Cuckoo Jencks

I found this article very insightful. We have been asking the question what is postmodernism, yet never came to a clear understanding and this reading at least made the concept a little more clearly.

The idea of radical eclecticism “the mixing of different languages to engage different taste cultures and define different functions according to their appropriate mood” (283). Jencks shows how a building was created with a mixture of renaissance harmony and Modernist collage to create a heterogeneous characteristic. It was able to speak to a variety of people. This goes along with what talked about at the end of class and open text. It is up to the reader to pick out what is important to them and it matters how they interpret the reading not the author. This goes along with the building and Jencks ends the section talking about how because of the ambiguity it is up the reader to decide what the meaning is to them. While frustrating at times because there may be question left un-answered it allows the reader the freedom to choose their direction. Isn’t it up to how the reader responds to the text, than what the author intended? Authors usually create for the reader so there response is right for at least them.

Another rule that caught my attention because of the school I went to is the idea of multivalnce and how it reaches out to the rest of the environment really caught my attention. While this idea of an “organic unity” is rare, it is interesting to see how buildings have blended into their environments. The last couple of years in high school we were undergoing a huge renovations and one of the main concerns was that we were going to hurt the environment. One of their goals was to preserve as much as they can by finding other solutions. One of the concerns was that the school was going to have to destroy some trees because the parking lot needed to be expanded, after a year or so of going over solutions they found a middle ground. I have also gone on school trips where we went to look at buildings that had been “molded” to their environment. I was on a school trip in seventh grade and we went to this building that prided itself on the fact that they blended in so well with its surroundings. Through the use of color, and natural materials around the building they were able to construct so that it blended in so well that we drove by it without really noticing anything. A few years later I was on a tour through a building that had decided to move the building plan back in order to preserve the trees because they were so old. They also used materials that helped it blend in with the trees so that it was not just another obnoxious building. Now days we will destroy entire areas so that we can get what we desire.