Day: June 1, 2009

My late night insomniac generic thoughts

Notes on the future of the region

It is immediately apparent that this structure is composed of a formless heap of fragments colliding one against the other. The whole area between the Tiber, the Campidoglio, the Quirinale, and the Pincio is represented according to a method of arbitrary association (even though Piranesi accepts the suggestions of the Forma urbis), whose principles of organization exclude any organic unity.

Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth – Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1987), p. 34.

Tijuana began as a utopian ideal, its origin as a city rooted in concepts of modernism from the late 19^th century. Its past is modern – similar to NY, LA, Las Vegas or any other 20th century city. Downtown Tijuana is quasi modern and pseudo utopian. A city that simulated universal ideals that in the present remained obscure by the distopian path of postmodernism. Yet being modern (or pesudo modern) is not a fault, but an attribute that in the mist of globalization could generate a new “mood” for the city. As some say, maybe modernity is unfinished business. For Rem Koolhaas the generic is a consequence of the failure of modernism – junk space. Yet, a different kind of generic could appear –the search for an ethics in plurality and the ideal of architecture can become a premise for the construction of a correlative urban form. A Piranesian modernism is what Tijuana is all about.