AsToldByGinger, Lyotard

In Lyotard’s reading, he brings up many different theories of many theorists we have already read. He questioned them in an attempt to bring to light certain points that I don’t feel I completely understand. For example, Lyotard states that “Habermas thinks that if modernity has failed, it is in allowing the totality of life to be splintered into independent specialties which are left to the narrow competence of experts while the concrete individual experiences ‘desublimated meaning’ and ‘destructured form’, not as a liberation but in the mode of that immense ennui which Baudelaire described over a century ago” (39). Lyotard then goes on to pose his own question, “My question is to determine what sort of unity Habermas has in mind. Is the aim of the project of modernity the constitution of sociocultural unity within which all the elements of daily life and of thought would take their places as in an organic whole? Or does the passage that has to be charted between heterogeneous language games - those of cognition, of ethics, of politics - belong to a different order from that?” (39). Although I understand that Lyotard is attempting to create his own opinions on the subject, I’m not quite sure if he ever answers them or the direction that he is taking.

Later in the reading though, Lyotard references another theorist, Kant, and states “Kant himself shows the way when he names ‘formlessness, the absence of form’, as a possible index to the unpresentable” (44). This statement reminded me of the Macherey reading, in which he talked about intertextuality and the importance of the gap - that which is not seen.

Although I could relate this statement back to previous knowledge, I had a hard time comprehending the reading as a whole and to understand Lyotard’s central point. I look forward to Wednesday’s discussion and connecting the points that he is making.  

27Percent, Lyotard

          Lyotard's What is Postmodernism made little sense to me. I am very confused on the concept he is actually getting at in this piece and could not decipher or try to understand a certain thing to blog about. I do know that Lyotard was mostly reiterating what other scholars have said about the arts of modernism and postmodernism, but it did not help me to understand what he was actually saying here. It would definitely benefit me if we were going to have a class discussion on this reading tomorrow, but hopefully we will have time on Wednesday's class.

         Lyotard did talk about how we are all interconnected culturally across the world. For example, he says that we listen to reggae music, we wear Parisian perfume in China and people where retro clothes in Hong Kong (42). I believe what he is saying here is that globally, we all use products of one another's culture and that "eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture" (42).

Post Class-Habermas

I really enjoyed the piece by Habermas that we discussed in class on Wednesday. Some of the key terms we pulled out of his reading were: modern, avant-gardism, traditionalism vs. Avant-gardism, and finally, culture. The two that really stood out to me were modern and the word culture. They both related to a bigger idea that resonated with me during the class presentation, the idea that Habermas was arguing that we always want history to look better, so we end up re-writing it; in a sense, re-writing the past kind of through our own eyes or how we want others to see something. A quote from his piece that relates to this idea is "the relation between modern and classical has definitely lost a fixed historical reference." (99) When I heard this idea in class about wanting to make history look better, I automatically connected this to the debate in Texas over whether or not slavery should be included in their U.S. history textbooks. I went to school in Texas up until the 4th grade and I personally do remember learning about some aspects of slavery however now, a handful of rather conservative people in Texas quietly plotted to rewrite history and reshape the education -- and the minds -- of nearly five million young Texans. They even tried to remove Thomas Jefferson from a list of American history's key thinkers. He was one of the founding architects of the modern philosophy of church/state separation, as well as the author of that obscure document called the Declaration of Independence. So naturally he had to go. That move failed. In 2010, Texas spent about 1 billion dollars buying books for their school districts. Book orders that large tend to influence, if not dictate, what goes onto the pages in those textbooks not just in Texas, but nationwide. You'd think that conservatives who advocate for smaller government would cringe at the thought of allowing state government bureaucrats to use their power to brainwash the minds of young students. But I guess they missed that part of their neo-con class, which relates to Bell's piece on Neoconservatives. It is just so crazy to me to think that a small group of people could end up changing the way an entire state's young population views U.S. History, especially the Civil War, and not learn about slavery. It is mind-blowing that they have plan to leave out something that is so crucial to our country's history.

Post-class: Habermas

Habermas was very interested in the historical context of modernity. He claims that “the project of modernity has not yet been fulfilled,” meaning that modernity can never be completed because it is always evolving. He talks about the conflicts of traditionalism and Avant-gardism and how these factors affect modernity. The Avant-garde refers to people or works that are innovative and original, and push the boundaries of what is culturally accepted as the norm. It breaks from traditionalism and pushes us forward into the future. Traditionalism is perhaps of equal importance, because it anchors us to the past and gives us perspective of what is considered new.

