just consult The Oracle (OED), or ask people what they mean.

still,

some people (especially student mimicing they're idols super-star architect-gods) do tend to use English fantasically poorly, and wholly unnecessarily to try and make what they are saying sound either interesting, complicated, or just plain fancy. These people are generally just talking bullshit, don't worry if you don't understand them completely.

If you need examples of this sort of stuff (which is nonsense) find anything said by Caroline Bos from UN studio, she speaks more eloquently aggravating bullshit than any other person involved with architecture that I have ever heard.

Just be your own man/woman and describe things as you see them, it can be very refreshing for others I think.

as i get older, instead of getting more cranky/curmudgeonly about the difficult language used by the uber-academics and star architects, i've warmed to it.

when you're at the top of your game and you've been absorbed in very specific ways of thinking about what you do, i would guess that there are some times when using a language that is densely packed with meaning, language that might have to be unpacked/translated over time by those around you, could be useful and more efficient. at one time i thought it WAS b.s., but now i'm learning that it's just conditioning and immersion and lots of talking.

i came up when peter eisenman was a regular on the lecture circuits. he was the king of archi-babble - we sometimes thought he was more performance artist than architect - but i learned that, b.s. or not, his talking/thinking led him somewhere interesting; the words had results that took him in directions that hadn't yet been fully explored by architects.

if you have access to people like caroline bos, soak it in. revel in it. lazy cynicism just screens you from getting what you can from the experience.

the biggest danger is that you start to imagine that anyone who uses big words is just being pretentious, which simply isn't true.

when you are trying to discuss complicated ideas or relationships, sometimes you have to have complex language, or even invent a language.

i agree with steven: lazy cynicism is a poor approach.

true agfa, but then also many things can be communicated more effectively than so many architects choose to .

There's a lot to be said for a certain poesy, and Nouvel I think does it well, but there are too many architects out there who are, in my opinion, verbally dyslexic!

the other thing is that architects write for different reasons: sometimes writing in tortured language enables a new way of thinking about something - even if only for the writer. Writing can be a part of the design process (I know it is for me. I often have to write screeds of incomprehensible nonsense to get things happening).

i guess in this situation it would be important to distinguish whether you are reading something intended to be explanatory / descriptive, or whether the obscurity is serving some other purpose.

I am not opposed to it at all, I just wish to understand it. I'm not critical of big words, but when they are put in sentences that make little sense to me, I have to wonder about it. I am open to that it's me and I just don't get it. Are there books I can look into?
Agfa8x, what is a "tortured language"? And to answer your question -it's not in the case that I am reading something, but more so in person, lecture,etc.
I definately relate to what you're saying Steven Ward, about Peter Eisenman(and other's ) who seem like performing artist's--I have to say similar has occurred to me.
I have heard that Sci Arc abnd UCLA are trying to codify architectural language, so that it can have it own vocabulary, any news?

i guess by 'tortured language' i mean using words in a forced manner: using words in ways that are not common usage, for example.

Reading is really important. Read and mull over what your lecturers have written. Just keep listening, and reading, and it will start to make sense. Or it won't. There's plenty of theorists I don't understand.

I don't think there is any need to have a single codified architectural language, because it would just amount to limiting in advance what you can say about architecture.

"...because it would just amount to limiting in advance what you can say about architecture."

agfa8x: perfectly stated, beautifully clear and succinct.

One should use architectural language to a degree where it is furthering inquiry or creating dialog, not obfuscating it.

Not to say that all the academic speak is BS, but in general across academia there are boundaries. Technical academic language is important as you begin to address nuances that are of no consequence to the layman. It's all dependant upon context.

However, I do believe it can be taken too far and there is a gray line that can be crossed. Alan Sokal was able to publish the paper "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" which basically said nothing to a legitmate academic journal.

It shows how few people really take the time to (or can actually) understand what is said. I believe exploration of ideas through nuanced technical language is necessary but it shouldn't be baffling. The best known architectural manifestos/publications/papers are not overwhelmingly mired in complex language.

You shouldn't have to get it the first time, but it shouldn't baffle you forever.

Sokal's paper did say something, and Sokal used his credibility as a qualified physicist to get it published. Social Text (the journal in question) specialises in highly speculative papers. The fact that they published Sokal's paper did not necessarily mean they agreed, or even understood the full implications of the paper. They published it to further discourse; which was the intent of that particular journal.

ACFA, what is technical language, and how do you distinguish it from other language?

i'm not using "technical language" as a formal definition per se. I merely mean the body of jargon that usually accompanies discussion within a given field that isn't easily understood without formal training in the field.

but lets not argue semantics...

again. my point is that the language used in a healthy dialog should be used to better distinguish between very nuanced and similar ideas. when merely understanding the language becomes difficult, you begin to approach a threshold. this threshold would nonetheless be a shifting one depending upon the audience.

The AA could not put it clearer

Performative Anomalies
Spurred by the predicaments of reconciling practice and research, we posit our understanding of architecture as primarily a material practice based on strategic mediation and opportunistic negotiation. While intrinsically and productively linked to a theoretical framework and self-referential systems, architecture inevitably operates fundamentally outside its internal discourse, affected by economic, cultural and political forces.

Yep, as clear as mud.

But what else is architecture, or any other profession, except the learning of and becoming fluent in another language. Once you learn the language you are accepted into the community, and can participate. Language also prevents unwanted outsiders from participation thus aiding protectionism. Furthermore, black clothes and Le Corbusian Spectacles further identify one within the group.

