{4}

TYPAL
CRITICISM
M

HOW WILL WE DESIGN THE OFFICES OF THE FUTURE?

In keeping with present office trends, the Lumosity offices in San

Francisco prizes lounge-like work environments, both informal and easy
to personalize. Image Courtesy of Matthew Millman/Lumosity
For many years, the world of office design
remained relatively stagnant, with a light,
open plan office floor and a generously-sized
cubicle about as much as most employees
could hope for. But recently all this has
changed: the world of the technophilic, fun
loving Generation Y has taken over, and
with it come offices that mix the best
elements of the traditional office with design
culled from living rooms, coffee shops and
childrens playspaces. This will
remain the future of office design for some
time or will it? According to Dr Michael
ONeill, senior research strategist
at Haworth, the Gen-Y offices days are
already numbered, as he explains in this
article originally published by Metropolis
Magazine. Read on after the break to find out
why.

2014: A typical WeWork office space. ONeill predicts

1984: A prescient historic essay, written by Susan S.
that such ambiguous offices are likely to confuse the
Szenasy and Christopher Wilk, predicted the coming
next generation entering the workforce by decades
age of the electronic office. Image Courtesy of
end. Image Courtesy of WeWork
Metropolis Archives

But in about five or six years, I predict well

In the past five years or so, weve seen the
see the need to shift that model to one that
traditional officethe Dilbert world of fixed
emphasizes legibility of space. By that I
cubicles, all lined up in numbing monotony
mean spaces where the layouts are easy to
begin to disappear. We have left the Baby
understand, easy to navigate, and where the
Boomer era of office design behind and are
spaces intended uses are clear and obvious.
well on our way into the work world of
Why this shift? Changing demographics.
Generation Y. Part of this change is due to
These current ambiguous spaces are very
how rapidly technology has untethered us
much inspired by Generation Y. But theres
from traditional office space. But change has
another generation behind themGeneration
also been driven by the preferred work style of
Z, the kids of Gen X-erswho will be coming
Generation Y, which is much more
into the office workforce at the end of the
collaborative and motivated by the need for
decade. Now in high school and middle
social connection. At the office, they demand
school, these kids have two defining
choiceover the location of their work and
characteristics: they highly value order and
the options of spaces to use.
predictability (their Gen X parents were
In response, companies are adding an latchkey kids in the seventies, determined to
increasing variety of individual and counteract the chaos in their own childhoods
interactive venues for work, ranging from by raising intact families and kids who value
rooftop gardens, intimate lounge areas, and clarity and certainty), and they are almost
cafs to game rooms and meditation centers. congenitally distracted. They are heroic
This generation deliberately blurs traditional multitaskers, glued to their smartphones and
spheres of life and work (home/office, work/ tabletsand guess what? Theyre terrible at it.
play, private/public), which has led to a
So picture them on their first day of work,
design philosophy that celebrates surprise
walking into the Generation Y office
and complexityand ambiguity in the
environment, seeking structure, consistency,
intention for how work spaces should be used.
and orderand refuge from distractionand
instead encountering complexity, ambiguity, and chaos. Theyre going to want to run away and
hide: Can I sit here? What is this space for? And the visual confusion and overwhelming choices
will simply add to their distraction and make it harder to get their work done.

At the same time, a significant number of Baby Boomers will be at work; many will still be years
away from retirement age. And the older of these aging in place workers will have struggles of
their own, based on physical challenges like declining vision, hearing, and mobility. Today, they
complain because the workplace is shifting away from their familiar comfort zone, but in five or
ten years time they may have real complaints. They wont see, hear, or perceive as acutely, and
the ambiguous and complex Generation Y work space around them will aggravate the problem.
So this idea of legible space will take on critical importance for many office workersyoung and
old. It should be thought of as a universal design principle for the four-generation office of the
future.

Cite:Michael O'Neill. "How Will We Design The Offices of the Future?" 06 Sep
2014. ArchDaily. Accessed 22 Sep 2014. <http://www.archdaily.com/?p=545412>

SUMMARY
Typal Criticism merupakan sebuah kritik dengan metode membandingkan 1 buah atau lebih obyek
dengan obyek ukuran standar. Pada artikel di atas, obyek yang dibandingkan adalah sebuah kantor era
modern (generation Y) dan kantor pada umumnya.

