The Om Factor

Remarks from the Fray:

September 11 couldn't help but have an effect on architecture, but I think the "OMchetecture" movement is not a final form. I think it's more like the state of numbed shock that follows a trauma, before assimilation and analysis set in. Daniel Liebskind's winning design for the WTC site is a freeze-frame of Gehry-style architecture's exit wound. The plan looks like nothing so much as the splintered crystalline fragments of the original towers. Soaring but jagged, laden with mournful symbolism at every turn, it directs your focus inward to a center that no longer exists. It is, in retrospect, a design that looks surprised. The present wave in architecture probably is influenced by the fate of the World Trade Center. When the greatest of buildings go up, the whole world knows it. A kind of dialogue forms, between the building on one side and its globe-spanning body of observers on the other. The icy, titanic geometry of the World Trade Center was a statement, and a challenge, to everyone else. It was the quintessential unmovable object. And it sent a message. The idea was floated, more than once, to simply rebuild the towers as they were. Nobody dared to. Liebeskind's design makes a different kind of statement. Like the competing designs (a pair of tic-tac-toe grids meant to symbolize "hands clasped in prayer"; two smoke-colored towers crookedly swirling into the sky; an empty, skeletal image of the vanished towers), his proposal screams "VICTIM" from its every surface. If the contest was held again today, I don't think any of those would win, either. They're not a correct expression of how we feel. Post-Iraq, Post-Afghanistan, we've passed the hurt along, and don't feel like that anymore. But OMchitecture's not a reflection of feeling. It's a reflection of Novocained numbness. It's reminiscent of modern architecture, but in its original form modern architecture was exuberant. . . this. . . isn't. It seems all about not being noticed, and not engaging in dialogue because, feeling nothing, it has nothing to say. Maybe it's a stage of the process. . . or maybe it's just the state of relaxation after bloody catharsis. But it makes me almost glad the economy is faltering. We shouldn't build too much while we're in this mood.

--Thrasymachus

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"Omm" is probably not a major new movement, but "Wow" architecture was no major movement, either. What seems to be regained in the buildings in this slideshow is a recognition of the importance of interior spaces--most of the examples cited were very inviting. One could definitely see some fright or a retreat into comfort in their exterior design--as well as a desire to avoid dividing people--but I also think they have more in mind. These buildings don't seem to run from the realities of the post-9/11 world: they remain very modern, and avoid trying to evoke a less vexing time by retreating into self-conscious retro or classicism; they also reject any thought of nihilism or cultural relativism (no multi-culti Benneton goop) and are also not as frivolous as many of the pre-9/11 "wow" buildings, which may look quite kitschy soon. The "Om" buildings in the slideshow contain some really wonderful interior spaces that invite exploration, meditation and interaction with other people, things the "Wow" buildings often didn't bother with (Wright's Guggenheim is a lousy place to view art). Ironically, the "Om" buildings, whose exteriors reflected a very temporary sense of trauma after 9/11, may stand for a long time because of the wonderful interior spaces they ended up creating.

--CaptainRonVoyage

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(8/7)

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