"Abstract" Architecture:
Abstraction as a tool to strange realism
Modernism has had recurrent trouble with the aesthetic problem of realism. This discussion is of great importance for contemporary architecture and design. Architecture directly intervenes in the real world, yet the architect acts at a removed distance through mediations. The past two decades have seen a shift in the technologies of design mediation, producing a different set of representational problems for architecture. The discourse surrounding Speculative Realism offers a way in which these issues can be engaged in a provocative manner through an aesthetic of realism. A realism, that if not necessarily naive, often lies closer to “the strange".
Abstraction as a tool to strange realism
Modernism has had recurrent trouble with the aesthetic problem of realism. This discussion is of great importance for contemporary architecture and design. Architecture directly intervenes in the real world, yet the architect acts at a removed distance through mediations. The past two decades have seen a shift in the technologies of design mediation, producing a different set of representational problems for architecture. The discourse surrounding Speculative Realism offers a way in which these issues can be engaged in a provocative manner through an aesthetic of realism. A realism, that if not necessarily naive, often lies closer to “the strange".