Aspek yang dibandingkan dalam artikel ini meliputi function dan form, di mana si kritikus
menjejalkan sebuah sugesti kepada pembacanya bahwa sebuah kantor pada umumnya sangat
membosankan dan relative stagnan dengan desain cubicle-nya. Berbeda dengan kantor Generasi Y yang
sangat dinamis dalam hal bentuk dan menaungi fungsinya.
 {1}
DOCTRINAL
CRITICISM

BRUTALISM'S BULLIES

In late April, the city of Baltimore issued a certificate of demolition for the Morris A. Mechanic
Theater, prevailing in a lengthy quest to destroy one of its most unique buildings. With a
character somewhere between a stone-age helmet and a concrete cog, the nearly fifty-year-old
buildings assertive structure has earned the affection of a small number of enthusiasts who
embrace its almost oppressively functional style of architectureand almost no one else. The
theater, designed by therevered and often imperiled architect John Johansen, will be replaced
by a condo.

The story of the Mechanic has become overly
familiar. Brutalism, a muscular and
monumental architectural style known for its
unsparing use of cast concrete, has grown old
enough since its heyday in the fifties, sixties,
and seventies to have aged badly, but not old
enough to inspire much sympathy. The
austere, domineering artifacts of its
philosophies now face widespread enmity; a
number of institutions, with varying degrees
of exertion, have sought in recent years to
replace their Brutalist inheritances with
practically anything else.
Of the five at-risk Brutalist buildings I wrote
about being under threat two years ago, three
of them are now gone, or about to be
demolished. Its been a bad year for Johansen
in particular: In addition to the Morris A.
Mechanic Theater, the delightful Mummers
Theater in Oklahoma City faces imminent
destruction, as soon as the proper certificate
emerges from the citys administrative
process. The destruction of Bertrand
Goldbergs Prentice Womens Hospital in
Chicago began last fall, after such helpful
developments as a Rahm Emanual Chicago
Tribune op-ed hailing its replacement as
progress. The Third Church of Christ
Scientist, a Brutalist church in Washington,
D.C., was demolished in March. Five of the
buildings in Paul Rudolphs Shoreline
Apartments in Buffalo, New York, are due to
be razed.
As John Grindrod wrote in the introduction
to Concretopia: A Journey Around the
Rebuilding of Postwar Britain:
There is an accepted narrative to the way we
think about our postwar architectural legacy.
That narrative is somewhat akin to the plot of
a superhero blockbuster: a team of
supervillainsplanners, architects,
academicshave had their corrupt,
megalomaniac way with the country for 30
years. Then, at long last, a band of unlikely
heroesa ragbag of poets, environmentalists,
and good, honest citizensrise up against this
architectural Goliath and topple it in the
name of Prince Charles."
This is, unfortunately, exactly how large
numbers of critics conceive of Brutalism
today. Those who wish to preserve examples
of the the style arent simply fighting against
indifference, theyre combating avowed foes
antagonists who would gladly take a turn at
the wrecking ballwho view sympathy for the
style as willful contrarianism of the Bach or
Before, Ives or After variety, not just
divorced from reasonable taste but
purposefully set at odds with it. They sense
that battle lines have remained neatly drawn
between (lower-case) modernists and
traditionalists, and that modernists are now
making a convenient pivot to save their
austere wonderlandseveryone becomes a
fan of precedent once theres a Supreme Court
decision that they like. As Rod Dreher wrote
in at The American Conservative: It is ironic
that Modernists, who based their entire
movement on liberation from tradition, are in
the position of making traditionalist(ish)
arguments for saving their hideous buildings
from the wrecking ball.
The task of Brutalism preservation, like many
others, has been to safeguard a dying species
of architecture that isnt coming around again.
A Next American City piece speculated
hopefully that Prentice Hospital Could
Become Modernisms Penn Station Moment.
It hasnt. Curiously though, as Brutalism
perishes in the real world, its been flourishing
in the publishing sphere. Paul Rudolph, a
fascinating architect whose work has suffered
from a broad spate of demolition, is receiving
a handsome tribute in a forthcoming Yale
University Press Volume, Timothy
Rohans The Architecture of Paul
Rudolph, while Chris Mottalinis After You
Left/They Took it Apart offered a tribute to
Rudolphs lost homes (a traveling exhibit on
one of Rudolphs lost Florida houses is also
afoot). The heroic print-only architecture
magazine Clog released a 2013 issue on
Brutalism; Grindrods Concretopia and Owen
HatherleysMilitant Modernism and A New
Guide to the Ruins of Great Britainhave
issued forthright defenses of the lasting value
and design quality of much Brutalist
construction in the UK. Such developments,
and the valiant work of local and national
preservationists, seem to have secured a few
successes: the landmarking of M. Paul
Friedbergs 1975 Peavey Plaza in
Minneapolis and Marcel Breuer and Roebrt
Gatje's Broward County Main Library in Fort
Lauderdale, as well as the salvation of Paul
Rudolphs Orange County Government
Center. Now the focus of a renovation plan,
the Orange County center is the subject of an
unrelated and bizarre, if intriguing,
proposal from prolific New York hotel
designer Gene Kaufman to purchase it for
some unspecified private use.
As deep as the Brutalism bad vibes runin
a 2012 New York Times Room for Debate
piece on brutalism, Anthony Daniels
screeched, Atrocities Should be
Eliminatedprofit, not bile, is generally the
strongest threat to its longevity. Most
developers formula for determining whether
a building is dispensable or not is grounded in
whether they own it and can build something
larger on the site. This is a threat to any
architecture, of course, but especially so to
varieties that the larger public doesnt
