don't do what he wants. you will get more out of it by not conforming to his 'aesthetic' inklings, and fighting for what you believe in.

also, feel free to tell other professors what a douchenozzle he is, for worshiping gehry's huevos d'titanium.

do to learn and don't do to do

If he's really a postmodernist, functionality, climate, regional styles, and orthogonal lines should all be fair game. Read your Venturi, Eisenman, and Frampton and make sense of why they use those elements and you can start having a dialogue about what you are doing. Then read some serious deconstruction and apply it to what sounds like a sloppy pedagogy.

There will be times during your career when you will be right to be obstinate , but remember that you are in school to learn, and part of that is trying new ways of doing things. If you a certain that you know what you are doing, you probably shouldn't be in school at all. Seriously!

But if you are curious about other ways of doing things, have a personal meeting with your instructor, tell him what is important to you, make him explain the WHY of his approach, and then give it a try. I tried both ways - stubborn confrontation, and later curious exploration. My experience was that the first led to frustration and crap grades, the second generated real dialogue with the professor, changed the way I thought (even if only to give me new reasons to dislike the method I was being taught) and was easier both academically and emotionally. School is the perfect place for trying something different - no one's money is being wasted, no one's neighborhood will be ruined, and ultimately, no one will even remember your project.

Maybe you'll graduate with the same interests as when you started, but I would wager you won't.

^yup and recognize it's just *his* opinion and it's prolly whatever he was indoctrinated with in school.

also recognize that that shit doesn't age well and it already getting passé

Part of architecture is convincing your client what they need, not what they think they want.

I think there is a middle ground that exists here that perhaps neither of you are seeing. I feel like it is your task in this studio to figure out what that is, exploit it, and then defend it. Do your research... get to the root of what your instructor is after, know the history, know the lineage and know how to talk about it. There is more to it than form making reproductions. Push yourself outside of what you already know. You might be surprised to find something new along the way.

Also know that later on when you start working, it's highly likely you will find yourself in the position of having to do something you may not like, say a faux-stylized "lifestyle center." Use this as an opportunity to see that every project, regardless of how banal or tasteless, has something you can learn from.

He has his own eccentric ideas about architecture and if I were to bring up those guys, I'd be told I'm being derivative and I need to come up with something entirely original that's never been done before.

uh, dude...
decon is the very definition of derivative.

Believe me, I've tried to take some of his suggestions and find a middle ground where we can both be happy. I don't want to come off as a pompous know-it-all or stubborn. Anything I do will be too "safe" or not "edgy" enough, whatever that means.

I'll admit I'm bad at articulating my ideas and I have a tendency to just pretend I agree rather than defending my ideas to avoid confrontation/argument. I think more research and figuring out to talk about what I'm doing is the next step here.

are u suppose to know his philosophy before u take his class?

forget the part about agreeing with him. just roll with it, surrender to it, learn what you can - both the pros and cons, as houseofmud said. (really? you can't learn from koolhaas?!)

it also sounds like you're a little wrapped up in stylistic concerns and not digging deeper. gehry/koolhaas: bad; "real world": good is pretty shallow.

your work right now is about exploration and learning; you're not building any of it so you don't have to worry about your 'philosophy' that much. you'll find that along the way. (how can you have a philosophy if you haven't learned more than one point-of-view yet?)

in the day to day life of architectural practice diplomacy and solid argument are critical. you've got to give the client what they want while still maintaining the integrity of what you think is important.

again, though, i'd argue that you might not be fully formed enough yet to be able to know what you'll THINK is important.

in the professional world, you always, let me underscore this, always give the client what he or she wants. architecture is a game of continual compromise. the trick is to get what you want out of a project after having incorporated all of the input from your client, consultants, etc. i would start now in school rather than have the shock of this reality hit you in professional practice later.

I would say learn what he is trying to teach you... your in school, your opinions are prematurely formulated. You should go through the exercise. If your uncomfortable with his rules, then question him about it but not as a challenge.

