The Emergent Rules

After reading “The Emergent Rules,” I was definitely left a little confused but tried to make sense of it. The way I interpreted the reading was that architecture is constantly reinventing itself similar to the way postmodernism is constantly changing. I connected the rules to the concepts we have been discussing lately in class. For instance urban contextualism represents the proper balance between two elements. The reading gave the examples of public to private, work to living, short blocks to city grid. I related these examples to binary opposition, the influence that one thing has over the other. For the first rule which concerns beauty and composition, I thought of Roland Barthes and his description of the pleasure we get from the text, however, connected the aesthetic pleasure we get from seeing a piece of art or architecture instead of text. Rule two suggests the influences we get from cultural and political pluralism. Jencks states, “ …it is tied to very specific functions and symbolic intentions” (pg. 283). It discusses eclecticism as “disturbing and unresolved” no matter how diverse the audience is (pg. 283). Rule number four, is categorized by anthropomorphism. This is a term used that is known as incorporating ornate details and abstract ideas such as including silhouettes of faces or pieces of the body into their buildings. Number five describes how material is recycled from the past and passed off as the present. There is an emphasis of rhetoric and returning to previous ideas which I thought was a good way to describe postmodernism as well. Number seven talks about the collaboration of difference and opposites and using them as an advantage. Number eight was interesting because it incorporated the use of semiotics and how we continually make new meaning for things. Once again I think semiotics plays an extremely important role in postmodernism. Number nine discussed returning to traditional ideas and reinterpreting them. “Many ways old forms are given new meanings to justify their existence” (pg. 291). This concept of creating new meaning correlates to semiosis and postmodernity as well. Number ten and eleven I got the same kind of interpretation from each. I thought they both were similar in the goal to bring back figures of the past and the adaptation of the revival. This idea I connected with our views on religion. These were some of the things I got out of this reading, I could be completely wrong so if anyone wants to help me out a little bit feel free!