Poetics of Sincerity

architects Janez Koželj, Martina Tomšić, Polona Filipič, Edo Wallner
project Memorial Chapel Pod Krenom in Kočevski rog, Slovenia
written by Aleš Vodopivec

 

Jean Baudrillard, one of the leading and most individual of thinkers of the 20th century, had already written in 1977 at the opening of the Pompidou Centre that it was “architecture of cultural disappointment… Where is the secret, the charm, the ritual, the meaning of this building? When techniques substitute for the reality of the world then that what is imaginative, dream-like, mystical disappears.” Architects today do not talk so much about techniques as they do of operativness, production, effects, marketing, branding their products, etc. In explaining their works they use the vocabulary of the new economy, the consumer society and the money world. Architecture follows the entertainment industry, fashion styles, and trends, and there is all the less art and culture. There is almost nothing of the dream-like, magical and mystical any more.