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Architecture

Architecture can be described as being a vocation, a business, a calling, a science, as well

as a passion. It is both an artful science and a social art. It provides firmness, delight, and

commodity (Song et al 397). Therefore, it gives a sense of a place. Further, it supports the entire

activities of human involvement. Thereby, it is essential in helping the man-made to find a

perfect fitting within the environment as well as promoting the well-being and health, economic

activities, enriching the lives both spiritually and aesthetically, and helping in the creation of a

legacy that symbolizes and reflects traditions and culture.

Architecture is as old as the beginning of the earth. In the first century BC, there was a

roman Architect Vitruvius who authored a book on this field. He described architecture as

having three main components, that is Firmness, commodity, and delight. According to

Vitruvius, firmness describes the durability and the integrity of the structure. The cThe

commodity is a description of the ability of the structure to serve its purpose in fulfillment of the

function that led to the construction of the building. Lastly, delight describes the ability of the

building to both pleasing visually and aesthetically and able to stimulate the senses and lift the

spirits of the people (Song et al 397). However, over the periods, these fundamental constituents

of architecture have been compromised. Hence, many fatalities resulting from architectural
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structures have hit the world. However, a crisis is an opportunity in disguise. Therefore, this

paper seeks to evaluate various crises that have occurred in the world due to architectural

failures. Further, the paper seeks to look into the ways in which these crises can be a turning

point for the betterment of architectural field and all factors that come into play.

Architectural crises and their benefits

The issue of the architectural crisis is not to arise. Different players in this field including

architectural theorists and historians as well as the architects have been talking about the crisis of

architecture for over a century. This crisis is not arising from any single fissure. It is a making of

many factors undergoing a succession of shifts, which are paradigmatic. It is argued that the

architecture itself is a crisis. Further, its relationship to various fields that are a critical basis of its

inspiration is also a crisis. Therefore, some of the factors contributing to the crisis of the

modernist architecture include the systems of production that are radically new, radically new

culture of material, and new cultural requirements that are radically new. These factors are

premised upon the cycles of products, which are accelerating due to high consumption of the

capitalists and the subsequent response of the communists (Federici 232).

This crisis of architecture has undergone metamorphosis. In the periods before

modernism, the crisis intertwined in the totalizing and tendencies of the modernist architecture,

which were solipsistic. Therefore, there was a crisis of symbols and their meaning. In

deconstructionist/ deconstructivist architecture, the crisis encompassed incorporation of the new

paradigms of aesthesia that found their premise in the CAD systems that were potential.

Taking the example of Greece, the history around the discourse of architecture reveals

that the debate of the association of the Greek came into being many past decades. This debate is
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still dominant until today. The identity of Greece in regards to its association with the rest of

Europe hits hard the field of architecture. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the theorists

of architecture and the architects battled this question on various occasions. Therefore, the

discussions concerning the Greek architecture surrounded the issue of the meaning of the cultural

autonomy in an environment encountering continuous and intense dependencies and influences.

They also battled the issue of maintaining their identity in an ever-globalizing architectural

world. Further, there was a great problem in trying to maintain nativity and originality and

drawing a clear line from that, which was imported (Federici 234).

A discussion on architecture in a form of public criticism came into being on a practical

and immediate level in the nineteenth century. This period marked the foundation of the Greek

state. It also coincides with the neoclassicism consolidation in Greece. After the war, the small

city of Greece was left with only a few houses standing. Therefore, Stamatis Kleanthis and

Eduard Schaubert set out a new plan for the city in 1832. This plan composed of the large

boulevards and open spaces (Eckh 340). This plan was the basis of the criticism that surrounded

architecture. The nature of the criticism was found on four major issues. These issues included

assessing the owners and the reasons for demolition or expropriation of the buildings, assessing

the legality of the houses, the legitimacy of the owners of houses or public space, and lastly the

composition of the new aesthetic form. The thought that the new tools of designing resulted into

an orderly city made an inter-linkage of these issues. Hence, parameters of neoclassicism

including symmetry, regularity, and theoretical concepts transformed into ideas that gave rise to

the framework of aesthesia that was acceptable for the mind of the public. The problem that

arose with these aesthetic judgments is that they always disguised individual interests as opposed

to concerns that were sincere (Eckh 347).