instinctively value. If the Real Estate Board of
New York could argue with a straight face that
not a single structure in Manhattans
Midtown Eastmostly composed of venerable
pre-war structuresmerited landmarking,
then what chance is there for Brutalism in
Baltimore?
Fortunately, at times sheer presence has
proven a valuable boon for some Brutalist
structures. In the case of government and
institutional structures, where physical
demands for replacement structures typically
arent radically different, demolition and new
construction would routinely prove more
expensive than renovation. This was the case
with the Orange County Government Center,
where the county government was skeptical
that wholesale demolition and replacement
would actually prove any cheaper than
renovation. I wrote recently here about the
immense size of American sporting facilities
offering little guarantee of their survival;
happily theres no luxury-seating-level
incentive to level Kallman and McKinnell's
immense Boston City Hall or Rudolphs
University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
The most substantial misfortune for Brutalist
structures, though, is that theyre so
frequently associated with urban decay. The
United States doesnt have nearly as
substantial a residential stock of Brutalist
buildings as in Europe, but what it does
haveplenty of government, educational, and
institutional structuresalmost universally
suffer from a lack of maintenance. The
imagery of rundown Brutalist structureslike
The Mechanic Theater and Mummers, each
abandoned for a decadeis even worse in
Europe, where theyre often identified with
vast legacies of lower-income residential
construction from the council estate to the
banlieue to whatever dystopia youd like to
find.
Its worth remembering that the breadth of
midcentury modern design didnt always
enjoy its present relative vogue. Some
pinnacles never agedMies Van Der Rohe
and the Eames chairbut much modernism
wasnt given a second thought. As tiresome as
it might be to cite Mad Men, and as inchoate
as its influence on popular culture might be,
its proven a useful means to see production
design explicitly influenced by Skidmore
Owings and Merrills nineteen sixties work
presented as crisp and newnot as a
patchwork renovation torn asunder by new
ductwork or electric cables. Google Mad
Men and architecture and youll see a wealth
of items pointing to the broader second tier of
modernism: Gordon Bunshaft and Wallace
Harrison, Emery Roth and Sons, Charles
Luckman, William Pereira, and others. Its
doubtful that were going to see a hit Brutalist
TV series, but simple examples of Brutalist
structures brought tastefully to the 21st
The humanizing touches in Brutalist
century could prove a similar aid.
structuresand in fairness many lacked
themhave often been forgotten or removed.
None of this is to deny that there are often
Timothy Rohans Paul Rudolph volume
real problems with many Brutalist structures.
outlines a number of fanciful touches in
Their upkeep can prove considerably
Rudolphs U. Mass Dartmouth volumes:
expensive due to design issues; the Orange
County Government Center, for instance, has
Carefully chosen, brightly colored textiles and
eighty-seven distinct roofs, while the Third
carpeting acted as vibrant, stimulating foils to
Church of Christ Scientist required the costly
the omnipresent, gray concrete [t]hey chose
deployment of considerable scaffolding to
to upholster the common room banquettes in
change a ceiling lightbulb. In many cases,
orange and carpet the floor with a pattern of
Brutalist structures had downright terrible
orange, red, and purple stripes. The banded
notions of how to arrange space and strangled
carpet echoed the raised ridges of the concrete
urban life like a vintage seventies street
block and the striations on the poured-in-
villain. The main entrance of the Mechanic
place structural beams and balconies.
Theater, for instance, faced a mid-block plaza
while largely ignoring Baltimores adjacent A similar spirit guided recent renovations of
main thoroughfare. In some cases, buildings the library, infusing light, color, and openness
are arranged in ways that directly frustrate to the space. Glass additions, which alter the
any meaningful efforts to build an engaging original design, show how considerable
pedestrian sphere. Thats a pretty variation and revival of existing Brutalist
understandable reason for replacing them, architecture is possible. Robert A. M. Stern
though in some situations its not actually the charted a similar renovation of Rudolphs Art
case. Boston City Halls Plaza, for example, is and Architecture building at Yale. Another
not an insuperable condition of the buildings Brutalist theater, the Alley in Houston, is
existence. Its totalitarian horror hasnt undergoing a substantial renovation, which
crushed life in adjacent dense streets directly will alter much of its interior, while leaving
to the south. Rather, its the immense plaza the exterior intact. At a Clog panel on
that sucks the life out of the area; if you can fit Brutalism last year, John Johansens son
Cirque du Soleil into your square with plenty noted that his fathers response to threats to
of room to spare (as Bostons been doing the Mechanic Theater had been to mull over
lately), its too big. how it might be altered to accommodate
contemporary criticisms (regrettably, its unclear what solutions Johansen might have
envisioned; he died in 2012). Similar revivals have become common in the UK, which, while it
boasts arguably many more decrepit examples of the form, also has more viable peaks. The
Barbican Estate and its contents have undergone some very sharp renovations; the complex
remains desirable. Erno Goldfingers Balfron Tower is undergoing a renovation which seems
entirely likely to prove successful. Even larger complexes can prove open to transformation:
The huge Park Hill Estate, a sort of Jacobs Ladder spread above Sheffield, has sprouted
multicolored panels and scrubbed decades of neglect.

