Graham, Jencks

A point that I found very interesting was the idea of urban urbanism Jencks says that you have to have “the ‘proper balance’ between essential elements: public to private, working to living, monument to infill, short blocks to city grid, foreground square to background housing.”
I believe that what he is trying to say is that the postmodern ideas have become so intricate and specific, instead of just serving a purpose as it did many years ago. A building used to be a building…a building did not need to be a garden, arcade, train station…etc. Now, architects are making their work so intricate, and that is the only way that we find their work acceptable, because of our postmodern ideas. In the past 5 years we have transformed from the Nokia “brick phones” to the Apple Iphones. Technology is really getting out of control as time passes, it makes me wonder what things will be like in years to come. I do not believe that Jencks agrees with these postmodern ideas, and he does not think that we should focus on them.
I think that architects and manufacturers are focusing too much on creating things that will be seen as “futuristic.” I do not know why it has to be this way, because it is not really necessary for one thing to serve so many purposes. Sometimes, as he mentions, it gets difficult, because it is so easy to forget what the purpose of the thing is, because it has so many other uses. I think that they should focus on making the best products or architecture, that will last a long time and serve the purpose effectively, instead of just trying to make it appear like the latest technology. We get too caught up in the future, and lose track of the time that we are currently living in.
I might have been really off track…but I tried.