The other issue i have is any teacher that tries to convince you to design a certain style is not a good teacher. he should focus on your concept and rational. Style is subjective. This is design studio not arch history class. Correct me if im wrong but Post modern and deconstruction are complete opposites?

There is also a 98% chance that you will not design in your preferred style in your career. You should loosen up now and not be so idealistic.

You are in school to learn. Almost everyone out there has something to offer (granted, some offer crap), something to learn from.

Go into it with a positive attitude and you'll get something positive out of it. I fought a professor once, same thing, worthless crit, she yelled at me several times, etc., etc. In retrospect, while I didn't agree with her opinions (I wasn't working to my potential, and that annoyed her, already accepted to grad schools so I slacked a bit), my project could have been a TON better had I been open to things and not so overly/naively confident/cocky.


Anyway, I'd think long and hard about what your prof "could" be trying to get you to do - think outside of the box. While stararchitect buildings are surely the realm of the elite, they are still buildings that people use everyday. Don't dismiss formal expression and design just because it has a sculptural quality.

Things don't have to be orthogonal, boring, or whatever to function well and have all of the qualities you seek. Do what he wants, but also incorporate your interests/ideals. I see no reason why these two cannot work together.

I highly doubt he's trying to get everyone to make the exact same thing or conform to some rigid and useless formula. He's there to teach you and he knows more than you do.


Assuming you "know" and he's just "forcing" you into some formal mold is going to make you look cocky and naive. No one likes that and it doesn't serve you any good either.

I think there is some really good advice above. You might also want to check out your school's website. My school has a little faculty page, and it describes a lot of the firms, awards and research of each faculty member. It's really helpful, especially early on to read about their research. It's not that you have to agree with them or copy them, but when you see their research in a more objective way, it can make you more aware of their thinking.

I think the key will be to do the project your way, within his guidelines. Like others have said, I dont think he is just forcing you for the sake of forcing you.

It's a design exercise. You wont always be able to only follow your own design ideals completely. Treat it as such

I think a lot of times in school, students want there to be "no limits" to their designs and projects, which is unrealistic in the real world. So getting practice at that now is a good thing


and you are in school still. You shouldnt have a "cup of tea" yet. Saying you do to your professor wont go over well, because honestly, have you designed any buildings with his style yet?




maybe sketch out his ideas and your ideas and find some middle ground between them. that way, when he is at your desk and criticizes your choices, show him the steps you took and that you actually didnt just dismiss his ideas.


If he sees that you did the work and explored his advice and ideas, but just chose a different solution, it will most likely go over better than if he just sees you ignoring his advice.

Take the extra step of doing it his way and then adjusting if it still doesnt work for you.

Gehry and Koolhaas are pretty different architects and, it's already been pointed out, so are the schools of decon/pomo. The trick w/ studio is to take the instructor's suggestions/requirements and bend them to your thinking. So if they tell you they don't like or want you to change a part of your design, think about why that could be, and then do something that parallels their thinking but in a different way.

Maybe you could still make some something really "functional" but take some small aspect of the project and do something more radical. You could have an interesting wall pattern, or come up w/ a structural system that allows the building to almost disappear or something. There's ways to be radical and sculptural while still allowing for function. Sanaa's serpentine pavilion or their new rolex learning center could be some places where you could find a common ground.

post modern and deconstructivist isn't the same thing.

hi Wheatley,

You tried it your way and suffered for it* - were you happy with your design? If not, then I fully agree with HouseofMud that you are in school to learn.

If you divide the world as 'starchitect spectacle' and 'real building', why did you choose a DESIGN program**, when there are many courses in Building Technologies?
There seems to be a growing number of people who want to distribute Architecture into these domains, and I wonder where it will conclude.


* is this summer school, and does it impact 'real' school at all?

** is it studio or a seminar?

The way I dealt with it was to challenge them.

In turn, I am not going to Harvard while others who went with the flow are, for whatever that's worth.

