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| The interior of Central World - endless space |
Bigness is unlike the past manifesto that I’ve read, it does
not burst out nor does it is clear of its support for a specific style or
movement. To be honest, it is quite ambiguous but in a way, due to its uniqueness,
Bigness became memorable and easily noticeable in real life once fully
understood. However, in my own understanding, Koolhas and his concept of
Bigness is different in that unlike Mies or Corbu, who created a particular
“genre”, Koolhas didn’t create Bigness, in fact he claimed that “it is there”
just like Mt.Everest.
Koolhas pointed out that there are five main points that
define Bigness, 1. The building is beyond a certain mass, when a building
becomes big. 2.The establishment of “mechanical connections” such as the
elevator. 3. The façade can no longer reveals what happens inside, which came
along with the separation of the interior and exterior. This can be sum up as
“when architecture reveals, bigness perplexes”. 4. The mere size of the building
and lastly 5. Bigness is no longer a part of any urban tissue, in other word,
there’s no relation to the site or the context what so ever, it creates its own
context.
Thus, from this, such buildings that can be associated with
this concept can be found here in central Bangkok. Since Bigness has this
automatic label as being “American”, countries such as Thailand, which received
its strongest western influence from the U.S is bound to have some “Bigness” on
display as well. For example the Paragon, a clear example of “Bigness”, from
the outside, there’s no relation to the inside at all and the interior like a
mystery if you’ve never enter the complex. Another real life example would be
Central World where the complex would consumes you, separating you from the
outside, lures you into its vast continuous space, entertaining, better yet,
capturing you for hours. Once, inside, the essence of the whole building could
not be captured in a single shot, the building seems endless, not only because
of its physical size but also the natural structure, where it could just grow
and extend further (mass-produced and simple construction of column and beams)
bordering to the concept of “Junk Space” as well. There’s also the absence of
time once you’re inside, this absence may due to the lack of connection between
the interiors and exterior, in fact, most casinos in the U.S represent this
ideology of Bigness as a way to lure its customers as well. The similarity
between all of these buildings of Bigness is that they all created their own
context, not the site but the architecture itself was the one that created
this. While Paragon and Central World might relate to the location of being in
central Bangkok, there’re nothing specific in the relationship between the
architecture and the locations. In other word, Paragon and Central World are
almost like their own cities in a way, they can be put anywhere, as there’s no
relation to the context of the surrounding.
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| Siam Paragon - Bigness, no relation with the surrounding context nor does the interior and exterior have any clear connection. |
After reading the text it does leaves me thinking, wondering
of real life examples that this “theory” of Bigness could be applied to and
indeed I’ve found some and despite my early dislike of this text, I started to
understand, not fully but at least, it is a start. I believed that this
partially due to Koolhas way of representing his viewpoint towards Bigness. I
felt that his reaction is very neutral that I could hardly recognize if he
preferred the ideology or even agree to its or not, thus due to this ambiguity
in his writing, my reaction and response ended up not as vivid and clear.
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