Its kind of like learning Japanese. And its also great for scrabble.

Obviously that AA paragraph is not light summer beach-reading, but if you read it through carefully, its quite comprehensible... and even apt, because it points out that architecture 'inevitably operates...outside its internal discourse'.

Do you expect the AA to be writing for my mother?

please change the scale of your question's perception, its angle of disproportion is relative to space but not time. Consult the HGG

..if anyone has heard Tadao Ando speak/lecture, it is absolutely minimalist/austere, but completely beautiful and communicative......reminding me that a strong, clear idea/project always trumps a so-so post-rationalist concept supported by a contrived language....

this topic is old news, a subject that will be hashed through throughout the next generation of architectural discourse and beyond. the following example, cribbed either from archinect or another similar site several YEARS ago, is a good indication:

"Our strategy was to insert a dynamic fluid-based waste-management technology that would act as an on-demand interface between the body of the occupant and the public infrastructure of the urban environment" – ‘Architect’s’ description of a toilet installation.

well found 0+

most terms can also be found here

link

now this is pure bullshit

The sheer courage of these pieces is breathtaking. The space inside, the gap between the walls, narrows, widens, breathes in and out (if you can speak of massive iron “breathing”, which in Serra’s work you can) and eventually rewards you with an inner chamber, from which you have to follow the same route out…each emphasizes the ancient Greek philosopher’s Zen-like adage: hodos ano kato mia kai hote, “the way up and the way down are one and the same”. A maze would be fussy; it would interfere with the stupendous directness and logic of Serra’s spatial language.

ROBERT HUGHES on the Richard Serra installation at the Bilbao Guggenheim
Guardian

more crap

The wholly immersive urbanism that is a place that is distinctly built environment and seeks to create compact walkable neighbourhoods all connected and interrelated in a complex pattern of urban form and function.

The Ashford Borough Council Local Development Framework’s definition of ‘a town’

ok, BOTS, let's hear your keepin-it-real take on Serra.

your second example is just grammatically wrong, so you can hassle that one all you like.

point taken. Now where's that plane ticket to Bilbao...

I worked for several years as an editor at an architectural press. Edited most of the architects mentioned here. You wouldn't believe the ridiculous pretensiousness and obscurity of most of the manuscripts before being submitted to VERY heavy editing. By little old me.

My point is that most architects are not skilled with language--good writing makes complex ideas more understandable, it doesn't obfuscate them more. From time to time language is used effectively by architects as a device. This should not be done by anyone who is not:

a) an extremely good writer
b) very well read. in literature and theory
c) writing for a very small and specific audience who is both a and b.

99.5% of those trying to express ideas about architecture should strive towards simplicity and conciseness. Seems unlikely to happen any time soon though. Ugh.

I knew that I was in trouble w/ Arch-speak when my words in a meeting were transcribed as "Tubes of Tin" - I was really saying "two-bah-ten".

Ha! Ha! Ha! I actually did work on Eisenman's book about the Santiago project.

I'm gonna have to abstain from comment on it though.

fortunately there's actually very little writing in the book. Can't remember if that was in there...don't think so. If so my ass is on the line. Uhoh.

fortunately there's actually very little writing in the book. Can't remember if that was in there...don't think so. If so my ass is on the line. Uhoh.

lilbuddy, I like the cut of your jib ;)

from the areforum.

Not everyone is amazing at writing, and even architects can benefit from editorial help. Thank goodness they have lilbuddy to help out and then laugh behind their backs about how awful their manuscript was.

First-years used to play the game where each picks an architecture buzz word and sticks it to the back of a critic's chair (after the critic is seated, and without he or she noticing), then they get points whenever their critic speaks the word on the back of their chair. It was funny - but also somewhat revealing as to what words some first-year architecture students view as obscure, or as archi-speak. For instance, I don't consider the words "superimposed" or "tectonic" to be academic archi-babble, but there were frequently found on the backs of chairs. Are those the types of words you're talking about? If so that's core vocabulary that you probably will - and should - pick up relatively quickly. If, on the other hand, you're talking about of-the-moment terms being tossed around by star-chitect critics ("rhizomatic" and "minimally supersymmetric" were some I remember making the rounds of my department a few years ago) then don't worry - those terms will be out of favor before you graduate anyway.

In the late '80s, I heard these words thrown around every friggin' day : 'Juxtapose', 'icon', 'patina'& yes, 'tectonic.' They also loved 'Brise Soliel' & something called 'Bose Arts'.

bose arts = beauxs arts

French school that pretty much defined architetcural education from the 18th century.

Can hardly be regarded as obscure

sorry 19th century

Sorry ieyaseu, I was making fun of the way they pronounced it @ GATech.
Kinda like a 'Tube-of-Tin' =2x10.

"juxtapose", "icon", "patina", and "tectonic" don't seem to me to be pretentious archispeak. Those are pretty normal words that I wouldn't expect to go out of style in a year or to be thought of as obscure by very many people by the time they get out of architecture school. I think all of those except for tectonic are words that would appear on most SAT vocabulary lists. More importantly they're words that are used pretty frequently by clients, consultants, etc., so we're at least all speaking the same language. "Rhizomatic" was a popular one when I was in grad school (mid 90s) but I haven't heard it since.