Archinect - Features

Architecture Beyond Design: In Which We Consider What Makes Architecture Significant

2022-06-17T08:50:00-04:00

"In our darkest moment we were given a miracle, the candle became a magical flame that could never go out and it blessed us with a refuge in which to live…And our house, our Casita itself, came alive to shelter us."

- Alma Madrigal, Encanto

When we discuss the agency of architecture, we can easily make the error of assuming that architecture alone causes an impact or change to occur within a community. A school, for example, no matter how masterfully designed, is nothing more than a complex assembly of materials if there are no teachers, students, administrators, and staff to give it life. Human beings must first imbue a building with life. That building, having been activated, can then serve as a vehicle that enables its inhabitants to become more themselves, to become more human.

Architecture in the Givenness - Toward the Difficult Whole Again: Part 2

2011-04-26T22:06:00-04:00

Our education is based upon the Classical education. An architect is a mason who has learned Latin. Modern architects seem, however, more likely to have mastered Esperanto.

Adolf Loos, “Grundsätzliches von Adolf Loos,” Adolf Loos (Vienna: 1930), p. 17.

In our world of powerful stimuli and the often irresponsible, commercially motivated love of experimentation for its own sake, there is a great deal that does not establish real communication. For intoxication alone cannot insure lasting communication.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful (UK: 1970), p. 51.

The art of building has been transformed into a business of self-display and promotion through the design and construction of figurative motifs, making it an object of consumption.

David Leatherbarrow, The Roots of Architectural Invention, (UK: 1993), p.1.

Architecture in the Givenness - Toward the Difficult Whole Again: Part 1

2011-04-08T12:46:07-04:00