Deconstructivism (usually refers to a style - think Moss/Coop Himmelblau) is a subset of Post modernism (a particular way of looking at the world that questions issues of singularity and truth.) Post modernism should not be confused with the term POMO, which is a derogatory term for a particular style (an ironic reinterpretation of historical styles.) Koolhaas is neither POMO nor Decon, but he is certainly postmodern. Gehry and Koolhaas come to architecture with extremely different goals/methods. To simplify one could say Gehry is primarily interested in rethinking form, while Koolhaas is interested in rethinking program (based on social and political issues.) All of them address the form/function debate. Try not to confuse the end result with the methodology.

Anyway back on topic. You have your whole life to decide how you want to practice/design architecture. I say give your instructor the benefit of the doubt, and work with him. I doubt he is set on a specific style, but rather he is likely interested in getting you to reconsider what issues architecture can address.

as a studio instructor, I welcome (and hope that) students find their own angle to the studio process. I can only provide inspiration, a process to start the ball rolling, and feedback/evaluation. Everything else is up to the individual.

Okay, if you don't like the process, propose an alternative process that provided the required deliverables at the end. It is up to you to be rigorous in explaining how and why you will proceed. the worst that can happen is that you get an F (but that is very unlikely if you had a good process and produce sufficient stuff - drawings, models, renderings, et cetera). Be fearless and be self-aware.

oh, Koolhaas is post-structural not post-modern.

What year are you?

Id totally agree with Steven, I dont think youre digging deep enough into either strategies. The purpose of school is to push limits, both the limits of philosophical approaches and your own. People are functional critters, we need shelter and food and water, but theres a lot more to human life than that. Were also emotional critters, spatial critters, cultural critters. There are some really, genuinely profound areas of inquiry in deconstructionism, and you should absolutely push yourself to know and understand them. But you arent going to do that either by just heaping together a bunch of curvy shapes to make him happy or to categorically reject everything your professor has to offer.


Im a big advocate for fighting, but you have to fight well. The last thing you should do is pretend to agree. Challenge him, challenge decon, challenge yourself. Youve got to crack into these ideas and break them down if you really want to understand them. Really good professors genuinely respect be challenged by their students. I fought like a banshee, and the professors I fought hardest against are the ones I have the closest relationships with now.


Remember, this isnt just about swoopy shapes, its about how humans react to space. And that isnt at all mutually exclusive to a building taking in and reacting to its environment efficiently, quite the opposite, its the central challenge of modern architecture (I use that as an umbrella term for all new architectures) to evoke new kinds of space as efficiently as possible. Think minimalism! You can be minimalist and deconstructivist at the same time. You can take an old idea and unravel it into something radically new. You can use curves to your advantage in achieving simple energy efficient spaces. So do it! Take his ideas and your values and subvert them, push them into territory that neither you nor your professor expected. For me, thats always been the best way to grow my own work, and if your prof isnt a totally dogmatic dickweed he'll respect you all the more for it.

lebbeus woods ....... need i say more.....

hmmm, a lot of people use "Pomo" to mean simply Postmodernism, including people outside of the field of architecture. I'm not sure there's an excepted definition of "pomo." More of a slang term and not necessarily derogatory either.

Also, it's arguable that deconstructionism, as a form of philosophical inquiry, is really a subset of postmodernism, or if it is really anything definable at all. Do you lump Eisenman in w/ Moss & Himmelblau?

Barry, I'd be interested to hear why you think Koolhaas is post-structural and not post-modern (I don't necessarily disagree, I really am interested).

Going back to the OP, maybe Wheatly can learn a valuable lesson in not generalizing too much about obscure philosophical doctrines and architects with large bodies of work... And I can learn not to confuse Postmodernism w/ "Pomo."

This is a weird setup... A crazy renegade blobist professor v. responsible design student. It's usually the other way around.

Someone already asked: what year are you in? Why does your studio only have one professor? How many assistants are available for desk crits? From my experience (where a studio has multiple teaching staff available) it's best to shop your ideas around until you find someone who will approve of what you are doing and help you expand on the ideas. Once your idea is sufficiently developed, it becomes that much easier to defend your project during the final presentation, regardless who is in attendance.

