f meaning:
The philosophy generally reflects a belief in freedom and accepts the consequences of individual actions, while acknowledging the responsibility attendant to the making of choices. Existentialists prefer subjectivity, and can view human beings as subjects in an indifferent and often ambiguous universe (ôExistentialismö).
In the 1950Æs and 1960Æs, existentialist literature such as the writings of Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets emphasized the freedom of existentialism, while those of Albert Camus and Kierkegaard emphasized the despair associated with trying to make choices with only oneself to rely on. The feelings of alienation connected with detachment from God and the rest of society are a theme that runs through existentialist literature as the down side to the freedom that the movement ostensibly promotes (ôExistentialismö).
The progression from estrangement to event is played out in many aspects of modern society; one of these is architecture. Estrangement in architecture begins with the impression it gives us of otherworldliness, an incongruous feeling that something is out of place:
When architecture seems to leave the ground, reactions occur within us--not unlike those sensations of people tracking the orbital flight of manmade satellites--reactions which can be best described as feelings of estrangement. According to contemporary reports any such estrangement effected by the Eiffel Tower of 1889 was still of a very elementary character, counteracted by the sight of the familiar panorama of metropolitan Paris spread out at one's feet almost to the horizon: what lay below had had its measure paced off and thus remained forever in a scale (Conrads & Sperlich 22).
The Walking City by Archigram and the Generic City depicted by Rem Koolhaas represent somewhat utopian conceptual models that demonstrate how the transition from estrangement to event would be carried over from philosophy into actual ...