I Love Lucy

This includes a story of her mother who waltzed into a social service agency dressed in an impressive outfit to set straight an issue that her elderly neighbor had trouble with over the past year in a single day (Cottom 1012). To elaborate, she justifies why poor people ordinarily make the choices they do, while conversely questioning them. In her text, “The Logic of Stupid Poor People”, Cottom declares that “We want to belong” (1013). I agree that we want to belong, if you belong you are safe. At one point, her first professional job manager decided she was accordingly “. . . too classy to be on the call center floor.” (Cottom 1014) This proves that putting money into a brand name suit can have a positive influence on others, in this case she gained a high pay raise and her workload was decreased. If poor people spend money on classy outfits, the rich people will perceive them as their own.

“Outlet shopping is perhaps luxury’s greatest ploy to get its goods into the hands of anyone and everyone,” (Thomas, Pg. 246). “But outlet shopping is the antithesis of the flagship, the antithesis in fact, of luxury itself.” (Thomas, 2007. Pg. 247) Columnist Karen Heller explained to Thomas after visiting Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in New York, “The clothes were marked down, picked over and repeatedly pawed, the opposite of how they were originally displayed. Their power to enchant seemed minimized, even at a third the price, smashed together like produce in a storage hold.” Thomas explains how luxury merchandise is purely just that, leftover “luxury” products: overproduction. No longer does luxury embody the experience of pampering nor does it signify class and wealth. Some

Geoffrey Wright, an El Paso architect, describes Henry Trost’s grand design of El Paso High School incorrectly as a “renaissance revival” in a 1991 article in the Austin American-Statesman. Although he was mistaken in this observation, he made another observation that was correct, which is that the eastern façade of El Paso High School’s six humongous columns, on top of it’s bases and adorned with acanthus leaves, is most definitely a design of the Classical Revival style. He also went on to state, “[T]he style adopted the best parts of Greek and Italian architecture centuries later.”

There was a time when social classes were most easily identified through material goods and possessions. Whether wealth was gained through inheritance or hard work, it was the luxury items that made the most visible and tangible statement regarding a person’s social status. Men could rely on a large house or expensive car to proclaim the success they had earned. It was much more common to see women adorned in jewels, designer clothes, and furs as symbols of her upper class status. The extravagance of a woman’s appearance was a reflection of the success of her husband, so it was natural to indulge her desire for expensive material possessions.

Question 1. Choose an architect or practice whose work is covered by or relevant to this course and discuss critically one or more of their design projects or drawings or urban proposals as precedent case-studies. Selectively situate this work in relation to their body of work, and against the practices and concerns of the period. Focus on the architectural qualities of a specific key aspect of the design of the projects. Selectively consider how they might relate to the historical situation, cultural values, theoretical concerns and design practices of the time. This may involve a selective analysis of compositional design practices, material fabrication production and the experiential reception of built outcomes of the projects.

This essay will focus on how those works are informed by both regional and international course. In this context, Sydney Ancher and his strong Miesian simplicity as well as Peter Muller’s affinity with Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture principle.

The eighteenth-century city was a place in which actual physical space was subjected to a complex mental layering of conceptual spaces, focusing on the design theory of architects as Boullee and Durand, with his charts. Which legacy was continued later on through the architecture of Paul Philippe Cret, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn, some of the most outstanding modern architects of 18th-19th century. Furthermore, distinctive features of neoclassicism and outlines

In the sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond, airing on CBS in the late 90’s and early 2000’s we see an nuclear white family with two parents, two kids, grandparents, and a set of other relatives. The target audience appears to be within the age of 18-35 for this time period in comparison to other shows such as Frazier or Will and Grace. The family is very middle class oriented as far as the home, clothing, and jobs of the characters go. They live in the suburbs and are never too hurt for money. Playing into this story also comes the subtle humor and remarks at sexual acts that happen very often throughout each scene. However, you never actually see these sexual acts take place and there is no point of uncomfortable actions throughout this

