Technology, Abstraction and Ideas of Nature

Coming to terms with modern architecture, we must read through such seminal statements through their sensibilities and societal myths which they exemplify. Now, we shall explore parallel themes to do with new myths of modernity, poetic expressions of technology, the reemergence of abstraction, and analogies between architecture and other realms such as minimalist sculpture, landscape art and nature. Architecture oscillates between the unique and the typical where the old and new may reunite in unexpected ways. Example, the Navarro Baldeweg’s Congress Hall in Salamanca which underlines the complexity of ideas, fantasies, memories and aspirations that may operate in a single function. If this interconnections work on the surface the result would be stylish and superficial. If they work in depth, a new synthesis of form and content becomes possible. Even those architects who asserted the romanticism of engineering or the rhetoric of new avant-garde have pedigrees and belong to tradition. When casting an eye over the wide range of buildings relying upon features of earlier modernism, it is important to carry a general distinction in mind between mere “signs” referring to past modernity and the substantial transformations resulting in inventions that are vital extensions of earlier lines of thought. “High-tech” figures are such as Richard Rogers whom tended towards techno-romanticism in its almost picturesque handling of shiny silver ducts, tubes and mechanical services. Roger’s ex-partner, Renzo Piano, aspired towards the natural inevitability of forms arising from considerations of structure, function, day lighting, and assembly. Norman Foster was somewhere between the two where his ideas were often rooted in structural facts or metaphors, but he was also concerned with light, space and the elaboration of detail besides mechanical and natural analogies woven into his works. Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (1979-85). While