So my thoughts on U.S.A...
That’s more like it! Following last weeks cheese fest that was The Fountainhead, it’s nice to get back to a good old fashioned, just telling it like it is, no fancy trimmings, no nice endings, book showing the tragedy of success.
The mini biographies within U.S.A are insightful glimpses into the lives of some of the most famous individuals from the turn of the century. The way Henry Ford, after helping create the world of the automobile, chooses in the end to hide away from it all. He spent the money he earned from manufacturing a world of motor cars, to build a world where the cars didn’t exist. He rebuilt his childhood farm, he praised the obsolete models of transport he himself had made obsolete and he moved roads away from buildings he owned. Why would he do this? Had he seen the tragedy of his life’s work, the pollution and tarmac that was covering everything in its path? Or had he simply had enough of it all, grown sick of the monster of the motor run world he had helped to create.
Do architects follow the same kind of pattern? I know that after three and a half years of designing Sainsbury’s car parks and clad sheds I am already sick of the sight of supermarkets, to point where I will do anything but go and shop in them.
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Session 9 - 27.11.09 The Fountainhead
So my thoughts on The Fountainhead...
Film, as a media, is a lot harder to explore than a book, or any written media. With books authors’ say, most of the time, as they please. The thing with film is it has to be coated in Hollywood cheesiness and the token traditional fairytale ending. In the film, Roark ends up the winner, he gets the girl, he gets the success, he gets the fame, he gets the glory, he gets the money and he gets to build his big job without anyone getting in the way of his design. The “Hollywood” ending is never the case, the “machine” would never allow it, and no one man can have that much power without consequences. In real life Roark would have been thrown in jail for blowing up that building, not honoured.
The scary thought is, is this how architects are seen to be? No wonder we don’t get much respect from other sin the building industry, do people see us as ego maniacs, self obsessing with our designs and that we spit our dummy out when we don’t get our own way?
Granted a film about an architect sitting around all day drawing and taking crap from all directions would be a truly boring film.
Film, as a media, is a lot harder to explore than a book, or any written media. With books authors’ say, most of the time, as they please. The thing with film is it has to be coated in Hollywood cheesiness and the token traditional fairytale ending. In the film, Roark ends up the winner, he gets the girl, he gets the success, he gets the fame, he gets the glory, he gets the money and he gets to build his big job without anyone getting in the way of his design. The “Hollywood” ending is never the case, the “machine” would never allow it, and no one man can have that much power without consequences. In real life Roark would have been thrown in jail for blowing up that building, not honoured.
The scary thought is, is this how architects are seen to be? No wonder we don’t get much respect from other sin the building industry, do people see us as ego maniacs, self obsessing with our designs and that we spit our dummy out when we don’t get our own way?
Granted a film about an architect sitting around all day drawing and taking crap from all directions would be a truly boring film.
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