Monday, September 14, 2015

Green University by Vo Trong Nghia Architects

Design by Vo Trong Nghia Architects for a new university campus in Saigon. I certainly find concrete modernism more bearable when it's covered with trees. I wonder, though, what upkeep of this place will be like over time. Will the trees have to be replaced when they get too big and their roots start tearing up the courtyard? But anyway I spent an hour this weekend reading architecture news sites and this was the most attractive building I saw. When is modernism finally going to die?




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G. Verloren said...

"When is modernism finally going to die?"

Whenever they manage to come up with something which you like even less, I would imagine.

In all seriousness, though, if anything, I feel "Modernism" is actually slowly evolving in new directions, rather than dying off. Compare early Modernist buildings to some of the newest being built today, and you can find striking differences in both aesthetic choice and practical design.

Heck - strictly speaking we aren't even talking about truly "Modernist" architecture anymore, but rather "Postmodernist". It's like how Cyberpunk literature and media gave way to Post-Cyberpunk, while in the music world we got things like Post-Rock, Post-Punk, Post-Grunge, and others. It's a continuing offshoot and progression of the original philosophy, with certain identifiable differences, but ultimately the same general roots and direction.

It seems to me that culturally we're tending to have fewer clean breaks with the past - fewer instances of feeling compelled to throw out the old almost entirely and create something completely different from the previous establishment. Changes are accruing more gradually and organically - we're embracing the concepts of syncretism and "remixing" more than we have historically.

Chalk it up to globalism I guess, but overall it seems like the current era is being dominated more and more by flexibility in our identities and philosophies than previously. Sure, there are still plenty of rigidly uncompromising values and beliefs floating around, but I think in general people are more willing to try to adapt and reform thigs rather than tear them down and replace them wholesale.

September 14, 2015 at 3:49 PM

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