June 2016
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I N T R O D U C T I O N
Walter Gropius, the famous German Bauhaus architect and theorist, incorporated glass in the Bauhaus school. To the critics it was perceived as modern, and for its concept, it was used for spectacle. You can see out, but they can’t see in. The moment that changed a million, was when it was a realized and actualized idea. It was the idea that brought storefronts to monitor pedestrian thoroughfares, and it was also the same fuel driving the curtain-less glass box of the Farnsworth House, at the middle of the twentieth century. However, as the world has changed and transformed in its progressions and follow through of innovation, true mass media invention is currently shaping a new path in which our world is taking form.
Media has become such a quick and informative tool. It has made the next boom, following the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution transformed the society in such a quick way, that it directly inspired Impressionism, showcasing the quickest and most painterly strokes for the most natural and transformative things. Parallel as to now, the first revolution of industry seized craft, and now the technological revolution has seized privacy…
A Q U I E T P R I V A C Y
Privacy is a thin shadow. It is a mild barrier that had been formulated through time, and now ramshackle in the world of today. Mad men at one point in a Modernist time, drove from one edge of town to the other. They drove a brand new Chevrolet across a fifth mile roundtrip, stopping for cheap gas, and enjoying a lit cigarette heading towards their suburban shelter. A shelter that was hidden, private, and separate from their dirty city life, perceivably filled with pollution and mess. However, over fifty years, what happens when the Mad Men are paying student loan debt? Paying a double amortized mortgage that goes belly up in the midst of financial crisis? Paying stacks of debts to achieve auto lease-worthy credit? And, finally, making sure that the job is steady to afford all of it, and more?
Therefore, the culture of contemporary life, has become one of honesty, and one of simplicity. It’s a growing scene of sharing cars, cars accounts, sharing houses and housing, and sharing our superficial thoughts and innermost reasons over social media. It has become one of walking to smaller scaled urban zones, than living in widely separated McMansion homes. Interactivity is at its prime, with the desirability to relate and connect to other people. What has prospered this removal of the separated self, and evolved the realized sense of community? Suffering, and more specifically, the economic suffering we are still not even close to closure from since the 2008 recession. It has forced a young and uprising group of the Millennial generation to think beyond the glass walls of the Farnsworth House, and the glass ceiling of the banking system, and instead focus on permanently lasting experiences. These experiences are how we are now called to shape our design. To add further, the time now is interactive, and the media is mass spread to every monitor and every inter-connected computerized device. With an economic downshift, and its lasting effects of the growing and ever-popular Millennial generation, the meaning of privacy is ever-changing… Privacy simply does not mean the same thing now, as it used to. Young people used to buy starter homes far apart from one another, need a certain amount of bedrooms, and live more demurely and quiet. Development were built with setbacks, houses had even split-plan layouts, and every household member wanted their own bathroom. But now, honesty is trending, and sharing with others is key. The Millennial generation is the first proven to cope better with situations by interacting and sharing with others, and with that, experiences are of more value and profound. They don’t care about having a bigger backyard, or a house with a guest bathroom, because there are no guests, only community.
However the sensation and experiential quality of community has shaped the rising generation, and affected the discourse of design, another architectural factor came heavily into play. Community would never be without the intrusion of “open concept.” Starting back to the nineteenth century, design first sought to evolve spatial planning, incorporating openness.Open concept is more relative in design now more than ever, ranging from typical suburban homes, to re-purposed public spaces. However, this is a concept that was started over a century ago and had its lasting effects on its affected society and culture. Architecture is a response from cultural shifts and attitudes. It reflects the time one is living in, and it showcases above all the feeling of an era. It also inversely impressions the time in which we live, stamping society and culture with theoretical thought and built action. This planned and build impression of openness was the fighting word of modernism. Although it shadowed homes distances apart from one another, it began a discussion of space. Space and privacy travel in similar paths, and at certain points overly intersect. The spatial re-organization of many notorious modern, architectural marvels open spaces, with the arrayed pattern of program, and the intentional visibility, and therefore lack of privacy. To be modern, was to live in one’s time, and possibly beyond it, and by incorporating open spaces, dialogue, conversation, and sociability was able to be formed. It was an American Modernist, such as Frank Lloyd Wright, who was able to notorious open living areas and kitchens, to not trap the woman like a machine, cooking for her family, but elaborate a social scene. One could now converse while cooking in the kitchen, and open spaces allowed for sharing and accessibility.
Privacy has continued to remain overrated, although our past and contemporary place is constantly lifting its barriers with regards to the way people live their lives. A simple shift in design, in spatial qualities, in planning and scheming, changed a whole society of individuals. It changed the way people prepared their meals, where they sat for dinner, and how they interacted. As we face a new reality of interaction, it is always important to understand the lasting effects that every design perpetuates. We live in a world of limited boundaries, which used to be four walls, which over time became glass, and eventually faded away. However, for every time in which we live, our reality is constantly dictated by its shift in architecture, and our place in the world.
©AlexiaVirue 2016