Bumble: Charles Jencks

"A Sleazy office floor..." WOW, who ever thought that they would be able to describe a room, a part of a room with the word SLEAZY. This article was fascinating because it is often so overlooked the building structures around us, the space that we conduct our lives. Restaurants, offices, schools, all of these reflect the postmodern world around us. The contrasts in buildings from the symmetrical and classical, to the asymmetrical and "fragmented unity," is extraordinary! Immediately after reading this, I started noticing the contrast between the, "Renaissance harmony and Modernist integration and the "disharmonious harmony" of postmodernism.

But the description words of the architecture was what was the most fascinating for me. Starting with calling a floor sleazy, this essentially gives a non human a human adjective, a description relating to a behavioral pattern of risque and well, "sleazy." Often I find that postmodern words can only be described using other forms of the same word. An example in this article is of the, "Urbane urbanism." The buildings are urban, but like many other things in postmodernism, the word is familiar because of contexts and past experiences and knowledge.

Eclectic, the whole idea of this new trend in style is about the mixing of genres, mixing of styles. This could stem in a macro level to the increase of globalization in the world. But along with buildings having a dab of this and a pinch of that, I notice this mixing with just about EVERYTHING! Food for example, the most famous restaurants in New York City right now are the Asian fusion. My favorite is a sushi bar and Mexican grill. There are no definitive lines anymore, it is all one big jumble of thoughts and foods and people.

The idea Jencks talks about of using anthropomorphism in buildings reminded me of all of the crazy theme restaurants. You have structures that look like characters, things in our world today, or a place in the world. One of the greatest examples of this is a theme restaurant called Mars 2112. This is a huge space designed to look like a spaceship, there is a simulator ride that you have to step into to get to your seats. You are then transported into a galaxy and served by "aliens." Imagine you were transported from the past and saw this restaurant, what would they think about the reenactment of the alien waiters? Theme restaurants are endless, Jeckle and Hyde, Batman, Caves, Castles, Renaissance festivals. The architecture is remarkable and are truly used to step outside of traditional architecture from a long time ago.