Friday, June 14, 2013

Book review -Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan

Rem Koolhaas is an architect and a writer whose style of lustrous, he was fascinated not only the architecture he himself acquaint as a philosopher. His contribution to mankind as an architect is not substantial, but his philosophy of architecture is much more interesting than ugly design principals derived by the great Le-Corbusier. Perhaps his vision and mission was not about the tangible built environment his vision was to derive the emotions, feelings and intangible qualities of the life and architecture. He always expresses the idea of a place rather than an idea of a space. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan is intemperately-illustrated with details shows his intention and skills; as an architect who is capable of presenting anything via illustrations rather than words. His approximation of demonstrating idea is dandier for oodles extents. Which made the book Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan is much shorter considering the fact that the argument which he is trying to build by the book. This is not a norm at all that the architecture books are full of illustration and drawing, but the book itself making the strong arguments to perceive and proceed. For the establishment of the theory which he was going to produce, he produced few examples. Most of them are American town model such as New York Manhattan etc. He habits as case studies, such as  
1_    The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Coney Island,
2_    Rockefeller Center,
3_    The Empire State Building
4_    The Downtown Athletic Club now a residential building,
5_    Radio City Music Hall
6_    Diego Rivera's unfinished murals for the RCA building
7_    Rockefeller Center
Most of them are well developed and finished town designs. And the interesting side of these case studies is they were designed long time ago when the current age wasn’t decided to born. But he doesn’t aware of the fact that it was built in the past and he complains that the public demand is not such nor the precise decision for the place.
Published in 1978, the book starts with explaining the history of the location. He tried proving the olden theory that the golden past creates the exuberating present. The author on the spur of the moment focus into the birth of the Manhattan town and informing the reader that the town discovered in 1609 and it was planned under utopian theories of town planning. Addition he is manipulating the readers’ mind that the British planner is responsible for everything happened and happening. The ingrained the idea of unsounded of the British planner helps him to focus reader to the implementation of the grid system. He indicates that the grid system was applied to the Manhattan in 1811 without understanding the history, context spatial control and the rough nature of the place. His criticism of the grid system in the book is contrasting. But which Is not strong enough to make a conversation or an argument.
Koolhaas pointing to the British planner; thus the success of the two dimensional discipline in primitive planning is not applicable in three dimensional planning. The permittivity of the two dimensional decision making process doesn’t utilize the practical paradigm reality of the place. Then he connect the two dimensional idea of planning and grid system. He identifies the utopian planning has a relationship to the grid system. He says the strategy behind the grid system is for falsifying the population for commercial industrial purposes. The criticism of the grid system is continues throughout the entire book. He himself impose that the grid system is much more technical element at the non-technical feeling of the mankind. Then the reader is brought into the Manhattan experiments and discoveries. He says that the Manhattan is an architectural lab or a zoo.
Hence the grid system is placed to simplify the design of the urban context. But then he reproduces an idea that the grid system was alienated to the American town by their general law of speed. “America is all about speed”, President Roosevelt. But in fact the grid system is introduced to the town planning by the ancient Sumerian architects those who have excelled the profession of making town according to the grid system five thousand years ago. They are the people those who have started planning the town. However the idea of the grid system is that the town is very well planned and arranged in order to make the town safer and efficient for the public user. His promotion of that idea makes conflicts between the user of the town and architecture of the town. He himself calls for aid at the New York architecture pollution. He describe the situation of the country shall help to evaluate a system which helps to develop a methodology which helps to evaluate the methods of the system that help to produce the architecture. The book acclivities the idea of the place with its qualities such as the best spatial qualities is in inevitable for the New York.
He added that the technological advances such structural abilities elevator techniques spark with the grid system to abolish the geographical and contextual consciousness. This is a brand new hypothesis when it comes to the readers mind suddenly. He explains that the emotional barriers are destroyed by the technology. Koolhaas explains it as an additional method of escaping from the place ‘mass ascension’ (moving upward). Supporting that theory he explains the demand of the recreational spaces are imperative due to the demand of the escape from the place. But he abstract that the recreational spaces are illusion way of escaping from the metropolis. But he forgot to contrast the idea of escaping from the city and utopian design demands of a place. Perhaps he is not conscious enough to combine his argument with all the information provided in the book.
Enhancing to that, he boil down Coney islands as the perfect environment. He explains the Coney Island is a perfect place to escape and celebrate the delirious urban life style. The mutation of the nature makes the artificial more attractive. The ground of the island is welcome more people and makes the miracle of the nature with artificial environment. The idea of a dreamland concept is materialize by Coney islands in order to rest the delirious life style of the Manhattan people.
Achieving the utopian life or theorem formulated in 1909 in American minds. It is still lingering in the collective subconscious of the political and public minds of the Americans. According to which the Koolhaas identifies the skyscraper as an artificial space for that to achieve. As Koolhaas articulates, the Skyscraper represents the meeting of three urbanity revelations:
1_    The reproduction of the world
2_    The annexation of the tower
3_    The block alone

