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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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@sansampersamp is an architect. Let's see what he has to say about 'where architecture has gone' since Eisenman.

Philosophical perspectives in architecture have also largely moved on from Eisenman's deconstructive minimalism in the (an) opposite direction somewhat towards Heidegger's object-relational ontology/phenomenology via Harman. See Mark Foster Gage's Killing Simplicity.

Okay. What does Gage say?

It is understandable that Harman would enlist Lovecraft....Lovecraft also frequently enlists architecture and geometry....In "At the Mountains of Madness," Lovecraft writes of a city with "no architecture known to man or to human imagination, with vast aggregations of night-black masonry embodying monstrous perversions of geometrical laws." In "The Call of Cthulhu" he writes of a character who was "swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn't have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse."

...To try to design such a Cyclopean city...would be a lost cause, but to imagine architecture that similarly alludes to a deeper or alternate view of reeality is an appealing opportunity....Harman writes, "illusion and innuendo are the best we can do."

There might be some youngsters or non-english speakers in the audience. Let's double check the essence of Lovecraft:

Lovecraftian horror, also called cosmic horror or eldritch horror, is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock. It is named after American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). His work emphasizes themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries...

So architecture has moved on from Eisenman to getting as close to emparting "cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries" as they can.

No, no. They're not evil. They're just trying to create buildings that replicate the effect of an alien presence so profoundly dangerous that merely conceptualizing a infinitesimal part of it drives you to madness.

This looks more like free association than an answer to sun’s question…

I also think you’re misrepresenting Eisenman and Eisenman enthusiasts. Could you show me where he says “ architecture is meant to make people psychologically uncomfortable,” “Buildings must literally impose psychic harm and pain,” or “An architect has a moral imperative to create such pain among the populace”?

How is it "free" association, it's literally a link to an article a local "Eisenman enthusiast" gave himself. How much closer to "meant to make people psychologically uncomfortable" can you get, than talking about how awesome it would be to do Lovecraftian architecture, but having to settle for mere allusions?

This just strikes me as proof positive for OP's thesis. Cognitive dissonance, no one would be so comically evil to do such a thing, therefore people aren't saying what they're clearly saying.

I think everyone in the chain probably believed what they were saying. I don’t think what @sansampersamp said Gage said Harman said about Lovecraft tells us much of anything about Eisenman!

There's no cognitive dissonance because there's no evil here, anywhere.

Eisenman's buildings range from "fine" to "pretty darn cool" in my view. "...Architecture that similarly alludes to a deeper or alternate view of reality" in a Lovecraftian fashion is also cool. Rad, even. I want more of that. Sign me up. This isn't even some complex "well we have to understand the dialectical nature of suffering and how even negative emotions can be valuable" shit. This is just very straightforwardly an architect who makes cool buildings that he thinks are cool and other people think are cool. There's no malfeasance here, no shenanigans.

To me, your question sounds akin to someone saying "how exactly can you support Harry Potter books pushing Satanic propaganda on our children?" It's hard to provide an answer because I disagree with the entire framing.