McGuigan 2/3

The line that most interested me in the article “Love the New Skin You’re In” is the following: “we’ve begun to value our midcentury architectural heritage in the same way we’ve snapped up Eames chairs or George Nelson bubble lamps. It’s not just buildings by such textbook giants as Frank Lloyd Wright that seem precious – there are movements to save old neon-lit motels and those over-the-top ‘googly’ –style fast-food joints from the 50’s.”  Just as some fashion does, architecture can also come back into style.  Art styles, fashion, products and architecture come in and out of style so fast that people are always obsessed with getting what is new and trendy.  People push things to the side that they may have once loved just because they think these things no longer go with the time and there is something better that has been built or introduced to the market. Years later people become nostalgic for the things that they once loved and probably forget why they stopped using these things in the first place. These things, as well as architecture, come back from the past.  There are pieces of architecture built in modern time that have influences from past decades or are supposed to look like replicas of a structure that would have existed in a past decade.  An example of this would be the popular chain restaurant Johnny Rockets that is fashioned to look like an old dinner from the 50’s.  Another example would be how many of the homes in Celebration, Florida and designed to look like they were from the Victorian era although they were just recently built.  I believe that these are examples of what Venturi was talking about in regards to tradition reinterpreted. Although the examples I gave are pretty similar to the architecture of past decades they also have a lot of modern elements that come from this day in age. The have a historical continuum but also have been reinvented to work in the modern world.