Via Ben H comes a series of 50 Icon Eye’s Manifestos, which are all interesting to read; especially check out Rem Koolhaas’ manifesto, Europe is doing almost ridiculously well:
We fly for next to nothing, we have the highest quality prisons, Europe gave us millions of new friends, Frisian Lakes are maintained in order, sewers that ruined the most beautiful beaches are gone, the Spanish countryside is now a polished backdrop for whizzing high-speed trains.War criminals are put on trial. Ireland is rich. The Turkish think about who they want to become.
…
400 million of us dictate the taste of six billion people. We decide what is beautiful and what is good behaviour. (sic) Our rules are contagious and are voluntarily complied with by all others. No one is afraid of us, yet we are immensely popular.
While Rem’s cheerleading of all thinks European, along with their forthcoming commercial and capitalistic hegemony is great and all, other so-called manifestos are more instructive on where we are going from here. Specifically:
- Hernan Diaz Alonso/Xefirotarch – Notes on Mutation and the Pursuit of Horror (and sometimes the Grotesque).
- Peter Eisenman – The spectacle is the sun that never sets on the empire of modern passivity.
- OSA (Office For Subversive Architecture) – Passivity can’t be wrong… it’s safe
I know the idea of gathering 50 manifestos from different designers and architects was to comparatively illustrate the differences, but in the three above ideas you have three completely different world views, all relating to ornament and form.
I can’t shake the idea that we haven’t completely closed the arguments of the late 1990’s; perhaps the decade’s long aberration of riches will settle down and we will all have so much more time to read and argue about Post Colonial Theory and decide once and for all the manner of form, how/why form is derived and whether or not linguistic theory is applicable to design. Or have these issues already been resolved, and I was too busy working with developers?