Habermas says, “The relation between ‘modern’ and ‘classical’ has definitely lost a fixed historical reference” (99). When we are thinking about the past (especially when we ourselves have not experienced it), we must be very aware that there could be factors shaping our view. History has long been documented, but by who? Books, cinema, television, radio, and the internet give us information about the past, but these sources are by no means unbiased. Revisions in history (intentional, and unintentional; subtle and, at times, unsubtle) can be dangerous in our cultural understanding of the past. The past is a very strong influence of the future, but we how we perceive the past is sometimes inaccurate, since we ourselves have not experienced it. We must also be careful about nostalgia, because this feeling of fondness can misshape our understanding of the past. History has a way of repeating itself, and in the fast paced world we live in, it is easy to forget the lessons the past has taught us.

AsToldByGinger, Post 9/25 Habermas

After our last class, and discussing Habermas’ “Modernity - An Incomplete Project,” I felt that many connections could be made between our modern tendencies with technologies with the “the cult of the new,” (99) and “hyperstimulated sensitivity” (101). 

I felt that the cult of the new was very relatable to American society today, especially among my generation who is constantly craving the next new phone, upgrade, car, tablet, laptop, headphones, TV’s, speakers etc. As a whole my generation never seems to be satisfied with the current, always eager and looking ahead - waiting for the release date of the next thing. For example, this past week Apple released the new IPhone 5s and 5c, and broke records with selling 9 million in the first week alone. Apples CEO said, “The demand for the new iPhones has been incredible, and while we've sold out of our initial supply of iPhone 5s, stores continue to receive new iPhone shipments regularly. We appreciate everyone's patience and are working hard to build enough new iPhones for everyone." 

Apple also released their new mobile operating system iOS 7 around the same time in which over 200 million devises have already upgraded to the software which Apple stated was the “fastest software upgrade in history.” The pure speed at which consumers take in, and are so excited about these new products exemplifies the cult of the new that we’re living in.

I believe we, as a generation of millennials, are also overly stimulated in which the media helps to perpetuate this cycle. They are always informing us of the masses of people that are jumping on board to get this new said technology and are helping to create a bandwagon effect. They glorify the “newness” of upcoming technology and expensive consumer products by running their campaigns and then proceeding to create their own headlines about them.

Post 9/25 Habermas

         I don't quite understand Habermas very well; he touches on many different areas of theory that didn't make much sense to me. But a certain quote from Habermas stuck out to me during the reading and our class discussion. "The cult of the new... does more than express the experience of mobility in society, of acceleration in history, of discontinuity in everyday life"(99) describes the notion of our relationship to this fast-paced world. New technology, innovation, and ideas come about on a daily basis and within our world these things and people are constantly progressing rapidly while causing a disconnect with our everyday lives. This concept relates to a project I just did in my CMC 320 class: the political economy of body and food. 
          I created a culture jam of a 100 Calorie Packs advertisement and changed the name of the brand to 100 Seconds Packs to reflect how quickly our society consumes food. I made a parody of the brand name to compare to how convenient and accessible food has become and how food is made time friendly now a days. Food such as processed and packaged snacks, fast food restaurants, frozen microwaveable meals and fast casual food (Chipotle) are products of our time-consumed society. What confuses me about these snacks is that they are not that healthy, they are just packaged in smaller serving sizes and our society consumes them within seconds of opening the bag. I used Photoshop to altar the rest of the wording on the box from “Baked Snacks” to “Fast Snacks” and “Sensible Solutions” to “Speedy Solutions” to represent how quickly this food can be consumed on the go. I then altered the rest of the text to say “100 Seconds, 3g of Fat and 0 Time Wasted” to parody how our society wants to be able to do everything as quickly as possible.

Benjamin: Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin wrote this piece in the 1930's, a time when new technologies, like the photograph and the cinema, were gaining popularity and an alarming rate. Benjamin worried about the effects these technologies would have on the culture of art, specifically on how we perceive and think about an original work. He stated, "the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity" (39), meaning that we, as the audience, become obsessed with this concept of authenticity. With the technology to flawlessly reproduce an artwork, the original becomes important, not because of its artistic expression, but rather its monetary value.

