.three.

One thing that has been an ongoing study of mine understands why people maintain a strong hold to so called traditional styles specifically for houses. Although I come across individuals that what to translate all things traditional to every building they occupy. For instance I have many conversations with many friends regarding project that I have worked on or ones that I enjoy out of one of my modern architecture magazines, and the common reaction is “that looks cool but I wouldn’t live in it”. That is when I usually step up onto my soapbox and try to educate all of them on why they should appreciate modern architecture, and leave traditional building typologies in the past where they belong. When I take this approach it typically ends the conversation, I like to believe it is because I sounded like my theories were no match for their non-architect brain. As I crash back to earth I realize that my friends don’t really want to hear about boring, snoring modern architecture.

But with free digital storage space I can blather on for as long as I want about this topic. I promise I won’t for your sake.

My thesis statement would be, if I may call it that, tradition forms of architecture were the most technically advanced at the time of their construction, however as technology advances so should our emotions about the structures advance. Traditional structures not only were the most advanced technologically, but they were utilitarian as well. The majority of these were built as direct responses to a wide array of factors. Weather, growing population, site conditions etc. Today architects still take into consideration many of these factors, but what is different is our knowledge of construction and building systems has improved exponentially. In addition to these improvements of technology, today’s modern man has embraced modernization of virtually everything from cars to how he listens to music, but this modern man still wishes to live in a central hall Georgian or worse yet a conglomeration of Tuscan, roman and Greek styles all “uniquely” blended into one house. I say uniquely because if you picked up the real estate section of any newspaper, that is how realtors would spin it.

It troubles me that modern society is more than eager to embrace the newest car model, or ipod, but hesitate severely at the sight of an intelligently designed modern house. I am not saying that you have to make a choice between the two, and there is no compromise. I believe that we as architects should always learn from our historical precedents. It is very important to acknowledge their existence; however we can and should make all attempts to integrate the past with the present and hopefully the future as well. Instead of churning out copies of what was done before, let us do what we were trained to do and creatively address the design to keep up with all the modern instruments that go inside the house.

I will make this a stopping point for the time being, stay tuned for the next chapter...