Not a Bilbao Effect; A Babel Effect

Talking about architecture nowadays from the perspective of an undergraduate college girl who happens to had read some of the books about contemporary architecture. Contemporer architecture itself had long lists down to the meaning but we can safely call it broadly as an architecture of the present day. I'm surfing on the internet, strolling around libraries and bookstore for collect data for my final task. I was taking a look at built and or conceptual building nowadays and subjectively think they're sort of had a Babel Effect in them.

If there are some of you who didn't know yet, let me begin with the Babel history. Babel was a group of people who had just free from slavery and decided to settle in the land where they stand. They wanted to build a tower so high it touch the sky, so high it meet their creator, God. They wanted to build a highest tower ever made by the mankind. They picture as a united and smart civilization but unfortunately arrogant. Long story short, in the middle of the tower construction, God who already seen how conceit the Babel people are mess up their language to the point they couldn't communicate well at all. Suddenly they spoke in different languages. When a man gave the other man a sack of sand when the latter asked for a sack of cement, they realized that the Babel tower project can no longer be continued. Furthermore, they stopped at the failing and miss communication stillness in them and started to go their own way. Their own different way to different corners of the earth and history has it, that was the beginning of different languages human had around the world.

Taking a reflection from the story, I started to feel that the propensity of nowadays architecture are they are made by the ego of the architect. What the architect wants. Based on what we wanted the community to be, an organization to active in, a social develop into and the building shape out of. We spend a little time analyze the impact society honestly want through our project. And how many society had broken by architecture? by something we create through demolish something we didn't like.

"The ambiguous, promiscuous, violent relation one has with architecture works a tortured admission: the seal releases by sealing: the sign effaces by designing. The signature of architecture expropriates - can no longer be thought of as being in term of presence. Architecture as no longer/as no/longer not. Beautiful Architecture Without Beauty"

- Daniel Libeskind, Countersign 1991

Beautiful architecture without beauty.