A couple of months ago I attended a public conversation between Brett Steele and Marc Wigley which was moderated by Mark Cousins. Not surprisingly, the conversation revolved around contemporary education. Of the many things that stuck with me from that night, one statement by Mark Cousins remains strongly imprinted. He said that “if you hear someone start a sentence with the statement ‘architecture is...’, leave the room.” That attitude is one where architecture is not seen as a series of answers that are set in stone, but one where architecture is understood as a conceptual and material field that continuously evolves to transform the way we live. Our research has to provide an environment where new forms of teaching and learning can evolve and mature. It is through this pursuit of novel - yet relevant - forms of teaching and learning that we can foster a discourse about novel – yet relevant - ways of conceiving architecture. Design research is partly an attempt at creating and shaping ideas about buildings, and by extension, ideas about living, as opposed to mere constructions.
If I want to put this in the context that I’m operating within today, then it is the 3-year agenda titled Proto-design. While the agenda is laden with significant potential as scenarios of - conceptual and material - prototyping have become accelerated, the notion of the prototype can be very misleading. There is a mistaken elasticity attached to the idea of developing a prototype and this is partly a result of the lack of finality attached to prototypes. This results in prototypes (prototypes here can also be prototypical systems) sometimes being developed in conceptual and material vacuums. If we are truly dedicated to conceiving of new ways of shaping architecture, overhauling the whole process within which our field current operates, then our prototypes need to be specific (systems), setting out to answer specific answers, notwithstanding that the process will change conceptual and material trajectories along the way. Prototypes have to be specific; they cannot operate in conceptual and material vacuums. This is not to say that the design process needs to be collapsed or flattened, and that all answers and results are known from the initial stages of the design process, and all that is left is the production of these results. This divorces the act of production from its inherent creativity. What bothers me in the notion of the prototype is that its lack of finality allows it to become a crutch. For some reason, we avoid the reality that our ideas about buildings are almost buildings in themselves, (almost) buildings that have to respond to specific concerns. A clear question needs to be tackled head-on, and as soon as possible; what is a prototype?
p.s. This is a slightly edited version of a short paper submitted to the class titled Synthesis: Architectural Research, Writing and Project Documentation.
6 Comments
Mark Wigley has a lot of good stuff in the book "Index Architecture"
gosh, all these people make it sound like the world really is going to be less shitty if they find out the answer to their urgent question...an urgent question which is an echoing answer to their tutor's question.
actually it doesn't sound at like like a clear question and the tone is unfortunately rather histirionic.
If we are truly dedicated to conceiving of new ways of shaping architecture, overhauling the whole process within which our field current operates
why are you so dedicated to 'overhauling'? do you really know why or is this directive march simply being inculcated into you as a progressive postgrad creature? civilization, and all features thereof, has always formed itself through the mimesis, repetition, variation, parodying, overlapping of the past brought into consciousness. rather than look at the prototype simply as a paradigmatic break, would it not make more sense to be a bit less(i don't intend the moral overtones of this word, but rather its epistemelogical ones) affected in your assertions and recognize the tethers and the tentacles that syntagmatically bond entities to their environments?
seriously, i can find many things that are fucked up in this world...and i'm assuming that as intelligent postgraduate students, you would be able to tell us here exactly what you also find fucked up and how you address it. the concept of overhauling for its own sake is a non-issue; it seems to be an intelligent's person's placebo for their somatization disorder i.e. an imaginary medicine for imaginary afflictions.
or rather, epistemOlogical
good point
timberlandboots, why don't you walk away
:::JARGON WATCH:::
ARTICLE A:
"syntagmatically bond entities to their environments"
ARTICLE B:
"an intelligent's person's placebo for their somatization disorder i.e. an imaginary medicine for imaginary afflictions. "
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