This idea reminds me of when I went to China Town in New York City. On every street corner, there were four or five people trying to shuttle me into their store to look at knock-offs of designer purses, wallets, sungrasses, jewelry, watches, etc. It was obvious that some of the cheaper bags were made with substandard materials, which therefore effected the price, but some of the better quality knock-offs seemed to be nearly identical to an authentic designer bag. Consumers are willing to pay thousands of dollars for a real designer bag because it is name-brand and authentic, even though the knock-off version looks almost exactly the same for a fraction of the cost.



In class, Dr. Cummings passed around a recent news article from the Orlando Seminole about visitors coming from far and wide to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris. Being arguably the best known and most visited work of art in the world, one would think that when people get the chance to see the Mona Lisa in person, they would admire the individual brush strokes and small details that you would only truly be able to notice in person. However, as stated in the article, visitors of the Mona Lisa are more concerned with capturing the moment with a good photo rather than living the moment and admiring the actual painting. This makes me wonder if people who take photos the Mona Lisa do so in order to document the experience for their own personal memory, or if they take pictures to show their friends and family that they saw the Mona Lisa, as if it were a check off their bucket list.

Higgins-Post Class(9/29)

The last class we briefly discussed the concept of media and its implications on society as a whole. I feel that when the "news" is reported the idea of negativity seems to be the only thing present. It is rare to see positive things on the TV now a days. Why is that though? In my opinion the new stations and whomever has the decision of what to report feels that the things that get the public's attention are not positive acts but those that are looked down upon in our culture. When the shooting in Newton, CT happened I remember how the TV stations did a terrible job at reporting the tragedy. They were way to intrusive on the families of the victims, and they just seem to be giving the shooter more attention than anything else. This person deserved no attention, just punishment and the media gave him what he wanted. Overall, how culture seems to be horrible if one were to just watch the news all day. The news should be a reflection of the brighter acts from our society. People are extremely affected by what they see on TV, so when one see's sad and terrible acts on the television then that will rub off on them in a bad way. In conclusion, media controls alot of our societies customs and opinions, so lets at least make it a positive experience.

lacansmirror, Lyotard

Unlike Habermas, Lyotard actually brings up multiple Habermas theories and questions them.  Since they were from the same period and had similar ideology about modernism and postmodernism, they needed to critique each other to define their uniqueness.  This is seen in the pop music industry when there are similar artists.

For example, Cyndi Lauper and Madonna came up at the same time and competed with each other to be more unique and more popular.  Madonna ended up ahead because her critiques of the pop world were more drastic than Laupers.  Today, artists like Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Ke$ha, and Miley Cyrus all critique each other and push the limits to gain a few more fans and a lot more attention.  In terms of the reading, Lyotard explains that "Habermas considers that the remedy for the splintering of culture and its separation from life can only come from changing the status of aesthetic experience when it is no longer primarily expressed in judgments of taste" (39).  Lyotard argues that when the aesthetic experience is then put into existing problems, it changes the way in which those experiences refer to each other.  I agree with Lyotard because he takes the Habermas theory of cultural separation one step further by explaining the experienced implications of dividing cultures.  Thinking about future implications and the ways individuals realistically use aspects of culture is the thought of a postmodernist.  Habermas seemed to be enticed in the idea that modernity was not completed while Lyotard was looking forward.  Similarly to Habermas, Lyotard addressed the significance of mass media, including photography and film.  Lyotard mentioned the advantages of new mass media by saying "photographic and cinematographic processes can accomplish better, faster, and with a circulation of a hundred thousand times larger than narrative or pictorial realism" (40).  Both Lyotard and Habermas understood the advances and opportunities of new media, but Lyotard had a more optimistic approach when addressing them.

