Talk about the shift from modernism to postmodernism: Jenkins to Gehry; Las Lerup, etc.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, I worked in four architecture departments in north central Mexico, teaching architectural history and life drawing. I noticed then that many professors tended to exaggerate the importance of the concept of 'space' to the detriment of other aspects of architectural design and experience, such as materials, building techniques, the design of physical elements, symbolic aspects, etc. People said things like "Architecture is space." I prefered to think of a dichotomy, where material elements define space, and the design of space determines the nature and disposition of the elements, like pottery but more complex.
Lately I have been in contact with professors of architecture who have gone to the other extreme, denying the existence of space, citing evidence from physics that "space does not exist," only distances. This seems absurd to me, since the perception of space is fundamental to the human experience, in a phenomenological sense. This is the equivalent of telling students in the visual arts that color doesn't exist, when the qualitative experience of color is also fundamental to the experience of the world by most members of our species.
Both of these extreme views must be confusing to students who are trying to absorb the fundamental concepts upon which to build a personal view and praxis in this discipline.
Have other people had similar experiences? I am particularly interested to know more about the trend of denying the existence of space. Has anybody encountered this in their experience with architectural education?
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