Copy + Paste

Architecture, in terms of both theory and function, is a medium difficult to transpose to the public domain. Between the eye of the architect and the eye of the laymen lies a startling disconnect that can cause frustration amongst many young designers – the buildings that seem to enthrall and captivate the everyday man the most, are those which can have little to no architectural significance. Shallow, pretty, and meaningless, these are the buildings that will not outlive their own era; these are the spaces that will be swept away with the spirit of the age, only to be replaced with tomorrow’s zeitgeist. Yet, while their forms may be tired, their organization muddled and overcomplicated, and their function basic, there is a reason so many of these copy+paste buildings exist today, and why they are so easily welcomed in the arms of an overzealous public. 

Take for example track housing, an epidemic that has particularly infected the Southern California area. One of the largest contributors to suburban sprawl, track housing is the epitome of copy+paste architecture.  The incessant waves of cookie-cutter facades and identical landscapes destroy any sense of uniqueness, identity, and place that have come to define the many cities that aged in eras prior to modernism and postmodernism. This destruction began in the age of the Industrial Revolution, which saw the rural population flow into the developing cities.  As people piled into these overpopulated spaces to embrace the progression of the mechanical age, they began to lose the sense of identity that was so evident in the villages from which they fled. The big city was a place of anonymity, a concept evident in Edward Munch’s  “The Scream.” The figure, standing alone on a sparsely populated bridge, represents the alienation and isolation that was brought upon by the Industrial Revolution. Almost a hundred years later, when suburban sprawl has led people back into these metaphorical villages from which they once so hurriedly fled, the seemingly apparent sense of community that should be fostered by such developments was instead replaced by a familiar sense of estrangement, loneliness, and a loss of self.  

Considering this, it would seem that such copy+paste architecture would be unwelcomed by the general populace. Who on earth would want to come home to the same dreading feelings that have plagued so many generations prior? And yet, these track housing projects dominate almost all new real estate that is currently being constructed in the SoCal area. So what about these buildings makes them so irresistible to the public? To put it simply, their biggest fault is also their biggest asset.  Each individual house itself carries no particular distinctiveness, no underlying sense of life and soul. They are not buildings that affect those inside. Rather, they are buildings that are affected by those who occupy them. These buildings are reduced to their most basic typologies –four walls, a pointed roof, well-manicured garden out front – and become the ideal image of HOME. Even though, from a design perspective, these houses may be aesthetically and architecturally lacking, their basic and instantly recognizable forms can draw from people memories of times gone by. People begin to look at these homes as manifestations of their pasts, and caught in the almost unavoidable cycle of familiarity, find it the ideal place to build their futures. 

The idea of copy+paste is not foreign to the architectural sphere either. Some of the most famous architects heralded the idea of multiplicity in design. Le Corbusier himself, one of the most prominent architects of the 20th century and the forefather on modernist design, crafted the majority of his projects as samples that, in an ideal world, would be duplicated and rebuilt thousands of times over. In fact, one of Corb’s most radical ideas was to wipe out Paris in its entirety and replace it with a series of strictly-gridded high rise towers. And more recently, Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette in France explored the concept of copy+paste arch, with a series of programless red structures dubbed “follies.” These spaces carried no historical precedent, and like the track houses, act as a blank canvas for the experiences that occur within. Unlike track housing though, the work of Corbusier and Tschumi, although technically falling into the category of copy+paste architecture, explore new typologies that at the time, have never been seen before. The forms may have been nearly identical to one another, but they were a radical departure from that architecture that was prominent in their eras. In this sense, the copy+paste buildings they created were able to illicit a sense of identity and brand that is lost in the familiar forms of modern track housing.