Postmodern Architecture

In the past class, i felt very connected with the reading and the principals that we had discussed. In a previous blog i had posted, i talked about how architecture that is postmodern in my mind is reuining americas beautfiful cities. Modernistic architecture was a representation of when true pride went in to the building of different buildings, goods, etc. Handmade was common, and machine made was not around. Todays cities are taking away from the beautiful architecture that once built the cities, and the way that we should be remembering it is through the creation of more modern. To stray away into a new form of postmodernistic architecture, is not paying tribute to what first made the beautiful cities of america, and what is now makign them look "tacky and unoriginal." I dont know how it is in florida, but in PA old architecture is seen as being "authentic" and such cookie cutter style homes create a sense of fake and non-passion for the design. It is awful that society today is straying away to the fine details that were once crafted into homes, and now things like deep window wells, real wood fireplaces, and other features that made homes unique and authentic. I may be narrow minded, but i am giving imput from where i was raised in Pennsylvania, and growing up there made me appreciate the old character, and push away the fake new styles.

Avan-guard was another popular topic in the discussion and talked about things that were ahead of their time. I wanted to tie this to my theme of architecture. When i took a history of jazz class, we would listen to a avan-guard and i found it very hard to sit through. Such rash notes, and a cacophony of intstruments. I dont know if i can use a van-guard to describe architecture but the picture below would be my interpertation of it.

1800's home "authentic" style

Avan-Guard style home

Lyotard, 9/30

"...to bridge the gap between cognitive, ethical, and political discourse, thus opening the way to a unity of experience." (Lyotard, 39)

Jean-Francois Lyotard explores the reasoning behind Jurgen Habermas' idea of sociocultural unity. Sociocultural unity is the melding of societal customs and cultural practices. Often, these two are very different from one another. For example, the culture that an East Indian girl is brought up with may not resonate with the ideas of American societal customs. Discussing sex and other taboo topics may not be as acceptable and open as it is in American society.

Lyotard seeks to understand this conclusion made by Habermas in order to better understand postmodernism and all that it entails. Postmodernism is not about finding the balance between Traditionalism and Avant-Gardeism. This post modern world and the ideas it presents is a world "in which reality is so destabilized that it offers no occasion for experience but one for ratings and experimentation." (Lyotard 40) In other words, this world is not one of discovery and feeling but one for trying to move forward constantly. This element of modernity exists yet it is no longer so much of trying to get ahead. It is the idea of getting ahead so it is better liked and accepted.

Lyotard then goes to claim that postmodernism precedes modernism. In order for everything to go its separate ways and fracture into the incomplete state that is modernity, it must first achieve the elements of unity. We seek individuality that is accepted and like after unity is understood. 

ruqayyahali, 9/29

"Work it, make it, do it,
Makes us harder, better, faster, stronger!" 
-Kanye West 

In class we spoke of Habermas and his tendency toward the high modern aesthetics of the early 20th century. He challenges the completion of and fulfillment of modernity because of its ever changing qualities. He believes that modernity is not complete but continuously evolving. 

We can see that this is true because modernity is a push and pull between Traditionalism and Avant-Gardeism. Traditionalism breaks from the past and Avant-Gardeism deals with being ahead of everything else. Tradition keeps us holding onto what has happened and what we want to translate into the future (nostalgia regarded in a negative sense). Avant-Gardeism forces us into the future because it breaks from tradition and puts us ahead. 

I saw the idea of Avant-Gardeism through Kanye West's "Stronger" music video. His video breaks many traditions of past music videos during the era in which it was released. He depicts a future-esque scene that was very new and upcoming for the time. Audiences reacted positively toward it because it was a show of what we can expect from future life. It is the summation of breaking tradition and moving forward. Even in his lyrics, Kanye talks about what we want from the future: "harder, better, faster, stronger." 

We are moving into this incomplete modernity through pop culture such as this song because we're mentally acclimating to the idea of what we want from the future. This idea of Avant-gardeism relates to our desire to move forward and achieve new ends. What we expect from modernity is apparent to me through this music video and interests me in viewing others of its kind and completely difference in order to see the many variations of Avant-Gardeism. 

