Props to the forerunners

Much of the early deconstructivist works, drawings, and ideas were never built. Breaking down architecture as it was previously known and reassembling its functions, exploring new languages of construction that appear to contradict the natural response to gravity, and striving for an unprecedented form that launches the field into its full potential, how could these things then be built? The point is not whether it was built or could be built but that the deconstructivists, along with the subjectivists, cubists, formalists, etc, brought design into a new way of thinking, a new world, that would produce the buildings of our day. Their own ideas needed to be extreme in order to make their point and make people think. Today’s works influenced by deconstructivists are not as extreme, but are certainly unfamiliar forms at which a population marvels. Frank Gehry especially breaks down conventions and traditions, sees building in a new way, and designs works which we can hardly judge ourselves. It is difficult to critique when we are so unacquainted with the language. I believe we will need to let the deconstructivist forms develop and become a movement, and after witnessing many of its products, after realizing the ways it succeeded and the ways it failed, then we can offer our criticism. It is the evaluation that might catalyst the rise of new theories, and it is these new theories that might further advance the field. That seems to be the cycle. Thus, I do believe that architectural theory, no matter how bizarre or elitist or unfruitful it may seem, is a forerunner to the next generation’s architecture.