A Penn Station moment would be a great boon to Brutalism, but it remains abidingly unclear
that theres any martyr whose passing the world would notice, let alone mourn in large numbers.
In the absence of such a moment, the greatest need for Brutalism is likely not buildings that die
spectacularly but that simply live effectively.

Anthony Paletta is a writer living in Brooklyn. He has written for The Wall Street
Journal, Metropolis, The Daily Beast,Bookforum, and The Millions on urban policy, historic
preservation, cinema, literature, and board wargaming.

Photos by Adam Gerard, Kelvin Dickinson, Joseph, jessamyn west, respectively

Correction: This piece originally ascribed Boston City Hall to John Johansen; it was designed
by Gerhard Kallmann and Michael McKinnell.

http://www.theawl.com/2014/06/brutalisms-bullies

SUMMARY
Artikel di atas menggunakan sebuah guideline tunggal di mana si penulis mengkritik Arsitektur
gaya Brutalism di era modern. Si penulis, Anthony Paletta, menanamkan doktrin pada pembaca bahwa
Brutalism merupakan gaya yang tidak mengundang simpati. Doktrin tersebut diperkuat dengan fakta-fakta
yang terjadi di lapangan, seperti banyaknya penggusuran dan penghancuran bangunan bergaya brutalism
tersebut. Memang, menurut Paletta, aliran jenis brutal tidak efisien jika kita menilik pada strukturnya.
Bahkan, menurut kebanyakan orang, bangunan yang menganut gaya ini cenderung terlihat sebagai
monster.