Stronger by Kanye West

lacansmirror, 9/27

After discussing Habermas I began to think he was a little pessimistic or he at least had strong opinions about modernity.  He saw postmodern ideas as being part of "the cult of the new" (99).  He also said that those labeling themselves as being avant-garde "can read his own death warrant" (101).  Basically, that statement sums up his perspective on the present.  He adds, "although the avant-garde is still considered to be expanding, it is supposedly no longer creative" (101).  His approach to the avant-garde is very negative by simply brushing it off as being unimportant.  Habermas also labels postmodernity "as Antimodernity" (98).  Instead of just saying it is not modern, the word anti generates more negative feelings about the idea.  In class I brought up the idea that the traditional could also be antimodernity according to Habermas.  Most would argue that the traditional was a completed project and that is why we transitioned into the modern, so would the modern then be completed if we are transitioning into the postmodern? 
I realize there is some overlap between these time periods where there could be modernity being completed and postmodernity being started.  However, once the culture embraces the latest trend, the old trend will end.  There will always be people like Habermas who might not want the trend to end, but once the culture adapts to something else it is already gone.  Since Habermas is a romantic modernist, he is obviously very attached to the period.  When the culture moves on before he is finished completing the project, it is frustrating to let it go.  However, traditional was necessary for modernism. Also modernism was needed for postmodernism.  There is no way to change something...without the something.  Therefore, if modernity is an incomplete project, postmodernity may be completing it.

Habermas, 9/25

In this reading by Habermas, he discusses the overcompensation that is done to differentiate antique from modern. There is a general consensus/feeling that the more modern something is, the more plain and less decorated it should be. The more antique something is the more lavish and detailed it tends to be.

Habermas addresses this idea in his piece by discussing 'the romantic modernist.' He states that we have developed self-enclosed canons that define modernity. For example, the period we live in, we define as modern. The period previous to that is defined as antique.

Because of this constant development and change over time, with each successive generation thinking of itself as more modern than the one before, this idea of romantic modernism is beginning to blur. There are less fixed lines between modern and antique due to this rapid and ever-constant evolution into what is modern.

Habermas states that we should not give up on modernity because of these blurring lines but we should learn from this process and implement it in other ways. Rather than defining modernity in such definitive ways, we can understand that it is a cycle and perhaps better comprehend the relation of modernity to the world in general. We can focus on aesthetic modernity and the way that modernity is used to represent forms of art in the current time. Rather than pit it against previous art and ideas, we can draw from the process and discuss how the past has influenced this change in time consciousness that is modernity.

The Public Sphere

Average road in Southeast PA

In this chapter, Habermas talks about how the public sphere and space is an essential part of society. When i read this chapter it tied into the movie we say called Electric Signs. The fact that today were are losing out "public space" to the large corporations taking over our space without the say and permission of those living within the towns. Where i live in Pennsylvania, there are absolutely no billboards, as the town understands that it only makes the town look less "authentic."In central Florida particularly, it seems that billboards are found nearly every 1/10th of a mile. I don't understand why a "wealthy" town like winter park, would want signs that reduce the value of properties and the natural beauty of nature.  When the Director talked about how there are less public space due to these advertisements, i completely agree, as in winter park, i feel as i live in a totally consumeristic society, whereas in Pennsylvania, small local stores and no billboards make it feel like a "community". As Habermas says, "the model of public space guaranteed society a sphere of private autonomy. Without the private spaces and areas that the community has, it may feel as it is trapped in corpoate americas world of agressive marketing, and the need to have their products sold to every consumer possible. I  personally never wanna live where a billboard is within miles.

Open Space

Easy Living

Higgins- Lyotard(9/24)

        What is Postmodernism? A complex question with a even more complex answer. Off the top of my head, I would define it as a period shift from modernism that includes a more broken-down to the core type of style. The era of postmodernism began to take place in the later part of the 20th century and is a way of relating/connecting culture and society to art. The author we looked at for Wednesday's class is Jean-Francois Lyotard on his piece, Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism? Lyotard opens up with the concept of Realism, but not necessarily the art style but rather the whole emotional ambiguity that is instilled in the critic and artist when a piece is being debated. "But in the diverse invitations to suspend artistic experimentation, there is an identical call for order, a desire for unity, for identity, Artists and writers must be brought back into the bosom of the community, or at least, if the latter is considered to be ill, they must be assigned the task of healing it. (Lyotard, 40)"

If a main premise of the ideology of modernism is that "at one point it was modern", then the difference of realism is a smaller gap then we thought. Creating something that can be perceived to be that of present day and of actual actuality is the idea but postmodernism takes it further than that. It revolutionizes the concept, to be more thorough of life itself. Going in to detail of the actions and reactions then relating those "eurekas" to something that exists today. "that which denies itself the solace of good forms , the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable.(Lyotard 46)."

