الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Words are their own worst enemies. ’Deconstruction’ is no exception. Deconstruction means to ’tear down’ or to ’destroy”, In architecture, the concept has gained wide reputation as a new movement with famous architects as followers. I cannot deny that when I first confronted Deconstruction, I disliked it. I was astonished of the broken fragmented shapes creeping into architectural students’ projects. I did not understand what they were doing and looked for the scientific canons that govern the practice of designing and constructing buildings namely: ’Commodity, Firmness and Delight’, but did not find any (from my point of view at that time). ’Instead I found clashing masses that explode to form tiny buildings with formless shapes scattered at odd angles. I could not believe that ’ugliness’, acute angled rooms and ambiguous masses with no definite shapes could creep into the first place prizes in architectural competitions all over the world. This phenomenon problematizes the relationship between aesthetic values and current architectural practice. If architecture is governed by aesthetic conventions, why do ’collapsing buildings’ keep spreading and invading all the architectural departments and magazines? And even if it has won a reputation abroad, is it suitable to be applied here in Egypt? Bernard Tschumi, one of the leading architects in this field, indicates that ’Architecture can be consciously negative. It can be deliberately built to be disagreeable, uncomfortable, and dysfunctional.Y In practicing the proverb ’Never judge a race by the worst man in it’, I decided to look for other good men in the race. I took on the task of finding the beauty in these buildings and looked for the reasons for its success and spread Soon T became aware that Deconstruction as a philosophical approach has first originated in Literature and then influenced architecture. I also recognized that the meaning and understanding of Deconstruction differs from one person to another. And hence I decided to investigate ’The Meaning of Deconstruction in Architecture’. In her book ”The Critical Difference”, Barbara Johnson clarifies the term ’Deconstruction’, ”As a term, it is ... much closer in meaning to the original meaning of the word ”analysis” itself, which etymologically means to undo .A virtual synonym for ”to de-construct”. Deconstruction came to have direct influence on discussion in architecture and on the building process itself. It has led to an insistent focus on meaning. It was not the matter of analyzing how meaning is produced but rather of vesting the architect with the responsibility for designing buildings that radiated meaning. This idea of meaning narrowed so that it was not necessarily understood by the society or even by the patron, but only by the architect himself.’ Furthermore, a building can be understood differently. It even acquires different meanings as time passes by. These multiple meanings depend ~n their users as much as on their creators. The term building means its masses, texture, colors, light and feelings. Individuals have their own interpretation of each element according to. their culture and tradition. The architecture of Deconstruction, according to many, is motivated by the need to break the bonds of accepted modes of thinking about architecture, in order to create new possibilities. It is a chance for architects to be set free from their constraints, and the cultural beliefs inherited about architecture. In architecture, Deconstruction has been reviewed distinctively. ”The architecture produced in the name of Deconstruction attempts to embrace notions of fragmentation,dispersion and discontinuity through formal means’”. Others attempt to clarify its aims and methods. ”Deconstruction is not demolition, or dissimulation. While it diagnoses certain structural problems within apparently stable structures, these flaws do not lead to the structures’ collapse. On the contrary Deconstruction gains all its force by challenging the very values of harmony, unity, and stability, and proposing instead a different view of structure. A Deconstructivist architect is therefore not one who dismantles buildings, but one who locates the inherent dilemmas within buildings ... Irregular geometry is ... understood as a structural condition rather than as a dynamic formal aesthetic. It is no longer produced simply by the conflict between pure forms. It is now produced within those forms. The forms themselves are infiltrated with the characteristic skewed geometry, and distorted. In this way, the traditional condition of the architectural object is radically disturbed.” Goals of Research: 1- To uncover the meaning of Deconstruction as well as of what is said about it. The research will proceed to investigate Deconstruction theory, what is it about? What does it aim at? And how it can be applied? 2- The research attempts to answer these questions in relation to architecture. The objective is to know how the Deconstruction Theory affected and influenced architects in their ideas and work. Whether the philosophical theory is the only influence on architecture today is a question worth answering. 3-Find the concepts and meanings hidden behind deconstructed buildings. It will be interesting to find out and unveil the modes of thinking of its architects, and find the rules that govern their work. |