Pada akhirnya, Paletta cukup sukses meyakinkan pembacanya bahwa brutalism memang kurang
kontekstual dan efisien.
 {2}
SYSTEMATIC
CRITICISM
{3}
MEASURED
CRITICISM

WHY GREEN ARCHITECTURE HARDLY EVER DESERVES

THE NAME

Something surprising has happened with many so-called sustainable

buildings. When actually measured in post-occupancy assessments,
theyve proven far less sustainable than their proponents have claimed. In
some cases theyve actually performed worse than much older buildings,
with no such claims. A 2009 New York Times article, Some buildings not
living up to green label, documented the extensive problems with many
sustainability icons. Among other reasons for this failing, the Times
pointed to the widespread use of expansive curtain-wall glass assemblies
and large, deep-plan designs that put most usable space far from
exterior walls, forcing greater reliance on artificial light and ventilation
systems.
Partly in response to the bad press, the City of
New York instituted a new law requiring
disclosure of actual performance for many
buildings. That led to reports of even more
poor-performing sustainability icons. Another
Times article, Citys Law Tracking Energy
Use Yields Some Surprises, noted that the
gleaming new 7 World Trade Center, LEED
Gold-certified, scored just 74 on the Energy
Star rating one point below the minimum
75 for high-efficiency buildings under the
national rating system. That modest rating
doesnt even factor in the significant
embodied energy in the new materials of 7
World Trade Center.
Whats going on with these supposedly
sustainable buildings? Read on, after the
break
Image from the ArchDaily Infographic on LEED.
Things got even worse in 2010 with a lawsuit
[$100 Million Class Action Filed Against
LEED and USGBC] against the US Green
Building Council, developers of the LEED
certification system (Leadership in Energy
and Environmental Design). The plaintiffs in
the lawsuit alleged that the USGBC engaged
in deceptive trade practices, false advertising
and anti-trust by promoting the LEED
system, and argued that because the LEED
system does not live up to predicted and
advertised energy savings, the USGBC
actually defrauded municipalities and private
entities. The suit was ultimately dismissed,
but in its wake the website Treehugger and
others predicted, based on the evidence
uncovered, that there will be more of this
kind of litigation.
Whats going on? How can the desire to
increase sustainability actually result in its
opposite?
One problem with many sustainability
approaches is that they dont question the
underlying building type. Instead they only
add new greener components, such as more
efficient mechanical systems and better wall
insulation. But this bolt-on conception of
sustainability, even when partially successful,
has the drawback of leaving underlying forms,
and the structural system that generates
them, intact. The result is too often the
familiar law of unintended consequences.
Whats gained in one area is lost elsewhere as
the result of other unanticipated interactions.
For example, adding more efficient active
energy systems tends to reduce the amount of
energy used, and therefore lowers its overall
cost. But, in turn, that lower cost tends to
make tenants less careful with their energy
use a phenomenon known as Jevons
Paradox. Increasing efficiency lowers cost,
and increases demand in turn increasing
the rate of consumption, and wiping out the
initial savings. The lesson is that we cant deal
with energy consumption in isolation. We
have to look at the concept of energy more
broadly, including embodied energy and other
factors.
There are often other unintended
consequences. A notable case is Londons
sustainability-hyped Gherkin (Foster &
Partners, 2003), where the buildings open-
floor ventilation system was compromised
when security-conscious tenants created glass
separations. Operable windows whose
required specifications had been lowered
because of the natural ventilation feature
actually began to fall from the building, and
had to be permanently closed. The ambitious
goal of a more sophisticated natural
ventilation system paradoxically resulted in
even worse ventilation.
The Swiss Re Building by Foster + Partners, also
known as The Gherkin. Image Courtesy of Wikimedia
Commons Aurelien Guichard
No building is an island
Another major problem with green building
programs happens when they treat buildings
in isolation from their urban contexts. In one
infamous example (Driving to Green
Buildings), the Chesapeake Bay Foundation
moved its headquarters to the worlds first
certified LEED-Platinum building but the
move took them from an older building in the
city of Annapolis, Maryland to a new building
in the suburbs, requiring new embodied
energy and resources. The added employee
travel alone whats known as
transportation energy intensity more
than erased the energy gains of the new
building.
The theory of resilience discussed in our
article, Toward Resilient Architectures 1:
Biology Lessons, points to the nature of the
problem. Systems may appear to be well
engineered within their original defined
parameters but they will inevitably interact
with many other systems, often in an
unpredictable and non-linear way. We look
towards a more robust design methodology,
combining redundant (network) and diverse
approaches, working across many scales, and
ensuring fine-grained adaptivity of design
elements.
Though these criteria may sound abstract,
theyre exactly the sorts of characteristics
achieved with so-called passive design
approaches. Passive buildings allow the users
to adjust and adapt to climactic conditions
say, by opening or closing windows or blinds,
and getting natural light and air. These
designs can be far more accurate in adjusting
to circumstances at a much finer grain of
structure. They feature diverse systems that
do more than one thing like the walls that
hold up the building and also accumulate heat
through thermal mass. They have networks of
spaces that can be reconfigured easily, even
converted to entirely new uses, with relatively
inexpensive modifications (unlike the open-
plan typology, which has never delivered on
expectations). They are all-around, multi-
purpose buildings that arent narrowly
designed to one fashionable look or
specialized user. And perhaps most crucially,
they dont stand apart from context and urban
fabric, but work together with other scales of
the city, to achieve benefits at both larger and
smaller scales.
(Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1952), scored
20. The worst performer of all was Ludwig
Mies Van der Rohes iconic Seagram building,
built in 1958. Its score was an astonishingly
low 3. Whats the problem with these
buildings?