Democracy's Price

Today we all watched Electric Signs, a documentary by Alice Arnold. The film had an underlying theme of losing public space to private information targeted at particular demographics. I struggled finding this focus in the film because of the contradictions between the signs that were portrayed as problematic because of light and energy consumption; while in the same film, opinions of the same technology portraying not advertisements but rather artistic expressions weren't so negatively viewed upon by the public.

Billboards certainly aren't new. Neither are intrusive advertisements in a public sphere? What kind of fit will people have once we are all wearing contacts that have advertisements in them? It will happen in our lifetime...

Last week, we spoke about Readerly and Writerly texts. You know, the two types of literature that we face. One being the kind where you read between the lines, use your imagination to create the experience, like the Harry Potter example. The other, simply something like a list of items - requiring no necessary imagination to comprehend. These two types of text relate directly to a problem with the giant billboards, TVs on our walls, and screens in our hands.

What we have inundated our own selves with for capital purposes has largely inhibited the loss of some of the most pleasurable human experiences: mysticism, fantasy, and imagination.

Doctor Cummings asks what novels we have read recently. The entire class, a 300 level course filled with students that attend a 'prestigious liberal arts college' had nothing to say!?

We are in the information age. Information is now a commodity and every medium we can create to communicate that information is valuable real estate. This 'information' we all consume so much comes at a cost though. For if we aren't reading novels and the only writerly texts we fill in the blanks to are pictures of models in underwear that we imagine ourselves wearing, where did the fantasy, the mysticism, the magic go?

“Every morning brings us news of the globe, and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event comes to us without being already shot through with explanation. In other words, by now almost nothing that happens benefits storytelling; almost everything benefits information. Actually, it is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it. . . . The most extraordinary things, marvelous things, are related with the greatest accuracy, but the psychological connection of the event is not forced on the reader. It is left up to him to interpret things the way he understands them, and thus the narrative achieves an amplitude that information lacks.”
- Walter Benjamin

Jencks: Urbane Urbanism

The theory that resonated most with me in the Charles Jencks reading was the idea of Urbane Urbanism, which Jencks identifies as the "most commonly-held aim of postmodern architects" (285). This is the idea that new buildings "should both fit into and extend the urban context, reuse such constraints as the street, arcade and plaza, yet acknowledge too the new technologies and means of transport" (285). Urbane Urbanism is about more than the aesthetics of just one building; it's about many buildings that work collectively as a whole. Buildings are built closely together in similar styles, so that they look like they belong together. In class, we talked about how Baldwin Park is an example of this: the houses and apartments and other buildings use the same structure and have symmetry to make them look like they belong with one another.

During intersession 2 years ago, I took Disney and the City with Professor Foglesong, where we studied the urban politics and urban planning of Disney and Celebrations, a master-planned community developed by Disney. I learned about how urban planning is essential in order to make a community like Celebrations (or Baldwin Park), so that the buildings look as though they have come together to form their own the community. By living in Celebrations, residents must comply to strict rules set in place to keep all the residences looking uniform. For example, the lawn must be kept, with no lawn furniture or distinguishing features like sculptures, or university flags on display, and residents are not allowed to add on to or repaint their homes without getting it approved. Professor Foglesong stressed that this type of community cannot exist in a democratic environment; only a dictatorship, like Disney, can create this type of forced utopia.

Higgins-(Post Class Blog)9/22

          The most recent class was very interesting as we compared the various types of architecture being built in today's world. What made it even more intriguing was the connections we were able to make with modernism and post-modernism styles. One thing that I noticed was this increase in glass outer surfaces on buildings, it seemed to a modernistic quality that is ever-growing. The concept of having a massive glass construction as a public building has really formed into the sleek thing to do when creating a skyscraper. The style has dramatically transformed from these big brick buildings to the new modernism form of steel and glass. The picture shown is the Burj-Dubai, this building emits a feeling of wealth and power as it is known as the largest skyscraper in the world. The time and money that took to make this building were off the charts. Another style that I noticed is the way older buildings/monuments have the "fill in the gap" display. Such as the arc de triomphe, currents buildings seem to lack this concept and focus on the idea of construing buildings to look sleek and futuristic. Overall, the world we live in is constantly changing just like the building styles. It's important to dissect the meanings and social tendencies that are behind the creation of this massive projects.