LISA YAMADA
Staff Writer
Architecture is moving away from the rational to the fantastic and free.
Contemporary architecture is becoming controlled chaos, where angles can jut awkwardly left or pointedly right, masses of concrete and glass can form bulbous, flowing structures. More than the aesthetics are changing, these experimental designs are also becoming increasingly efficient and environmentally friendly.
Green Design
Generation Y is known for environmental activism, a concept that has resonated within the floorboards and ceilings of many new functional structures.
With an emphasis on sustainability, a new focus on green design seeks to reduce the plume of environmental problems that inevitably arise in construction, renovation, operation, maintenance and demolition.
Although it’s different for every building that decides to go green, Alyssa Pitman of the Global Green Resource Center in Santa Monica Pitman said green building emphasizes energy efficiency, water conservancy, reducing emissions and protecting natural resources.
Many college campuses around Southern California are enacting programs to increase environmental awareness.
Pepperdine offers a diverse array of programs for students to actively get involved in improving the environment. Working with organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Tree People, students can physically take part in building homes that are environmentally friendly, and in planting trees, which allows nature to help remedy the pollution in cities.
Both University of Southern California and UCLA are also actively getting involved. UCLA has a center designated specifically toward increasing environmental awareness, and USC has a degree program dedicated to the environment. Realizing the growing need to maintain and restore a quality environment, USC offers both major and minor programs in environmental studies.
But creating a healthier environment isn’t the only benefit of green-designed buildings.
Colorado Court on Colorado Blvd., a green apartment complex in Santa Monica, proves that green-designed buildings can save people money. One of the first of its kind, Colorado Court is 100 percent energy efficient, and although it’s functional, it’s also beautiful by design. Sparkling blue solar panels, delicately glinting in the sun, cover the ocean-facing side of the building.
Sparing no expense for sustainability, even the landscaping at Colorado Court is water-efficient. The grass, suspiciously green and shiny, is artificial, and the shrubbery, mostly composed of cacti, requires very little watering. Energy and water efficient, like many green-designed buildings, Colorado Court is expected save tenants money.
Blobitecture
There has been an increase of computer-generated shapes and forms being built, said Robert Barrett, the manager at Hennessey and Ingalls, a bookstore that specializes in art and architecture.
With nearly every book on architecture passing through his store, Barrett has been able to see the trends in architecture over the past 15 years.
“If you can think it up on a computer,” he said, “you can probably build it, which wasn’t the case before,” Barrett said.
The widespread use of computers has changed the way architects are able to approach their designs. Generation Y is comfortable with technology, and can use the computer to design buildings previously thought not possible.
One of the new possibilities aided by computers is blob architecture. Amorphous forms that once seemed implausible are now possible. Although seemingly complex in form, with the aid of a computer, blobs became relatively easy to design.
Reflecting this strain of design that came to be known as blobitecture is the structure called “What Wall?” A bulging architectural feat bubbling over the side of its building, the structure called looks as if it will ooze off its center. But the swelling, globular mass of brick and slanted glass is hardened into place. The building is in the Conjunctive Points district, a project to redevelop a seldom-used industrial area into an art district in Culver City.
Designed in 1998 by Baby Boomer Eric Owen Moss, “What Wall?” is just one of the many architectural anomalies in the area.
These amoeba-shaped designs, bulging in form, seem to overflow into their surroundings. Like slugs oozing slowly along, they break traditional notions of symmetry or form.
It was in the 1980s and 1990s that new forms, like blobitecture, began pulling away from straightforward designs that were solely created to be functional. Soon, innovative designs, like blobitecture, began coloring the cityscape.
In a generation constantly seeking change and innovation, and less interested in the mundane nature of standard lines, Generation Y became interested in the novel designs of these blobs.
“Buildings that are straight up and down stifle creativity,” said sophomore Micah Martin. “The surface [of blob-designed buildings] is very interesting. It almost makes you want to touch it.”
A generation in constant flux, architecture is slinking steadily along, keeping pace with the patterns of these Generation Y trends.
03-01-2007