miércoles, 26 de noviembre de 2014

Say goodbye to minimalism

Art, design and architecture are cyclical phenomena. The Greek and Roman classics have been inspired more than once as in the Romanesque and Neoclassical architecture or in the Elizabethan literature. Meanwhile, modernism returned under the name of minimalism, taking advantage of technological advances with which Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe didn’t count in the 50s and just as the neoclassical was bolted into the variegated Baroque, characteristic of New Spain, the minimalism evolved into Gehry or Zaha Hadid deconstructivism, so criticized in the new millennium.

This second decade of the 2000s began with a new story. We cannot speak of a contemporary style cause each style is contemporary to its time, neither I would take the term eclectic as it implies to copy what has been done so far, leaving the art and spatial design to repetition and not to innovation... surely the great theorists of the future will seek an appropriate name for what we see now in the world, for me is no better term that defines it that "egocentrism". The world today is as personalized as each of the seven billion people we live into the planet; globalization has broken any physical border and beyond appropriating a region or a specific area, we are appropriating all that is known.

Eliminating the negative connotations of the term, architecture now gives us endless possibilities to customize our spaces and do them completely of our own. Boundaries and rules are gone; designers must see everywhere for current trends together with our customers to make as personalized designs as we can. There are still some walls to break down that will require greater creativity by specialists to achieve increasingly unique and exclusive works; finally, despite the color palette that has been determined or the characteristic textures of each year, we have 202 countries to flip and find what we like.

Along with borders, molds are now gone, too. The rule of Mexican architecture that have been followed Legorreta and Sordo Madaleno to the letter for years and still retain the principles of Luis Barragán, which earned the Pritzker in 1980, is now over. This not means to eliminate the context but to remove the romanticism; Mexican architecture is much more than orange or pink walls with symmetrical square repetitions that can be useful as niches, frames or windows, as American architecture is not only glass skyscrapers. To make architecture for the site, for the customer and for the users, does not depend on mathematical models; architects now have the task to create as independent and personalized worlds as each of our clients are.


The Acapulco chair, a 50s classic during the explosion of this great tourist destination for national and international ones, now is used by interior architect Luis García Fraile in Ibiza or Jonas Labbé and Johannes Schotanus in Copenhagen. When finished borders, a Mexican design is used as an art object worldwide; and it is not out of its context, in contrast it joins another wider context in which coexists with all other elements that architects have created from a need, a taste, a spatial desire.


How to define "egocentrism"? Its best feature is that there are no features... is the most heterogeneous style that has worked until today, resulting in proposals as varied and endless as it is possible; each of us gives a new and different look to it according to what we want to obtain, so it is ultimately self-centered. But unlike the minimalism that precedes it, this style is concerned about the world; it promotes sustainability, the use of apparent local materials despite the variety of items that can be accessed now favoring local development. It is certainly a style-conscious; it is not only concerned but occupied to build a better world as the one we have now.  It reflects new generations that have tied in architecture: the X, Y and Z generations. What is not worth: to keep using white and "pure" volumes; it's time to evolve.

JPV

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