Older buildings perform better

sometimes

Many older buildings took exactly this

passive approach, simply because they had
to. In an era when energy was expensive (or
simply not available) and transportation was
difficult, buildings were naturally more
clustered together in urban centers. Their
shape and orientation exploited natural
daylight, and typically featured smaller, well-
positioned windows and load-bearing walls
with higher thermal mass.

The simple, robust shapes of these buildings

allowed almost endless configurations. In fact
many of the most in-demand urban buildings
today are actually adaptive reuse projects of
much older buildings. The results of this
passive approach are reflected in good energy
performance. While New Yorks 7 World
Trade Center actually scored below the citys
minimum rating of 75 out of 100, older
buildings in the city that had been retrofitted
with the same efficient heating, cooling, and
lighting technologies fared much better: the
Empire State Building scored a rating of 80,
the Chrysler Building scored 84.
But just being old is clearly not a criterion of
success. The 1963 MetLife/PanAm building
(Walter Gropius & Pietro Belluschi), now a
half-century old, scored a dismal 39. Another
mid-century icon, the Lever House
Seagram Building / Mies van der Rohe
As the earlier New York Times article noted,
they have extensive curtain-wall assemblies,
large window areas, large-scale deep-plan
forms, and other limitations. On a
fundamental level, as we can now begin to see
from resilience theory, they lack many crucial
resilient advantages of older building types.
There may be something inherent in the
building type itself that is non-resilient. The
form language itself could be an innate
problem something that, according to
systems thinking, no mere bolt-on green
additions can fix.
Oil-interval architecture
Architectural critic Peter Buchanan, writing
recently in the UK magazine, The
Architectural Review, placed the blame for
these failures squarely at the feet of the
Modernist design model itself, and called for a
big rethink about many of its unquestioned
assumptions [The Big Rethink: Farewell To
Modernism And Modernity Too].
Modernism is inherently unsustainable, he
argued, because it evolved in the beginning of
the era of abundant and cheap fossil fuels.
This cheap energy powered the weekend
commute to the early Modernist villas, and
kept their large open spaces warm, in spite of
large expanses of glass and thin wall sections.
Petrochemicals created their complex sealants
and fueled the production of their exotic
extrusions. Modern architecture is thus an
energy-profligate, petrochemical architecture,
only possible when fossil fuels are abundant
and affordable, he said. Like the sprawling
cities it spawned, it belongs to that waning era
historians are already calling the oil
interval.
Buchanan is not alone in calling for a big
rethink about the assumptions of Modernist
design. It is fashionable among many
architects today to attack Modernism, and
argue instead for various kinds of avant-garde
and Post-Modernist styles. Buchanan lumps
these styles together under a category he calls
Deconstructionist Post-Modernism. But he
insists that the Deconstructionists have not
actually transcended the Modernist paradigm
they attack: they still operate almost entirely
within the industrial assumptions and
engineering methodologies of the oil
interval.
Once again, resilience theory provides insight
into the serious flaws carried by this family of
related form languages and indeed, flaws in
their very conception of design. (Those will
need to be examined in great detail.)
Ironically, this modern model is now almost
a century old, belonging to an era of
engineered resilience that is, resilience
within only one designed system, but unable
to cope with the unintended consequences of
interactions with other systems (like urban
transportation, say, or true ecological
systems).
Because the Modernist form language and its
successors are tied to the old linear
engineering paradigm, they cannot in practice
combine redundant (network) and diverse
approaches, nor work across many scales, nor
ensure a fine-grained adaptivity for design
elements though they can certainly create
the symbolic appearance of doing so. Contrary
to such dubious claims (in what sometimes
takes on aspects of a massive marketing
effort), they cannot actually achieve what C.
H. Holling called ecological resilience. This
seems to suggest an important explanation of
the alarmingly poor performance of these
buildings and places, when actually evaluated
in post-occupancy research.
Seen in this light, the various avant-garde
attempts to transcend Modernism appear
more as exotic new wrappings for the same
underlying (and non-resilient) structural
types and industrial methods. But as Albert
Einstein famously pointed out: A new type of
thinking is essential if mankind is to survive
and move toward higher levels. Just as it is
not possible to achieve resilience by merely
adding new devices like solar collectors to
these old industrial-Modernist building types,
it is not possible to get meaningful benefits
with dazzling new designer permutations and
tokenistic ecological thinking within the same
essentially industrial design process. We do
need a big rethink about the most basic
methods and systems of design for the future.

