Jencks

The Jencks reading has a quote that reads, “there is a combination of continuity and change which looks perplexing because our view of both the old and the new is altered,” (281). In class we briefly touched on the subject of how skylines almost bring together history and how they describe and define places. Last semester I saw this “mixing different styles,” (283) and saw very many combinations of old and new styles of archtecture, art, historical sites, ect. I went abroad on a program called “Semester at Sea” which takes 700+ college students and teachers in four months around the world on a ship to 13 different countries and four continents. We visited various places such as Brazil, India, China, South Africa, and Japan. Week after week it was new country, new language, new history, new culture, and new skyline. In a matter of a week I was walking under the skyline of Hong Kong, to the Forbidden City and Great Wall of China, to a Buddhist temple in Japan, and on the streets of Tokyo. All in this time I can recall so many mixing and hybridity of old and new styles that Jencks discusses. Near many of the temples and historical sites I have seen how much they have had to change these to keep up with our modern world, despite their important history. I recall many of the buldings, old or new, in Beijing have some sort of design that follows a traditional ancient Oriental pattern, where as a lot of their skyscrapers break this theme and challenge anything that we have ever seen with architecture before. I saw how the skyline of Hong Kong defines the city and how it reflects the importance of wealth and power is to the city. Overall, I guess I have almost experienced postmodernism, if that is possible, seeing so much of the “old” and the “new” and how they come together to make what we see and what we question.