Performance and teleology

This article presents a generalized discussion of American and Dutch architectural ositions. The article uses Colin Rowes introduction to "Five Architects" as a prism for this discussion. He criticizes the ideological foundation of heroic modernist architecture, especially its claim of unifying form (physique) with social and programmatic content (morale). His argument serves as a justification for a syntactic formal approach. The article compares this approach to Rem Koolhaas' Delirious New York which operates with almost identical schisms. Koolhaas however comes to the almost opposite conclusion. He focuses on the programmatic proliferation of Manhattans grid. The article claims that these different critical reactions to the totalizing claim of modernistic architecture serve as a starting point for current architectural approaches.