GAM 04

GAM 04

Emerging Realities
GAM 04

If the gods are no longer gods, if the sacred grove has become a simple group of trees, then the twilight of the gods soon becomes a twilight of idols. Today, architectural modernism must be considered as reflective modernism. Its issues are no longer necessarily history, truth, negation and salvation, but rather contingency, uncertainty, ambivalence and irony. The “real” and the “imaginary” also engage here in a wide variety of intricate links, that cannot necessarily be brought down to the common denominator of “presence”, let alone to the common denominator of “design”. It is not enough to see architecture not only as design and spectacle, seeking to bridge the gap between theory and practice. But the foremost question is, when we talk about practice, what kind of practice do we mean? When we talk about realities, what kind of new realism do we mean? Numerous articles in this issue set out to answer these questions. No longer are these answers dressed up as “grand narratives”. Rather they talk about de-radicalization and a zero point. But this zero point is a point of transition. After the post-critical, a new concept of criticism. Emerging realities.

Cover Illustration: Bas Princen, 2007

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