Before its cancellation, the Anara Tower was
planned to be one of Dubais tallest buildings,
and an icon of sustainability despite its
west-facing glazing, high embodied energy in
materials, and, remarkably, a giant non-
functional (i.e. decorative) wind turbine. The
building offered the consumer packaging of
an image of sustainability at the apparent
expense of real sustainability. Image courtesy
of Atkins Design Studio.
A wave of neo-modernism
Yet if anything, in recent years there has been
a remarkable resurgence of an even more
unapologetic form of Modernism. In light of
the evidence, this is a decidedly reactionary
trend: we seem to be witnessing a back to
roots movement one that, like other such
movements, is based more on doctrinal belief
than on evidence. This fashionable Neo-
Modernism ranges from outright retro boxy
white buildings, interiors, and furnishings, to
swoopy futuristic-looking buildings and
landscapes. Stylistically, the shapes are eye-
catching and often edgy, and some people
(especially many architects) clearly like them.
Not everyone seems to care for this new/old
aesthetic, however. Some see the new
structures as sterile, ugly, and disruptive to
their neighborhoods and cities. Defenders of
the designs often attack these critics for being
presumably unsophisticated, nostalgic, or
unwilling to accept the inevitable progress of a
dynamic culture. This battle of stylistic
preferences rages on, with the Neo-
Modernists claiming the avant-garde high
ground, where they tend to dominate the
media, critics, and schools.
Of course, fashions come and go, and
architecture is no different: in a sense this is
just another phase in the more or less
continuous waxing and waning of
architectural Modernism for almost a century
now, along with raging debates about its
aesthetic merits. Those debates have never
really died down. Critics like Buchanan are
not new: in the 1960s and 1970s equally
vociferous critics like Christopher Alexander,
Peter Blake, Jane Jacobs, David Watkin, and
Tom Wolfe made withering critiques, but little
has changed.
What has now changed, however, is that we
are asking newly urgent questions about the
resilience of this kind of structure, at a time
when we need to rigorously assess and
improve that resilience. As this discussion
suggests, it is not only the particular and
practical issues of expansive glazed curtain
walls, bulky and transparent buildings, and
exotic assemblies overly reliant on
petrochemical products that are the root of
the problem. It is perhaps the very idea of
buildings as fashionable icons celebrating
their own newness, a quintessentially
Modernist idea, which is fundamentally at
odds with the notion of sustainability.
As they age, these buildings are destined to be
less new and therefore less useful, not more
so. The pristine Modernist (and now Post-
Modernist and Deconstructivist) industrial
surfaces are destined to mar, weather, and
otherwise degrade. The eye-catching novelties
of one era will become the abandoned
eyesores of the next, an inevitability lost on a
self-absorbed elite fixated on todays fashions.
Meanwhile the humble, humane criteria of
resilient design are being pushed aside, in the
rush to embrace the most attention-getting
new technological approaches which then
produce a disastrous wave of unintended
failures. This is clearly no way to prepare for a
sustainable future in any sense.
Courtesy of Nikos Salingaros
Modernism is more than just a style
In this light, why have the form language and
design methodologies of Modernism proven
so stubbornly persistent? The answer is that
Modernism is not merely a style that one may
care for or not. It is part and parcel of a
remarkably comprehensive even totalizing
project of aesthetics, tectonics, urbanism,
technology, culture, and ultimately,
civilization. That project has had a profound
effect upon the development of modern
settlements, for better or worse, and
(especially visible in the light of resilience
theory) made a huge contribution to the
current state in which we find our cities, and
our civilization.
The origins of architectural Modernism are
closely affiliated with the progressive goals of
the early Twentieth Century, and the
humanitarian ideals even the utopian zeal
of well-meaning visionaries of that day.
Those individuals saw a promising capacity,
in the dawning industrial technology of the
age, to deliver a new era of prosperity and
quality of life for humanity. At their most
credulous, its leaders were clearly enraptured
by the seemingly infinite possibilities for a
technological utopia. From that they
developed an elaborate and in surprising
ways, still poorly-evaluated theory about
the necessary new tectonics and form
languages of the civilization of the future.
Their followers today still argue that it is,
unquestionably, Modernism that is best
positioned to don the mantle of sustainability.
Many things did improve under this
technological regime, of course, and today we
can cure diseases, reduce backbreaking toil,
eat exotic foods, travel fast in comfortable
motoring and flying craft, and do many other
things that would astonish our ancestors. But
along with that new regime has come a
calamitous ecological depletion and
destruction of resources, and an erosion of the
foundation on which all economics and
indeed all life depends. So today, in an age of
converging crises, it is well worth our asking
hard questions about the assumptions of that
industrial regime and the complicity of
architectural Modernism as a kind of alluring
product packaging within it.
The story goes back to a remarkably small
group of writers, theorists, and practitioners
in the early 20th Century, and notably the
Austrian architect Adolf Loos. We will need to
look more closely at this history and what
its ongoing legacy means for us, and our very
daunting design challenges today.
Nikos A. Salingaros is
a mathematician and polymath known for
his work on urban theory, architectural
theory, complexity theory, and design
philosophy. He has been a close collaborator
of the architect and computer software
pioneer Christopher Alexander. Salingaros
published substantive research on Algebras,
Mathematical Physics, Electromagnetic
Fields, and Thermonuclear Fusion before
turning his attention to Architecture and
Urbanism. He still is Professor of
Mathematics at the University of Texas at
San Antonio and is also on the Architecture
faculties of universities in Italy, Mexico,
and The Netherlands.