 Koolhaas envisioned that the street grid system of Manhattan and the town system are overcrowded with people and buildings. He enunciates the town is overcrowded and no place for think. Which he introduce the hypothesis “the culture of congestion”. Besides as what he anticipated the "Culture of Congestion", formulated with the culture of the city, alimentation off each other. Represents a perceptive grading of Manhattan as a congested city and architectural test-ground, a research lab for the invention and implementation of the fundamental theories and visions that determined the metropolitan life style reach its current fabulous position. The fashion of delirious ness or the craziness is not an impact of architecture. If it is an impact from the architecture the rock and roll should have born in Manhattan not England. The culture or the architecture doesn’t exit exclusively, but their interrelation ship should have identified very sensitively without any repulsion. Hence the hallucinating life of Manhattan is not a direct product of the Manhattan utopian planning march.
The hypothesis was that the culture made the city or city made the culture. This argument comes from not only city architecture but also regional architecture where the specific places have specific details. But the Koolhaas cool argument doesn’t answer lots of questions. And also rationally if the city makes the cultures then; who made the city?
Therefore the paradigm of his vision which reflected in the book is not strong enough to make a foundation for bigger conversation. Via the entire book he is trying institute a conversation “whether man created the City” or “City created the culture”. All the details in the book are transcendent to illustrate these ideas and argue met which wanted to produce. But in some text he lacked the sense of strong controversy. He orders the justice and raise questions which really don’t need to answer. The estimate delirious him mad was that the town was developed before the generation arrival. And the generation follows environment and the culture given by a congested town grid system. Which is in fact Koolhaas intimately detects the Metropolis’s restless streets as products of population congestion. All the interchangeable with same hierarchy to follow the grid system which allows enhancing the production of the city. His filch view describes a level of population density which the earth can town holds onto. He articulates a hypothesis which helps to understand the realm of the grid system in the Manhattan. He proposed the idea of the speed which made American mind mad gave the birth to these mega towns. Perhaps according to his view New York is an example of that ambitious product of mankind.
Koolhaas construct many arguments via the book. None of them are methodological neither substantial to the concept of the book. Formerly he is repeating the same concept in many terms in order to clarify and explore another concept. He says the culture develops with response to the architecture of the place. But then again he raises the question; whether architecture made the culture or the culture made by architecture. This is dizzy when it comes to the readers mind that the writer is not strong enough to defend his own arguments. Perhaps he should have reviewed his own book again and again in order to clear the mess of ideas which he was trying express via the book.
The most interesting weakness of his argument is his vision or the hypothesis about the macro scale designs. The miracle of the architecture and culture verse via is not explained or established when it comes to the macro scale urban developments. The comedy of bringing many concepts together becomes more visible and understandable in that part. May be the Koolhaas took a long time to understand and theorize the idea. But which is ok to provide many hypotheses under one theory. But for develop an argument which is not professional to do so.
The end occurs in an interesting manner, Koolhaas placing the development of the Manhattan and compares it with great Architect Le Corbusier. And he explains the panoramic view of the Manhattan town as an n imagery abstract product of Salvador Dali and Le Corbusier. Salvador Dali brought the imaginary concepts and dreams into the fantasy. The rational of his fantasy is not the same as Le Corbusier’s ideas. Hence the Koolhaas cooled down express his capacity of imagination. Then he introduces an impossible fantasy, a brain storm for the reader to imagine something that the architects only imagine where he starting to accept the contradiction which he had brings to the conversation table of the reader. However the imaginary fantasy he tried bring has some utopian concepts. They are nearly based to derive the human demands and place. He is trying to justify the idea of his fantasy is part of cultural evaluation. But in fact most part of his fantasy based on classic demands of humans and resolving general urban issues of the human civilization.

Therefore Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan is manifestly utter failure in terms of fabricating an argument in the society. Or it is book with scattered ideas and concepts. Hence the solidness of the reader should have considered by Koolhaas more than what he tried explain and he should have tried to establish and strong and contrasting argument in the readers mind.

2 comments:

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  2. man there are way too many spelling and grammar mistakes in this!

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