Sunday, 22 March 2009

When did we lose our child like ability to see the world?

Currelty doing my research on Hundertwasser House in Vienna.

I'm responsible for looking at societies' response to it's construction and development over all these years since it's finishing in 1986.

I came across this article and it made me wonder why art and architecture had to be imbued with all these complex ideologies in order to have depth and culture. When did we begin to feed ourselves with the notion that because it has many folds of complexity and implicit meanings, that is what makes it beautiful and deeply mysterious?

A child never thinks like that. The world is beautiful in its own right no matter the colour, form or subject matter. Here's the opening sentence to the article:

"I picked up my niece at Vienna International Airport wondering what I would do with her. She is 22 years old, on her first visit to Vienna, and isn't interested in anything. You probably have relatives like this."

Which made me think a lot about why adults struggle so hard to find interesting things to do with people a generation below them. (It's not just Macdonald's Happy Meal / a playground or a concert that serves a growing child's burst of imaginative creativity, is it?)

It also reminded me of a TED video on "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" that mw urged me to watch awhile ago.

The article ended with this sentence:

"Even my niece was drawn to this magical place, waking up in surprise from her sleepy life to discover that there was at least one museum she actually liked."

Is it time architects go back to basics and think about how our inner childs look at buildings of tomorrow?

3 comments:

Maoshan said...

Kids often see much more than we do.
Observing kids is very interesting, and they often ask a lot of questions, like my four year old cousin! She always ask unexpected questions, like "Why the safety buckle on a taxi is around the body, but only around the waist on a minibus - while there's no safety buckle on a bus"

I am bringing a picture story book to work a day, some architects here don't understand the stories!!

Jayveean said...

i love hundertwasser!

GC said...

"We find ourselves growing, or indeed educated out of creativity."

The theory-processing industry is hardly not held responsible I believe.

And I still gasp at a charismatic orator who is talking from 2006, increasingly unsettled for the truth in it.