Hiral008 wrote:
Could you please explain the reasoning for Q2
< Question #2 >
Q type: infer -> the answer should must be true (100% true)
What is asked : Which types of the building is NOT likely to be built by modern architect?
Before enter to the options, let’s remind characteristics of “modernism”; it can be summarized by a word “simple”, and it is opposite thing from postmodernism, thus every thing P likes, M hates, vise versa.
“In its heyday, modernism was taught in architecture schools as a moral imperative. Architectural form was supposed to embody the spatial, structural, and mechanical demands of the building. Implanted in every student’s mind were two terse aphorisms: “Form follows function” and “Less is more.” All new structures, from incinerators to cathedrals, commanded equal respect as products of our advanced technological culture. People began to complain that churches and banks looked alike; only very gradually did large numbers of architects acknowledge that such objections might be well founded. Eventually, a substantial proportion of architects lost faith in the modernist movement, and many embraced a body of architectural principles identifiable as postmodernist.
Postmodernist is a reaction against the characteristic modernist style. In typical modernist buildings of the 1950s, differences between interior and exterior, top and bottom, and back and front—or, indeed, between portions serving different functions—were deliberately minimized. Surrounding structures and local precedents were almost invariably ignored. Detailing was made to look as uncomplicated as the surfaces and joints of the architectural model, no matter what design and construction effort it took to achieve that effect. While modernist architecture is moralistic and exclusivist—based on a set of “Thou shalt nots”— postmodernist architecture is amoral and inclusivist, based on contextualism, allusion to other design, and ornament.
Postmodernist contextualism demands that whatever is built acknowledge its setting. In the 1950s, modernism conditioned architecture students to assume that surrounding construction was obsolescent and soon to be replaced by “improved” modernist work; more sensibly, postmodernist architects see a building as an incremental change in an existing environment. Contextualism means that architects adopt the visual axes and prevailing roof lines of existing buildings, or promote correspondences in form, scale, and materials between new and old buildings. Postmodernists allude to historical styles in various ways: they may borrow spatial organization from the Italian Baroque style or incisive abstract lines from early modernist European architecture of the 1920s or decorative motifs from movie palaces and diners of the twenties and thirties, thus encouraging the very impurity and heterogeneity the modernist movement condemned.”Question #2 is a foxy question. When you hold on to only one concept of “modernism” among of others, (C), (D) looks pretty convincing.
Since GMAT pushes us to solve each question in a very short time, there must be a faster way to find the right choice than eliminating each choice, which talks right things about M.
Plus, RC is to test the ability of seeing “structure”, not to test “good memory”.
Regarding the passage, this passage clearly demonstrates ‘P vs M’ structure, therefore, like I mentioned above, every thing P likes, M hates, vise versa. And the author devoted one whole passage (the 3rd one) to describe about the Postmodernist contextualism, saying that P likes complexed styles and decorations (+ at the very last sentence of the 3rd paragraph, the author said that P likes to combine all different styles and decorations, which M condemns.)
So out of everything. One thing we are sure about is that M hates decos. Thus M is not likely to build something with decorations.
(C) and (D) are not 100% true because, “Detailing was made to look as uncomplicated as the surfaces and joints of the architectural model,
no matter what design and construction effort it took to achieve that effect.”, M would use any kind of design and construction techniques to achieve uncomplicated looking building.
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