The Crisis of Aesthetic

Abstract

Jean Baudrillard begins to bring an arising situation to light when he speaks about the new modernism. The Pompidou Centre can be seen as an important example of an object or a building that has become purely an expression of its inner machine-ness. Other contemporary philosophers like Etienne Turpin displays certain frankness towards this understanding of cultural progression as it is somewhat reflective of an aesthetic brought about by the anthropogenic smoothing of the earth’s surface to human appropriation. This situation is heightened by the fact that kitschy eclectic classicism becoming a language of significant ubiquity. In a brief analysis of a curve outlining nearly 80 identifiable architectural styles over the past 8,000 years; a severe asymptotic projection over the past 500 years indicates that with the steep and ever compounding velocity of technology, architecture might be in a bit of an identity crisis. Unprecedented progression seems to threaten culture and histories at a global scale forcing us to retreat into merely the shade of the “old”. The notion of interstitial space comes about through the collision of purely autonomous machine-like forms with symbolic objects. The result is an understanding of interstitial space that plays off the hyper complex geometrical patterns of machine simulacra. It also engages in an equally building and deteriorating concept of autonomy and sign within the collided complex. This could parallel conversations of interstitial space in elaborate baroque elements as form becomes divorced from the classical rigor of Vitruvius; for example, alternating and broken pediments or the thwarted proportions of mannerism. There is a narrative/future telling side of the investigation that approaches the issue on a second front. It depicts future cities that deal with the compounding pace of technology. Loss of culture is at such a risk that, context no longer becomes the workings of the landscape and environment, but the pace at which imminence and obsolescence of form occurs. This allows for speculation into how “old” things are dealt with at high velocities in the future.