Flexibility in Postmodern Architecture

Flexibility in Postmodern Architecture

In Stan Allen’s “Infrastructural Urbanism”, he talks about the diminishing role that architects play in the construction of the city, and the way postmodernism shapes recent architecture. The second lecture from “Venice Hospital” focuses on flexibility in architecture.

According to Allen, postmodernism in architecture consist of looking at history, and respond to contemporary demands. One of the findings of Stan Allen is that infrastructure projects have taken a step back in the U.S. Architects have also become less involve in the process, Partly because of specialization, which takes away a lot of the concern that architects used to deal with, consequently architects have been excluded from the design of cities. This is the reason Allen introduces infrastructural urbanism; Stan Allen states that architects are infatuated with meaning and image, that the focus should be on concrete proposals. Stan Allen is pushing for architects to focus more on the functionality of architecture and less on the way it looks. He also emphasizes that that architects should play a bigger role in the design of infrastructure, because infrastructure lays the foundations of the city.

In the "Venice Hospital" Hashim Sarkis focuses on flexibility in Architecture. There are many ways to express flexibility in architecture. The first for example is by giving a generic room multiple functionalities, either with moving furniture or partition walls. One would also argue that our world has change so much that our architecture has become flexible by necessity. A prime example of that is the fact the dynamics of the home has change; it’s not like in the 50’s and 60’s when the man would go to work and the woman stays home prepares dinner. In the home a lot of times both man and woman works, and sometimes the home becomes the work place. The introduction of technology has made architecture very flexible as well. It has worked in the industrial settings, by allowing manufacturing plants to be able to produce different products at a faster rate.