Indigenous Modernities: The Tocapu and Other American Grids

The article Indigenous Modernities: The Tocapu and Other American Grids covers the multiple layers of grids that are present throughout many of the societies in the Americas.  First off, grids were defined in a variety of uses such as functional, religious, symbolic, or expression of power.  These were often displayed in architectural forms such as brickwork, plazas, temples, and artwork.

While defining it is important, what is more important is to understand who used them.  This is the primary goal of the reading where it demonstrated that grids included many indigenous peoples.  But it also included many of the colonial/settler colonial grids.  While both grids did on occasion have a similar goal of expression of power, that did not mean that they worked well together.  In fact, more often than not, the colonial/settler colonial grids were often to break or defeat many of the indigenous grids.  This very clearly fits with many of the historical accountings of colonialism as a means of power and extraction.   However, it’s important to note how this domination was carried out.  For example, Spanish colonialism was a key theme of the reading and was demonstrated as breaking many of the functionalities of indigenous environments, particularly Modern Cusco and Mexico City.   These ideas provide an interesting perspective and thoughtful analysis into how many of our environments in the Americas have become defined to express many of the harmful effects that we are seeing today.

I Mean to Be Critical, But…

The article I Mean to Be Critical, But… brings into the vernacular the message of Architecture as a means of becoming critical of economic, political, and social order.  This is accomplished through two different dimensions of criticism, formal construction of meaning and spatial meditation of everyday life.  Also, it is important that critical design or architecture be considered unsettling and exposes the formalities of common practice such as economic, political, or societal practices.   However, these ideas are not new ones, but rather they were initially pursued by critics and architects in the 1980’s where they developed the ideas into a paper.  Essentially this paper defined critical architecture as a mediation between the reduction of dominant values and formalism freedom.   Although this was just a concept and in practice it assumed that architecture could resist the autonomy of formality, or the dominate practices of design. Good examples of these issues were mainly in the products of deconstruction.

Radically Public Architecture

The article Radically Public Architecture covers the issues architectural representation during the rebuilding of communities in Japan after the 2011 earthquakes.  This included the issue of sea walls and other protective structures with the sole purpose of proving disaster protection without regard to the social and cultural needs of those within the proximity of these structures.  Moreover, the overengineering of these environments ignored the humanism that should have been given towards residents.  This was primarily being pushed back by residents and architectural groups like ArchiAid and Home for All.  These groups adopted a different approach, rather than use a one idea fits all approach, they employed the importance of socializing with logical placement of housing to allow people to commune.   Along with housing, there was the rethinking of empty spaces meant for shelters and remnants of previous towns.  Essentially instead of allowing these spaces to feal cold and for emergencies only, they decided to remake them into living rooms or communal spaces with more practicalities for daily life.   In all these ideas help provide us with a clear picture for what might be asked a pawn us for redesigning spaces that are earthquake prone zones.

Critical Response

An area that I would like to question is the reading I Mean to Be critical, But…  I am primarily concerned with the idea that critical architecture needs to be unsettling or disorient its users to change the comfort zones of those who see it.  As someone who isn’t exactly a conformist, I agree with the general idea of breaking conformity, but I struggle to see how this would be practiced or even be realized into something that can go beyond monuments or individual structures.  For example, I don’t think many individuals would consent to having their home built in a way that disorients or unsettles them and their neighbors or passersby.  Moreover, it would become a social issue where they would likely be thought of differently if they did want to have a stark, uncompromising house that defies convention.  Take the examples that we discussed in class regarding early interior modernism as being cold, and unwelcoming. Also, I can think of an example in my own neighborhood where a house was placed on an unused lot and has faced numerous homeowners in the short years of its construction.  While shoddy craftsmanship did play a contributing factor to its high turnover, I would still argue that the primary turnoff of this house was the fact that the team ignored all conformity to local customs.  While this certainly isn’t the only example that I see and think of, it’s important to see this as a sign of a microcosm of issues.   The most significant of these issues is longevity, that is, how long will people be comfortable seeing something that disorients them or unsettles them.  In general, I like the idea of trying to break conformity, however it appears to me that we need to at least define how far we are willing to go in design and understand the potential ramifications if we do push for something too unconventional.

Application and Interpretation

For this week’s application and interpretation, I will be reusing the same building from last week, The Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro.  To recap, this building had numerous weigh ins from Le Corbusier to professional and academic designers, and various political figures who wanted to show a new image of Brazil to the world.  Taking the first two readings into account, I can definitely see the Ministry of Education and Health in a different light.  For one, unlike the various engineered projects that were mentioned in the first reading, this building was extremely cautious on how it was designed and who had input on it.   For example, there were 33 submissions to design of this building by various designers, professors, and professionals.  All but 3 were rejected because of strict rules and guidelines regarding site contextual use.  Also applying the second reading, there is multiple uses of both design grids and political grids or gridlocks.  Architecturally speaking the grids of the building are represented in symmetry in the windows, plaza, tilework, and placement of the columns.   Politically speaking, this structure was seen at the time as a means to modernize or break away from Brazil’s colonial designed past, although one could argue that this structure still had a lot of colonial elements to it.   In all this provides an interesting narrative that isn’t viewed from initial research and review.

Take aways

• What grids are present in our architectural elements and culture?
• How can we provide everyday functions to the creation of protective design?