New Forms Taschen 071

Holi is one of the morę thoughtful contemporary architeas. He has written, "As in Ovid's Metamorphoses. 'Knowledge of the world means dissolving the solidity of the world." So in the paradigm shifts of today all materiał heaviness seems to dis-appear. The devices propelling this world of information flow utilize non-material impulses in a visual field. Computeraided design, motion control, virtual reality, magnetic resonance imaging, Computer animation, synthetic holography - to name a few of the present means - are all rapidly developing vectors of information. which are characterized by motion and light.

"The horror of current events i$ projected into domestic living rooms every-where. Likewise, a soulless fashionable commercialism characterizes many of the arts. As we allow ourselves to be victims of unconscious habits, skipping from ges-turę to finał image, we leap over the simmering of feelings and thoughts that carries a slow developing intensity of ideas and forms and their interior spatial conse-quences.

An architeaure fusing these worlds of flow and difference is inconsistent by naturę. As the dif ferences of individual circumstance are essential, this architeaure must accept Emerson's admonition, 'Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.' Rather than conforming to technological or stylistic uniformity, this architeaure would be open to the irrationalities of place. It would resist the homogenizing tendencies of standardization... A new architeaure must be formed that is simul-taneously aligned with transcultural continuity and with the poetic expression of individual situations and communities."¹⁵

Pjges 76/77

Schneider ♦ Schumacher Info Box

Berlin. Ccrmany, 1995

Set up above the ground as though to emphasize its tempor ary naturę, the Info Box is also highty yisible becausc of its color and its situation in the midst of the Potsdamer Platz construction area. It catls, on the one hand. on a vocabulary related to shipping contamers. and on another level brings to mind some contemporary sculpture.

76 US8AN StRATECItS