Archinect - The Perennial Whole

This Cannot Be the Way Forward

2012-09-10T00:54:00-04:00

It is now the beginning of September; the most important week of a designer's life has arrived. Of course, I'm talking about Fashion Week.

Image Credit: http://www.sheknows.com/beauty-and-style/articles/949593/on-the-runway-vera-wang

This is a designer's Holy Week - a week to "celebrate" their contributions to society and to "high art". A time to display the fruits of their labor in their never-ending chase for the new, modern, and hip. Last season is over they tell us, get with the program or die tryin' (by which I mean get out of the business).

It should be no surprise as to why this week is so important. But it's not just important for fashion designers, it's also important for architects.

The historical and cultural intersection of fashion and architecture is undeniable and I will not attempt to revisit this in detail. What I would like to show is how the image of the runway models above serves as a visual metaphor for the current state of contemporary architec...

Words: The Real State of Architectural Discourse

2012-08-30T20:25:07-04:00

Image Credit: http://www.goldendrum.com/news/gd-column-20122/

In attempting to unpack the true workings of wholeness, people often run into several major mental roadblocks. This happens because, most of the time, they have never been exposed to this kind of thinking. The architecture schools of today do a very good job at teaching wordplay.

First, they hunger for definitions. A kind of dictionary that they can carry around in their pockets to 'fact-check' arguments and reshuffle the meanings. They have been trained to regurgitate these definitions rather than actually lay out their thoughts. They lose touch with reality, disparage unfamiliar ways of writing, and resort to complaints about how unclear the whole issue is.

Second, they think with a certain kind of logic. A logic that muzzles human intuition in a profound way. A logic that is somehow constructed so as to deny the valid and reliability of human feelings (and human life in general) and, therefor...

The Price You Pay For Speaking Up

2012-08-30T01:47:01-04:00

Below is a collection of various comments that I have received.

Collectively, they form the basis of a worldview which is totally antagonistic to even the mere suggestion that wholeness has anything to do with architecture:

you have allowed yourself to be nothing, to commit literary suicide and let your literary self be animated by the impersonal soullessness of your pseudo-belief. -t a m m u z
In other words, what you wanted, because it makes you feel proud of yourself to be a rebel. Fantastic, Enjoy it. Revel in it. But don't make up fake profiles (honestly, it's so transparent) to agree with yourself and pat yourself on the back. - Donna Sink
You're not using any intellectual rigor. Maybe I'm being too harsh in my criticism of your musings here, but it's the lack of rigor that upsets me - we've all seen far too much of it of late in our political climate. – Donna Sink
At best the people he inspires help keep certain memories alive, at worse they spread fairy t...

What’s Outside Our Window?

2012-08-29T19:37:31-04:00

A street in Tokyo | Circa 1950 | Source unknown

Wholeness is everywhere. It can be viewed through a microscopic and telescopic lens. It is in nature and, therefore, it is in our nature.

Some places are more whole than others, some contribute to the life of the world more than others. It is beyond simply not liking something and it is not a matter of relative opinion. It is an objective matter that is also intensely personal (or subject-orientated) at the same time.

In our time however, people have seem to completely forgotten, whether intentionally or not, what real life – life that was constructed from the whole, that made us feel like we belonged – felt like prior to the rampant industrialization period of the 18th and 19th centuries. Prior to the Machine Age, the world simply looked and felt differently.

Look at the image above. How was it that the people, the carts, the trolley, the telephone poles, the buildings all seem to be ...

A False Vision

2012-08-28T21:51:00-04:00

What is the one of the most disturbing aspects of the contemporary built environment? What is it that architects in practice and students in the academy do which result in a more unwhole environment? How can we unlearn these practices and build a more whole world?

Below is Morphosis' response to these questions. It cost $144 million to build.

Image Credit: http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2007/07/urbanities-and.html

This is the Federal Building in San Francisco; it was completed in 2007. There is no doubt in my mind that the firm attempted to make genuinely good architecture, to make something whole. What they were after was probably not called 'wholeness'. But having personally toured the building, it is becomes clear, in a matter of seconds, that it is a completely un-whole structure. It is one of a myriad of false visions of wholeness that pervade the contemporary canon. Magazine after magazine, blog after blog, website afte...

Christopher Alexander: An Unexpected Mentor

2012-08-28T19:59:00-04:00

I’ve never seriously thought about wholeness until about 2 or 3 years ago. It had no place, no real merit in studio; it was simply a non-topic. Just design they told us. Design, design, design. Like a typical student, I never questioned this. I just wanted to fit in, get some attention, and move on.

Somewhere during my first design studio, I began to question this stuff. Something felt wrong and disingenuous about my work. What I was "designing" just didn't feel very meaningful. I was battling my own instincts.

During this time, I was introduced to someone who made determined efforts in first articulating, in an academic setting, the notion of wholeness in architecture (Wholeness or 'oneness' is not entirely a new thought, many world religions adopt some form of this). It was from this individual that I first learned about wholeness – what is was, how we make it, and where it appears throughout history. I learned from him indirectly- though professors, writings, lectures, imag...