Also, be prepared to create volumes of work. More documentation you provide, the more immune you will be at risks of losing grade points to stylistic disagreements.

I got in trouble for defending my work during crits but I continued to do it anyway.

I did it so much that the Director of the Architecture department ended up yelling at me to shut up. I was not a happy camper and I demanded an apology. I never got one.

The fact is that a lot of architecture professors are assholes. They don't know everything and architecture is subjective. Period. You can either rise above their nonsense or you can prove to them why your way is better. I opt for the latter.

I don't know about that steelstuds -- I'd say that blob-proselytizing professor vs. responsible student describes about half of design education. Right now, there are a fair proportion of faculty out there who are angry about their inability to find clients for their blobs and are happy to take their anger out on students.

Let's be factual. If the OP is here looking for us to get him or her out of doing the work necessary to earn a degree than they've made a mistake. None of us can do anything about that. either they will meet the requirements that their faculty set forth, or they won't.

My sense, however, is that like many people these days this person has been confronted by someone who has a radically different idea of what architecture is. Sadly, they have made the same mistake Sarah has -- they have conflated a set of labels they memorized in lecture with carefully thought out ideas about the built environment. Frankly, I'm not sure if the student is the one making this mistake or the professor.

as always, SW gives the best advice.

if in the end all you get out of the studio is how you opposed a professor in a shallow debate i.e. functional architecture v blobist architecture then you will lose no matter what. granted the professor may in fact be really bad. they certainly exist, but it sounds as if you may be misrepresenting him/her. a good professor (or boss) will often try to get you to do things you disagree with initially and even instinctually, but 99% of the time when you try it on, and push the idea really hard, it always results in a better project in the end. not because you did what they told you, but because the exercise often times comes back to inform your own individual design impulses. design is a constant feedback loop in that way.

for example, i have had several design studios where for up to an entire month we did things that didn't even resemble a building, the exercises were strictly about space, form, and fabrication. these exercises always informed you how to approach the design of a building eventually, but this was often besides the point. rigorous production and process often times outlined by constraints (e.g. no orthagonal lines) is the best way to avoid stylistic debates at the onset.

if you choose to butt heads with your professor throughout the entire semester you gain neither experience in dealing with people nor do you get a project you are proud of to be able to put in your portfolio. it helps to not be so dogmatic.

...one of my favorite professors, a disciple of wright and goff, would say, "just make it cool, make it worth experiencing"

...designs wherein the beauty or potential are self-evident tend to make your argument for you

...so do your thing or decide to learn from the professor, either way, if people can just look at it and think, man, i wish i could be in that space, then enough said, you've proved your point

...meticulously reasoned decisions and the nuance of philosophical arguments become particularly crucial in the absence of self-evident, good design

what you'll find is that if you make it kickass, everyone will read into it a validation of their own theories

if it FEELS like your design just belongs there, you've done it

...at the end of the day, we subtly orchestrate and enhance experience and ritual --- focus on the orchestration, and you'll arrive at good design

sticking to this or that theoretical perspective, you can have a great project "in theory" that no one would ever want to experience --- and what is the point of that

there is an argument to be made for privileging good theory with the design product being a bi-product, particularly in an educational setting --- but this seems a dubious argument --- can you imagine the analogous situation of master chef's in a culinary institute saying, well, his soup tasted awful, but the important thing is that the theory behind why he made it was outstanding

of course if you can both make a project that is worth experiencing and that is grounded in theory, so much the better, but bringing a badass design pretty much trumps a well-crafted argument every time

the point of what i just wrote is not to de-value theory, but to recognize that crafting theory through language has different strengths and weaknesses than crafting theory through painting, drawing, sculpting or model-making --- furthermore, there are things you can do working directly in design that are difficult to do through logic or word-smithing because you don't always have the words to accurately express your intention -- so rather than thinking of it as theory or design or theory guides design or design guides theory, it is more a continuum flowing in both directions and good design is good theory, whether or not the words or concepts exist to express it through spoken language at that moment

furthermore, once you access theory through design instead of the other way around, once you access it through the act of making, you access sensori-motor intelligence, other senses become more involved, reaction to roughly analogous form can be utilized and very quickly, it is possible to end up at a design that works guided by instinct for which it is possible to construct a theory or connect to a theory in hindsight but for which it would have been very difficult to arrive at by starting with theory

jma - I agree with you to a point. I am far from a theory advocate, but you also need to be very careful when suggesting someone pursue something just because 'they' like it. There are very, very few intuitively talented designers out there and far too many that think they are just that (and are anything but).

