sociological dimension of space. Recently, some started to believe that virtues of modernity were not capable of coping with the emerging diversity and complexity brought by new bodies, who were gradually introduced into the urban scene through democratisation. Therefore, the de(con)struction of the canons of the modernism was the only solution in order to achieve a new phase in the material evolution of humankind. Spatial reflection of such an ongoing social transformation, that is to say, a major shift from „an ideal society centrally controlled by corporate groups‟ to a much more pragmatic one with „flexibility of control systems‟ is of prime concern in this study. In other words, a paradigm shift from „rational and sensible‟ state to a „chaotic, yet, perverse‟ state of human condition, in the name of freedom, is central to the discussion of the evolution of space design. In brief, newly emerging social and corresponding spatial phenomena seem to have took over, our cultural landscape via guerrilla war tactics, and was supported by scholars, who advocated the „death of architecture‟ for the sake of proliferation of low culture. Albeit, an initiative with good intentions of integrating all parties of the community, turned out to be working against the sense of community. Hence, the very same issues of social concerns seem to have shifted from socialist rhetoric towards the hands of a more capitalist rhetoric. Therefore, the new power and her weapons should be disguised in a seducing new skin... Fluid architecture of late 90‟s was the ideal new mediatic solution... In result, values characterised by grace, coherence, consensus, durability, order, have been replaced by pride, unquestioned wealth, corruption, falsification, distortion, humour, irony, nihilism, and „in-your-face-attitude‟ of the new generation of Murat Cetin is with the Kadir Has University, Dept. of Int. Architecture, Central Campus, Cibali, 34083, Istanbul, Turkey (phone: +90-533-344-9003; fax: +90-212-533-5853; e-mail: murat.cetin0001@gmail.com). citizens. Masochistic experience of contemporary urban life, grotesque images of environment, the parasitic and violent character of architecture, yet seductive outlook of their figures have fascinated the minds of the new (yet perverted) urban population. Hence, a fluid, vague, indeterminate archi-tectonic language was becoming politically correct decor for a rapidly eroding society. In fact, this new architecture should be evaluated within the web of concepts like otherness, utopia, fantasy, media, Post-Modern popular culture, consumption, marketability, pluralism, as well as the shift in the conception of “reality and simulation”. In this study, it is argued whether architects, as spatial artists, should shift their focus from the timeless qualities, tectonic virtues and ethical principles of modernism towards transient, ephemeral imagery of this fashionable formalism, simply because, capital is shifting hand from the former-elite towards neo-elite (formerly accepted as underground, grunge, illegal, disapproved, etc.). The decision obviously constitutes a fine line between architecture and prostitution in an age of social hysteria, schizophrenia, fetish, frenzy, disintegration, fragmentation, and thus, perversion. The argument is primarily based on the question of whether new vocabulary of fantastic images is an avant-garde formal jamborine, recurrent trend or fashion-like movement, or alternatively a major breakthrough in the sociological, epistemological, hence architectural frameworks.