A Predictive Approach

This is the start of the Autumn Opera Season in Europe. Yes there is opera almost everywhere, but I am picking out Europe at the moment because that is where modern narrative dramatic singing we call 'opera' began after all. And for this post I wanted to look at something to do with large structural architecture associated with opera.

Now there are many things one might conclude about examining modern design as compared to design approaches of the past but I want to focus on the impact of computer-generated hypothetical visuals. In this mode, the human design decision-maker or design manager, matched what they saw with some internal aesthetic template, and then says 'yes' to one visual image in a vast series of them; 'we'll adopt that one...'

Inside the very modern Bastille Opera in Paris

In the past, the human designer internally considered an imagined concept against a different set of templates, which were not all visual alone, but consisted of idea frameworks and intangible base principles, not just iterations of pictures be they multi-dimensional or simple two-dimensional drawings.

What I would suggest is that the way in which humans think becomes characteristically different depending on such differences of approach - and that also includes the ability, or inability, to think using words alongside or instead of graphical images.

I could suggest that one reason that the upcoming schedule of appearances by the Russian-Ukrainian Anna Netrebko at the new 'Bastille Opera Building' rather than say the older Garnier Opera Theater, is to do with security issues.

The Bastille Opera was designed by the Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott.

And he is right at the top of modern architecture and designs very beautiful buildings. Without putting any pejoratives on it, the fact remains that modern architecture lacks the small detail and tiny intricate, perhaps ornate, design elements that old styles possessed - although one has to add that with the great modern exponents, you are looking at some considerable intellectual interplay of ellipsoids and regular polygons and clear, clean-faced surface geometry which seems to be a characteristic of this era's leading buildings.

New Ferrari Sp 38 -
an obviously computer assisted design.

My contention though remains that the approach endangers human thinking processes and limits them in what they are able to think and to predict - and the reason building architecture is possibly less fragile to the problems of computer-generated iterative approaches is that buildings are not moving in the way that cars, planes, pens, and similar kinetic mechanisms are. Yes, gravity, mass and void space also are considered in terms of 'dynamics' and conceptual motion, but the eventual product is a static thing like a statue, rather than a mechanism that creates friction due to actual motion. Buildings allow for a different pace of thought inside the mind of the architect and designer.

I say that modern people cannot predict their near-term future.

I say that they have missed the bleeding obvious and by a long way.

What happens in the future...?

Take the example of China - here we have an ego-driven dictator (quickly passed a law installing himself for life), running with the economic momentum of people who established the direction well before him, and whose mind he does not understand at all. It's entirely possible that with the death of Lin Biao in 1971, and the death not long afterwards (1976) of Zhou Enlai, that China has been in the hidden grip of a power-mad elite that bubbled along beneath the optimistic surface presented by people like Deng Xiaoping. ...Because the factual reality of Beijing politics is that all we have seen has been nothing but internal purges and fighting among themselves at the top, and a system that drove away clearly competent academics like Zhu Rongji from the top positions.

Today we have state-run propaganda and an obvious 'cult of Xi' afoot in China.

The end game to this story is crystal clear. It's a story that we are thoroughly sick of, having witnessed all of human history up until this moment - but, like any bad gambler, Xi no doubt thinks, 'but it will not happen to me.' We are beset by these types of characters walking the political stage, in such a way as they never have before; in the past, such people were more circumspect - Macron actually publicly equated himself to the Roman 'Jupiter.' 

I haven't heard Xi do similarly but then, I don't get as wide a range of reports from China, as I do from Europe. There is an ancient saying whose origin nobody knows - it is this: 'the god brooks none but himself to (show) overweening pride.'