My favorite quote from school was "Don't ever do anything just because it 'looks' cool, but if it looks cool, chances are there is a good reason".

This is kinda a good lesson on teaching yourself to be better and learn from your own experimentation (that, while in school, is 90% teacher driven via experiments, readings, studies, etc.).



The largest point of having a theory, or 'idea', based design is that someone else can critique it. This was also one of most beneficial things I learned in grad school (via Mayne - "you can make someone that is just 'cool', but I can't comment on it, it just will be 'cool', subjective love or hate it, but nothing more and you can't really move past that or learn from it'). If you have solid ideas on the 'idea' and methodology on reaching your architecture, then someone can make suggestions/critiques, you can go back and re-examine based on the critic and your 'ideas', not just a 'I like a big window' 'why do you like a big window?' 'because it is cool' 'oh, then I guess 'cool' is all it will be'.

But if you suggested that there was an expansion of space, a moment of experience within the building that allowed for an interior/exterior relationship, etc., then someone could make suggestions on how to make that connection more substantive and experiential.


I agree with you, but I also realize that very, very, very few have that intuition to just make something without generative ideas. Make a box that functions, sure, but something of substance, no.

You need both for a truly successful building, imho.

JUST TELL HIM YOU WANT TO WORK WITH PER ON 3DH PROCESS DESIGN. EXPLAIN HIM AWAY AS A DEEP THINKING DANE WHO IS YEARS AHEAD OF HIS TIME...."HE IS CREATING FISSION IN ARCHITECTURE" THAT SHOULD GET THE PROFESSOR OFF YOU BACK FOR THE REST OF THE SEMESTER.

as both a history lecturer and a studio design tutor I am a little concerned and perplexed, much like Steven Ward, on your broad brush interpretation of his and your actions. Perhaps your lecturer is aiming to unlock your creativity which as it seems is locked into a premature opinion on what you think architecture is much less can be. I've typically suggested students to seek solutions generally rather than what they think is architecture, no disrespect.

post on archinect.

listen to your instincts, only strange people like to be badgered in a direction that their heart tells them not to.

As some of my friends and I used to say in our earlier studios, sometimes you just need to grab your ankles and take it.

Judging by my school, there are plenty of professors out there that, all things being equal (and sometimes not), will give higher grades to projects they personally like (ie style), or will give higher grades to students they like (ie the ones they see more often and think are trying harder).

So I would advise that confrontations with your professor, and designing in a style you know they won't like has a good chance of earning you a lower grade.

By all means, set up a meeting with your prof to get a better idea of what he wants. You can defend your design, but if he doesn't want to back down, you're taking a big risk.



Remember, we're an arrogant, stubborn profession.

A couple of points:

1. The fact that you conflate postmodernism and deconstructivism, and then Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas (misspelling his name) already implies that you have a lot to learn about architecture. One could strongly argue that these two architects have nothing to do with either deconstructivism or postmodernism, but are in fact inheritors of a legacy of plural modernism that continues to this day. They are also radically different in approach and results. So I'm willing to give your professor the benefit of the doubt here. If you're still in school, you aren't very far along in your architectural education. You might try going with what he wants. Next semester, different professor with different interests.

2. I've been around school as a student and now teacher long enough to know that when a student says that X is the reason that his/her professor hates his/her project, there's usually some deeper reason for the criticism that perhaps you don't understand yet.

3. You are not (yet) Rem Koolhaas or Frank Gehry. What you produce in studio will be unlikely to win you awards/acclaim/acknowledgement. Keep this in perspective. You're in school to learn; your professor has things to teach and presumably knowledge that you don't. Why not listen to him and learn from him?

