Playing with Architecture

Meaning is contingent. As well as our perception of things, it is impermanent. There is nothing that can actually be identified as 'forever'. Something that is sacred now, might become mundane tomorrow or in the next hundred years. These instances occurs a lot in art and architectural fields where artists and designers are always finding ways to surprise their audiences. Andy Warhol is one example of someone playing with this contingency with "profanity". His famous work, such as the Marilyn Monroe Pop Art was a sensation bringing someone who was a national star onto an ordinary canvas and exhibiting it so everyone, anyone, can have access to this celebrity. You will also have seen many of his works displaying very basic, mundane, and ordinary objects that you witness everyday. But because Warhol had established them as artworks it costs a lot more than what the real object sample originally cost and became a phenomenon with countless number of people crowded to have a look at a painting of what can be seen in the supermarket closest to your home, like campbell food cans. Another example is Jeff Koons' vacuum cleaners, again very banal objects placed inside a glass box, named a piece of art and the price of the vacuum cleaner rose to over ten million dollars. It is a sort of mockery in bringing people to pay attention on something that can even be seen in their houses or that they might use everyday. Both artists play with the meaning and perception of these common objects by embracing the absurdity of contemporary material art.

Profanity is even a more provocative issue in architecture, because of the cultural or religious values that a place or building possess, signs that evokes certain connections for people of that local area, for example a Wat or temple is a sign of sacredness for most Thais and Buddhists. Therefore, it is difficult to play with architecture without being offensive. A resort in Chiangmai that was designed and constructed with temple features and forms had raise an issue of appropriateness. Architecture can be 'played' with over its functions and meaning that exists over time. Most cases architects establish an unexpected or contradictory choice of design. The new Milstein Hall in Cornell has a contradictory function shift by putting the dome beneath its cantilevering structure. It is both a contrast and a blending of the new and old buildings. Dome is an architectural element placed at the highest point of the architecture it dwells on and is a visual prominence, that usually house sacred cultural and religious acts in the past, from Romans to Christians and the Byzantine period. Though situated underground and is understated than its usual signage quality, the dome is a sacred open space for critiques.