The Story: Relevance of Modernism

Relevance of Modernism

As Charles Jencks acknowledged, modernism would still be relevant in the postmodern era. As the model of the two converging worlds illustrates, urbanization and the path of classical, modernist and postmodernist architecture helped to establish a way of thinking based on the arts and sciences such as geometry and mathematics. It has become tacit knowledge to people living in the modern world. We take for granted the reinforcement of geometric shapes in the plates we eat from, the doors we walk through and the windows through which we gaze upon the world around us.

For the most part, the modern world has not yet understood the application of this thinking. Many people around the world live in poor rural conditions where such things are a luxury. More importantly, their children are not exposed to early childhood education that now re-enforces visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning. And even if they did, the home surrounds and living spaces to which these children will be exposed to are more akin to natural architecture with its free flowing lines and curves. This reinforces a different sense of aesthetic values that are very different to the modern geometric views and mathematical decoration shaped from classical architecture. This in turn, plays a significant role in the difference in thinking between the two converging worlds.

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