Joseph Paxton, a prominent garden-architect, working in conjunction with engineers Fox and Henderson Paxton submitted their idea. Although their design was entered late it was almost instantly adopted. It was so cost-effective; the fair’s planning committee had to accept his proposal. The overall design resembled a greenhouse, as he had grown

Material displacement, absurd formation and facadism, creates discussion, challenges the viewers and provokes polarised opinions. Architects within the current era, are expressive, artistically driven, technologically aided and therefore experimental. These factors have encouraged outrageous designs and statements. The outcomes have provoked controversy, which are expressed through various mediums, such as media, articles, debates and lectures. An architect that has created many controversial buildings, is non other than Frank Gehry. The individual whose works are considered between pragmatic professionalism and radical experimentation. One building that will be further articulated and examined, is the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). A building spawned from a sketch, and an idea of a tree house and as Gehry himself said “A growing, learning organism with many branches of thought, some robust and some ephemeral and delicate”. The intention of the design was to develop it inside-out, which has undoubtedly shaped the branding and marketing efforts of the school. The greatest controversial statement made towards the building, is its absurd and somewhat organic display of a ‘fabric’ like, brick facade. A facade that has been sculpted in a way that has never been attempted quite like that before. All to achieve the concept of ‘movement’, a fabric like quality with a

Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the most important architects of the twentieth century; with his buildings and his ideals of an organic architecture, he got to be known by everyone. Who does not know about the Fallingwater? This building is considered his masterpiece and represents all his principles. For him, organic architecture was designing by integrating a building to its site and context, and he was able to achieve it with most of his projects. However, Wright’s career did not started like this; he went through a lot of complex periods that ended consolidating his ideals as an architect. Moreover, each of these phases had different kind of influences that Wright took and learned from. Therefore, it’s important to acknowledge how outside architecture and social factors influenced his “Organic” idea.

On his book on Modern Architecture, Curtis writes that modern architecture was faulted for it’s “supposed lack of ‘recognizable imagery’” towards the end of the 1970s. This statement supports the idea of Jencks’ double coding where architects must now make

In the 1950s large retail stores such as Marks and Spencer’s adapted their clothing specifically through capitalistic ideologies for the consumer. A final way this poem shows

The East Facade of the Louvre is hard to define its style because of Perrault’s theory and Le vau’s influence. A historian, Blunt, argues that the facade shows the Baroque and Classical style at the same time. He wrote, “The Colonnade has no exact parallel in French architecture, but it is the first example in this art of the style of Louis XIV. In certain respects it is Baroque: the scale of the Order, the depth given by the free-standing colonnade, the variety of rhythm due to the coupling of the columns. In other ways it is more strictly classical than earlier French work: the clear and simple definition of the masses, the straight line of the front (in contrast to the curves of most of the Italian designs and even Le Vau’s first scheme), the severe and almost unbroken entablatures, and the purity of detail in the Order and the mouldings.”

In relation to this the book ’Le Corbusier ‘by Kenneth Frampton (British architect, critic and historian, born: 20/11/1930) also holds a link within some of the opinions, movements and beliefs of Le Corbusier. Focusing from the early stages of Corbusier’s life to his last works, we find ourselves indulging in facts and creations of Corbusier himself such as the Dom-ino. As featured in the previous reading ‘towards a new architecture’ Corbusier talks about the engineers aesthetic ‘two things that march together and follow one from the other one at its full height, the other in an unhappy state of retrogression’. After some research in to this I was lead to the dom-ino design (image above). The dom –ino was an early example of the engineers aesthetic and became the theoretical basis of most of Corbusiers houses up to 1935 and extended on a scale much larger than the two story house. The dom-ino led to a number of prototype buildings such as the United De Habitation. The design allows the concept of the free facade, The pieces were to be pre-fabricated allowing the construction time of the design to be reduced and thereby a product of Corbusier’s application of