Therefore, the dispute pitting the state and the modern Athenians was an illustration of

the reaction of the community against an impostor plan on their city. This new plan meant that

the indigenous configuration of the urban set-up was to undergo replacement using the imported

plan of the European origin that had a relationship to the establishment of the formal

architectural theory. The principles of design and the aesthetic values of the neoclassicism

architecture differed sharply from those that were in existence. It was observed that all the

architects who came up with the designs of the new plans had their educational backgrounds

from abroad. Therefore, they imported the new culture of architecture regarding contrast to the

ottoman mentalities that were existent.

However, the ancient architectural designs continuously dominated the word as the

standard reference architect beyond the nineteenth century. Many architects revered the Greek

architecture as the supreme aesthesia even in the age of modernism. The revival of the antiquity

of the Greek architecture as the standard of aesthesia received more reinforcement from the

Greek writers, intellectuals, and editors belonging to the culture of the international elites.

Hence, they helped many architects to embrace the classical roots of modernism ideology.

However, this ideology received a great deal of opposition from younger architects in the 1960s.

the younger architects argued that there was a need to envision a common global future globally.

Therefore, they desperately needed to break away from the architecture that only highlights the

value brought about by the local past. At the forefront of this new move in the architectural

formation of Greece were architects Takis Zenetos, Constantinos Doxiadis, and scientists such as

Buckminster Fuller, Margret Mead, Marshall McLuhan, among many others Hein, (Eckh 330).

The new way of architecture gathered motion and was embraced across Greece in the

subsequent years. It received reinforcement from the students, architects, and professors
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expressed their interest and favor towards throughout the 1990s and 2000s. However, there

remained a hard question that required answers. The issue of the value of architecture in Greece

and its identity was intriguing. The architectural discourse still surrounds on the ways of the

distinction between what is global and what is local as far as architecture is of concern. There

occurred a vast moderation of this subject of what is local, global, and extroverted after the 2004

Greek Olympic Games, which were followed by the financial depression. This period saw many

architectural practices diminishing include those of the well-established architects. The students

also faced a relatively oblique future in their profession. Consequently, there was a reshaping of

the architectural discourse after the realization that globalization also has its negative effects.

Hence, the need for a strong national identity in architecture took the center stage. This identity

was thought to be of great relevance even at the international level (Federici 232).

Consequently, in the year 2012 Greece came up with an emphatic new path of

architecture. The title of this discovery was "Made in Athens" and it had an international appeal.

In this new discovery of architecture, Greek was hesitant to adopt wholesomely the modernism

and globalization way doing architecture. Instead, what appeared to be new was as a result of a

hybrid between the global and the local architectural language. Hence, it was kind of an

architectural Esperanto. Therefore, it was more cosmopolitan and less regional, more

communicative and less critical, more consumable and less conceptual, more cynical and less

ideological.

Due to this identity, there was birthing of a new and more acceptable way of doing

architecture that resonated well in both in the local environment and the international scene. The

new architectural generation was named Greeklish generation while the newfound language of

architecture was called Greeklish language. Therefore, the main objective of this new
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architectural era is to find a consensus when dealing with the ever-fluctuating views between the

local and global ways of approaching architecture. Therefore, the Greek architecture can now

speak a language that is both Greek and English. Further, the current Greek architectural

generation encompasses both international and native, both modern and traditional. This

happening has occurred thanks to the crises that have hit the Greek architectural industry ever

since the classical periods. These crises have resulted in several architectural discourses that have

endeavored to bring about improvements in the architectural work in comparison to the pre-

existing ones. Therefore, the players in the Greek architectural field have continuously used their

crises for the betterment of their architecture. Hence, a crisis is not always a problem. It can turn

out to be a blessing.