Life is long. You will have years to act like Howard Roarke. Maybe for now you should allow yourself to go with the flow, explore, and evolve.

In my first point above, I should have said stylistic Postmodernism.

We can quibble about what theoretical postmodernism is, or whether it even exists (I tend to think of it as a convenient label for a tendency within an ongoing Modernism.)

It's been said probably in many different ways, but the point isn't consensus. I'd actually argue that with the guy. Architects can easily make style their religion/end all very quickly. Don't ever do anything for the sake of doing it. Himmelblau was mentioned earlier- Prix himself ripped apart plenty of projects in our studio when the work, at the end of the day, was only trying to obey some sort of fashion that students thought he would like. When it was evident that the work was genuinely trying to look at new concepts or ways of conceiving of space through process, etc..that is where you found Prix incredibly interested. Moss too will even tell you the point of the academy is not for students to obey professors (read the introduction to Who Says What Architecture Is?). In that case, this guy is telling you to more or less worship an image of what these Architects make...making a non orthagonal line just for the hell of it is bullshit. Study what these Architects were interested in from their beginnings..beat him at his own game.

i agree, ichweiB

there was an interesting symposium this spring at GaTech with Jeffrey Kipnis & Paul Finch sitting down face to face with Mack Scoggin, Thom Mayne, Liz Diller, Michael Meredith, and a couple of others. They would discuss the work of the architects present in particular but let the discussion wander wherever it might; theory vs design, mono a mono. Several times the interpretations of the theorists ran up against the harsh reality of an architect saying that the move in question with respect to the building being discussed was a correction of a mistake, or that that beautiful feature or phenomenon arose during construction or in response to a dilemma or b/c that was all they could afford.

Paul Finch brilliantly quipped in response to one of these exchanges, "Well, it may work in practice, but the question is, does it work in theory?"

Nothing could be more true. Theory is its own art form and it happens to align with design sometimes and is almost always in response to design, but they are not entirely co-extensive, nor should they be. There are times when a well wrought theoretical argument is its own beautifully rigorous and executed mental gymnastics and it stands on its own as superbly designed, itself an instance of art. There are times, quite frankly, when it struggles to grasp or to engage well a design because theory and design are wrought with different media and there is not always a direct correlation one to the other.

Theory is also wonderful because, even if as a practitioner, your particular method is such that you will not engage it deeply during design, it still presents excellent mental training to make your thinking both more rigorous, logical and penetrating. So if your contention is that your professor is not giving you room to articulate a valid perspective, then that is one issue. But if the mental rigor being asked is intimidating or uncomfortable, then that is not a valid reason to eschew the instructor's direction.

i say its not up to you to deal with anybody he is the prefessor and you are just a kid. weather you agree with him or not is irelevant and he doesn;t care either because if you become architect in 50 years you wont really be concenred with this professors philosophy. if you care so much about professor and dont realize its best to go with flow and blow smoke for good grade then you make perfect architect!
you go on and complicate everything like most archhitects perfrect!

Seems like you are two of a kind.
A professor with misguided knowledge of rules about processing architecture and how to practice it. A student, who already has an in-place philosophy about architecture.

Hey kiddo, you still have some time and hope on your side if you humble down a little, but looks like your prof is gone to the dark side already.

Oh, it is a small point but it spells Koolhaas. You don't want to get hit on the balls either.

Yes, but I actually question the original poster's interpretation of his/her professor's comments.

I've taught enough to know that a lot of students both take literally what you say, or misinterpret it to their own (often combative) ends. i.e. "the professor hates my work because he only likes blobs," when in fact the professor only criticizes, not hates, your work because the ideas are weak.

I'm sure there are some boneheaded, terrible instructors out there who force their students to design in a specific style without regard for ideas and concepts. But most architecture professors are attempting to get at something deeper--and encourage ideas and concepts, not styles.

I suspect that's the case here—that the professor encourages his/her students to look at contemporary examples as a reference and an approach. The student misunderstands, thinks the professor wants them to copy these examples.

