Captain Planet 09/20/09

I loved looking at all the different pictures of architecture in class on Thursday. By looking at the different types of architecture on the overhead, the concepts that Jencks discussed in the reading were clarified. Even though Jencks was an easier reading to get through that Habermas, I was still a bit confused about some of the key terms that were discussed. By actually seeing types of buildings and talking about the meanings of the terms, I was able to understand exactly what Jencks was talking about. Prior to the Jencks reading we have been talking about postmodernism in terms of media. I never realized that postmodernism also applied to architecture. Architecture follows the trend, just like media. Styles are repeated throughout history; ex: classical becomes neo-classical. I hadn’t been to any of the buildings that we looked at in class, yet I knew of most of the buildings. I realized that many of the buildings we looked at were famous because of they’re architecture. The Louvre in Paris is an easily recognizable building, and yet I never looked at the architecture as something uniquely different. Once we placed the term “radical eclecticism” to the type of architecture that The Louvre represents, I was able to clearly understand the definition of the term. This goes for the rest of the terms as well. I also loved looking at the anamnesis buildings. As soon as the ‘birds nest’ was shown I immediately knew that it was the swimming pool building from the Olympics and knew that it was called the ‘birds nest.’ Like The Louvre, I never thought to assign a certain type of architecture to the building. Now that I understand how many different types of architecture there are, I have already begun to look critically at buildings when I look at magazines pictures, or watch a commercial, or drive down the highway.