Moving away from Greece, architecture faces many crises in the rest of the world. The

architects seem to be undergoing deprivation of their primordial myths, they have undergone

experiences of barring from the hearth as well as sweeping them the doorsteps, and their

primitive hut has been shut, therefore locking them outside. As a result, most of the architects are

renouncing the importance of architecture as a form of production (Siozios, Harry, & Dimitrios

459). The section of the architectural education is the most hit with these new developments in

architecture (Song et al 397). After spending about four years studying architecture at the

graduate level, many graduates feel irrelevant. There is no one who approaches them with an

assignment of designing a house. Furthermore, if they are given the assignment it is not in the

context of that it can address the issues of construction and cost directly.

Therefore, the entry of the computation of paradigms into architecture has had the

implication of theories of parametric design, morphogenesis, protocell architecture, novel

tectonic, situated technologies, among other metaphors eclipsing a home. The predominant
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emergences of these metaphors include the fields of science and computation. However, the idea

of metaphorical borrowing is not a new happening. Since renaissance and core concepts of

architecture that are contemporary, it has been happening. The most hit sectors of architecture

with this idea of metaphorical borrowing include structures and circulation (Siozios, Harry, &

Dimitrios 459). These two subsections of architecture have their derivations from the biological

sciences. Further, they have proven to be principles that lead to high production thinking in terms

of fundamental organization of space as it relates to the inherent stability of buildings and the

movement of people through them. This crisis has been made worse by the ever-changing

sciences from which architecture borrows. Therefore, this has had a direct impact on

architecture. It has also to move at the pace of the developing and acceleration of these sciences.

Contrarily, this is not the case. The makers of the architectural metaphors are not up-to-date with

the sciences from which these metaphors originate (Song et al 397). They tend to be behind by a

margin of about twenty years.

These crises are not wholesomely negative. The perfect instance of the good side of these

crises is that the schools that engage in architectural teaching have made a turn-around in their

teaching technics (Siozios, Harry, & Dimitrios 459). They engage in the innovations within the

architectural sector. These innovations have their basis on the approaches of design that are

highly formalistic and rely on the emerging computation of paradigms. Therefore, it implies that

the students are not just limited to the archaic forms of doing architecture. Neither are students

limited to becoming architects after their four-year study. This is a great opportunity to

professors and students to make a comparison of the emerging trends in relation to the pre-

existing forms of the architectural engagement and therefore make better decisions concerning

the best way of approach in their work. Further, this crisis provides a great opportunity to the
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students and all players in the architectural sector to seek continuously better ways of improving

the architectural field. Consequently, it gives one freedom to engage widely in research related to

the architectural field. As a result, one is not tied to being an architect after schooling. Hence,

this is a great example of how the crisis in the architectural sector can be turned around so that it

is no longer a crisis but it becomes beneficial.

Works Cited

Hein, Eckhard. "The crisis of finance-dominated capitalism in the euro area, deficiencies in the

economic policy architecture, and deflationary stagnation policies." Journal of Post

Keynesian Economics 36.2 (2013): 325-354.

Federici, Silvia. "From commoning to debt: financialization, microcredit, and the changing

architecture of capital accumulation." South Atlantic Quarterly 113.2 (2014): 231-244.

Song, Yongze, et al. "Trends and Opportunities of BIM-GIS Integration in the Architecture,

Engineering and Construction Industry: A Review from a Spatio-Temporal Statistical

Perspective." ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information6.12 (2017): 397.

Siozios, Kostas, Harry Sidiropoulos, and Dimitrios Soudris. "Architectures and CAD Tools for

3D FPGAs." Reconfigurable Logic: Architecture, Tools, and Applications 48 (2015):

459.