'mono a mono'

ps. jmanganelli please don't take this the wrong way I just thought it was funny transformation of the expression.

No offense, Jmang... but I feel the problem with architectural theory is that it is next to impossible to substantiate to any degree.

I mean... sociology to a certain extent is a soft science (or pseudo)... and it doesn't spend nearly the time nor effort nor wordcraft in trying to substantiate such complex arguments.

Because even sociology knows the bounds of correlation and causation.

If, however, you would like to interpret architectural theory as a substrate of humanities dialogue... that would be one thing. But your typical historical format word make architecture... well, rather shallow and pedantic.

Historical review requires a he said, she said state from multiple parties about the same thing, some evidence that the action actually took place and a summation of the statements and evidence.

So, if you had a half-dozen people who said Building A built by Architect A is post-modernism... then by historical standards it is post-modern. Architectural theory on the other hand seems to take whatever intellectual de jure there is and retroactively rewrites history by saying "while I think Architect A was trying to be post-modernist, I really think his work is post-destructo-denialist."

This simply does not work. While history is constantly being reviewed and rewritten, you must accept previous interpretations as fact while supply both new evidence and new statements to form a a variation of the interpretation.

So, architectural theory generally fails both the litmus tests for sociological- and humanities-based as stuff to be regarded as fact.

Intellectual fodder? Sure.





But the only kind of architectural theory out there should be things like:

A) This structural system seems to be a step moving forward in the creation of coreless skyscrapers.

or

B) In a double blind experimental study, 82% of respondents favored that malformed lavender oval over all other forms.



The moment I see, "The creation of this volumetric space was considered to be cerebral by the architect as he wanted to evoke a sense of pensive calculation in the mind of the pedestrian as he wandered the carefully planned programmatic structure."

THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVE ON ANY LEVEL.

Unicorn - I agree with you to a certain degree. Theory is not always terribly useful when one is designing. It is also a very subjective means with which to evaluate architecture. Many contemporary critics reject theory for the same reason you do. Architecture can best be evaluated by its tangible qualities (how it effects us) rather than by its symbolic references (which are often only legible to a particular group or individual.)

When I stated earlier in this blog that Rem Koolhaas was postmodern I meant he was a part of a larger historical group. There may be no hard lines distinguishing modernism from postmodernism, but there are some philosophical differences which are useful to acknowledge. To simplify the argument for the purpose of this blog format - modernists believed in change (hence the Utopian visions of a future where social change was possible.) Postmodernists (often described as those practicing in a post '68 world) no longer believe that a single vision of the future is useful. These architects question top-down design strategies, and look for ways to incorporate pluralism into their designs.

As architects we may not be consciously be striving for a particular reading of the buildings we design, but like it or not we are influenced by the period we live it. The other labels being thrown around Pomo, Decon, Blobs, etc. are labels that are prescribed to group of architects largely based on stylistic concerns (sometime these are assigned after the fact and sometime they are self inflicted.)

To the original post: as was stated by me and others on this blog. The purpose of school is to test as many ideas and ways of thinking as possible. The more varied the educational experience the more techniques and methodologies he/she will have at their disposal when they graduate. Give instructors the benefit of the doubt during school - you can reject or accept these ideas after you've tried them.

Does art need to know the bounds of correlation and causation?

so it seems, unicorn ghost, you argue for HTC grounded in a thoroughly defensible method -- which is very valid -- and more useful generally speaking -- and where my focus lies as well -- but I think theory that is closer to pure art also has its place -- it is fun, for one, and it really can be ingenious and stretch the way one conceptualizes

your position reminds me of something as well, my understanding is that within theoretical physics, there are physicists that specialize in generating plausible theories and there are physicists that specialize in figuring out how to prove theories (gleaned from watching a documentary on the work at the Fermi Lab) --- using this as a rough corollary, HTC grounded in something closer to scientific method may act as a compliment to theory grounded in play upon pure logic or signification without concern for verifiability

the difference between focusing on what is necessarily true versus what is indeed true