Cite:Michael Mehaffy & Nikos Salingaros .

"Why Green Architecture Hardly Ever
Deserves the Name" 03 Jul 2013. ArchDaily.
Accessed 23 Sep 2014.
<http://www.archdaily.com/?p=396263>

Passive House. Image courtesy of Karawitz

Architecture

Michael Mehaffy is an urbanist and critical

thinker in complexity and the built
environment. He is a practicing planner and
builder, and is known for his many projects
as well as his writings. He has been a close
associate of the architect and software
pioneer Christopher Alexander. He is a
Research Associate with the Center for
Environmental Structure, Alexanders
research center founded in 1967, and
Executive Director of the Sustasis
Foundation, a Portland, OR-based NGO
dedicated to developing and applying
neighborhood-scale tools for resilient and
sustainable development.
SUMMARY
Dewasa ini, para arsitek berlomba-lomba
untuk merancang bangunan yang dianggap green.
Namun, Michael Menhaffy melihat rancangan-
rancangan tersebut belum memenuhi kriteria green
building.
Artikel ini termasuk kritik sitematik karena
menjawab pertanyaan bagaimana dan mengapa.
Mengapa bangunan masa kini jarang mendapatkan
sertifikasi green building? Mengapa arsitektur hijau
kalah popular dengan modernism? Bagaimana bisa
di tengah-tengah hiruk pikuk zaman modern ini hal
tersebut dapat terjadi? Pada artikel tersebut
didapatkan hasil ternyata masih terdapat kesalahan
sistematik yang ada pada bangunan.
SUMMARY
Masih menggunakan artikel yang sama,
artikel ini juga menyiratkan beberapa pernyataan-
pernyataan kritik terukur. Hal tersebut dapat dilihat
pada serangkaian hasil penilaian bangunan yang
diujikan pada beberapa bangunan. Hasil tersebut
dibandingkan pada ukuran standar yang telah ada.
Selain itu, pernyataan terukur juga terdapat
pada beberapa kalimat seperti walupun kriteria
terdengar abstrak , yang juga menyuratkan
adanya standar-standar pengukuran.
KRITIK ARSITEKTUR

DANIAR ROSE RAMADHANI

11/313593/TK/37966