Metropolis

After watching the movie, it would give us (the people who live in today date), to have some idea about how the people in the past would think about the future. We can see their expectations about the future; these expectations in some way are similar to the world that we are living today and also different in some way. In the movie the city of metropolis, has a lot of skyscrapers and each of them were very tall, the creator of the movie would expect the city to expand vertically, which is similar to what it is today. The buildings in the city were made of only pure geometrical shapes, and each of them looks like a box. The urban planning of the city would be what the modern architects would expect to it be. This is a lot of different from today’s building, today we have a lot of buildings that is in different shapes other than only geometrical shapes. Also the materials that were used to build the buildings in the movie are a lot different from what we have today. Today the building were made of variety of materials, and many of the building were made of steel and glass. This maybe because of the limitation of the technology in the past, that would limit the perspective about the future of the people. Also in the movie, we can see that there is a clear division between the two societal classes. The upper societal class people are living on the ground and on the skyscraper, where as the people on the lower societal class have to live under the ground. The type or the style of the building in the movie would also reflect the type of the people who lives inside it. For example, the upper class people, the building would be a tall building and would shows the power and greatness, where as the type of the building where the workers are living in would be dull looking and machine like. In term of the life style, the upper class people were lively and enjoying the life, where as the people in the worker class has to work really hard and become like a machine. This is different from today’s world, where we have the real machine to work for us and there is no need for the people to become like a machine. In the movie the place that the workers are living has the very similar concept to the concept of the worker house that Le Corbusier invented. From this movie we can see that the modernism and the way that the modernist thinks in those days has a lot of influence to the people in those times, that why their expectations about the future in many ways seems to follows what the modernists expect the future to be.

arch history first assignment

After reading the book ‘From Bauhaus to our house’ there are things that I agreed with and disagreed with

- I do agreed with the concept of the modern architecture, where “form follows function”, this would make the building more useful than a luxury.

- The use of only small range of material that can be easily found, like steel concrete, glass is also a good idea. This would cut down the fancy and unnecessary cost.

- The use of only the white and grey colors for the buildings, this would make things simple, and this would improve the overall view of the city.

- Making the buildings out of the simple forms, would make the building to be more easy to be reproduced, it would cut out the unnecessary parts and this would make the building to be more suit to the normal people of the American society. This cut down the luxury and makes the building for the functions.

- Also the way that Mies Van de Rohe revealing the interior structure that were hidden inside the construction outside to decorate the building, this would give more interaction of the people to the surrounding, and it is a good way raising awareness of the architecture to the society.

- I also agreed with moving the architecture into a more conceptual way rather than just the form or craftsmanship. This would make the buildings more sophisticated, raise the quality of the architecture.

But there are also things that I do not agreed with

- the worker house, by making it dull, factory like, machine like, theoretically would make things look better, more in order and machinelike, but this doesn’t improve the experience or the quality of life of the workers.

- Making everything under the same theme make things repetition and in order, would make the world more boring. If a person move and see all the same kind of building all over the place, theoretically the whole city would be in order and beautiful, but in reality the experience that a person would get would not be very pleasing.

- To me I think architecture is something to do with human experience, therefore if a building doesn’t improve or create the any positive affect to the people then the building would be meaningless.