Without theory, we run the risk of repeating the same designs over and over.

Hopefully pseudo-intellectualism passed off as profundities is dead.

Edward R. Ford's new book is fabulous. That's one way to approach the discipline of Architecture using ideas and history. Ford is sort of the Isaiah Berlin of Architecture where he studies and thinks about what has been done and then looks forward.

capital-T theory is now a matter for history
small-t theory (thinking and writing about architecture in a critical way) is in no danger of going anywhere anytime soon.

agfa8x couldn't agree more..

The ability of the computer isn't related with human being's primitive insticnt.
"Machine language" of computers isn't human being's unconscious.
That is a metaphor which is valid only on the "paper" or "screen".

For me, that seems Eisenman's 21st C. version which is out-dated and badly literally interpreted philosophy into architecture.
It only proves architects are losing originality of thought and a boring profession intellectually.

dasvague, i would argue that both those quotes are so steeped in theory, they miss the point entirely. they assume a polemic that no longer exists.

i think agfa's reading is much closer to the current state of theory, at least in practice.

I am not saying that theory in architecture isn't necessary.
But, I think, architecture theory has failed to explain the contemporary society, and they has failed even to understand deleuzian and faucauldian views and been attached to narrcisstic Imaginary or Heroic(superstar's) Symbolics.

That is the reason architecture is coming back to "pratices".

Looking for my place
On assembly lines
Fake prizes
Risin out of the bombholes
Skeleton boys hyped up on purple
Smoke rings blow from across the disco
Bank notes burn like broken equipment
Lookin for shelter readjust your position
Thought control ghost written confessions
Two dimensions dumb your head down
Duck don't look now company missiles
Power is raunchy rent-a-cops are watching
Makin their dreams out of paper mache
Cliche wasted hate taste tested

Hell yes I'm movin this way I'm doin this thing
(please enjoy)
Hell yes I'm turnin it on
I'm workin my legs hell yes
I'm callin you out I'm switchin my plates
(please enjoy)
Hell yes
I'm cleanin the floor my beat is correct

Stretched to the limit attention spans
Snap back retract collapse into laugh tracks
Noise response applause and hand claps
Floodgates open to the sound of the rainbow
Breaking points on the verge of pointless
Fools anointed to the followers fanfare
Look for the common not superficial
Code red cola war conformity crisis
Perfunctory idols rewriting their bibles
With magic markers running out of their ink
Lives in white out
Turn the lights out
Fax machine anthems get your damn hands up

Hell yes I'm movin this way I'm doin this thing
(please enjoy)
Hell yes I'm turnin it on I'm workin my legs
Hell yes I'm callin you out I'm switchin my plates
(please enjoy)
Hell yes
I'm cleanin the floor
My beat is correct

Your opinion is exactly structurelist's.

That is exactly why I said architecture theory has failed to understand post-structuralism or neo materialism.

I said to "LearningFromDasVagueness".

LearningFromDasVagueness,
I don't think I have to lecture about structuralism because I guess you already know that.
I am sorry if you feel offended.
Don't take my criticism too seriously and think that is just one man's thought.

Here is just one thought reminded of me.

Whenever in Korea, which is my home country I, as a college kid, went to seminars of "stararchitects",
they said to the audiences and panels "you guys don't understand my architecture because you don't know what the contemporary is and what architecture is".

Now, I know, what they mean saying that.
They were actually saying, "why you guys are asking what I don't know".
It is a simple variation of Freud's negation.
Actually it was the architects who don't know what the contemporary or architecture is.

The opinion about "Symbolics" and "Imaginary".

Maybe, even more "phallic" than structuralists.

pure empiricism
nominalism
evolutionary detour
primitive instinctual roots
nonideological
contemporary society
deleuzian
faucauldian
narrcisstic imaginary
heroic symbolics
post-structuralism
neo-materialism
structuralism
Freud's negation

Good, I knew you won't take my criticism seriously.

"But, I think, architecture theory has failed to explain the contemporary society, and they has failed even to understand deleuzian and faucauldian views and been attached to narrcisstic Imaginary or Heroic(superstar's) Symbolics."

syp: you're implying that contemporary architecture needs to understand these two points of views?

Why?

Of course, it's okey not to admit the contemporary is the period of poststructuralism.

However, they themselves keep saying their theory reflects poststructuralism, but it seems that they don't even understand those thoughts. That's the point......

I agree, for those who don't think that the contemporary is the period of poststructuralism, "Faucault" and "Deleuze" are just meaningless.

Of course,
you don't need to agree with "they don't even understand those thoughts", too.

I curious to know what you mean by "capital-T theory"

The above question was directed at agfa8x

one of the major distinction between human and monkeys are theories...

a human use math theory 1+1=2 to get the concept of 2

while a monkey needs to put 1 apple and another apple together to know what 2 means.

there are things that we do not need to actually built it to know it sucks if we know theories^^

yeah architects generally don't get basic post-structuralist thought. it actually takes a womping of french sentence structure to really understand how these ideas came about.

arguably, computational design what with field theory and all, is an attempt to interpret post-structuralism in physical form, but some of the larger points are generally missed. i find it to be very interesting that architecture as discipline also fails to address how these core philosophies have mutated under other social disciplines.

I think that architecture's failure to digest contemporary society also stems from its homogeneous makeup and its physical distance from current social on-goings. duh.

One of my friends pointed out that architecture and public administration is rather devoid of hipsterism. And that most of the "hipster" architecture students he knows are self-proclaimed hipsters.

The firest rule of hipster club is that you can't label yourself as a hipster.

msudon--

"I think that architecture's failure to digest contemporary society also stems from its homogeneous makeup and its physical distance from current social on-goings. duh"

I get homogeneous make-up, but what are you alluding to when you say,"[architecture's] physical distance from current social on-goings"

digestion failure

Learning from das vagueness,

where's Colquhoun's quote from?

3west-

architecture, as an academic pursuit, is physically distinct from emerging/relevant social "science". the ideas do not cross in any meaningful way. on a campus, separate buildings delinate separate ways of thinking. there is Space between what architects think about people [general public] and what social "scientists" think about people.
architecture students frequently postulate the most naive shit that would be laughed out of any serious social science class. as a practiced tradition, it's business model that demands business. it depends on market forces and is separate from the third of the county that does not directly participate and any other supernumeraries.

If you are going to propose wacky shit about moving/ordering/holding people, then you ought to know a lot about how people work. If you aren't outright proposing wacky shit, too bad, there are implicit powers structures under foot in your work and you ought to be aware of the implications. its kinda like "leave the campsite as you found it, don't leave your trash- but don't really change it unless you get native plants/are an arborist"

basically I am advocating for a mo-dern archigram.

3west-

architecture, as an academic pursuit, is physically distinct from emerging/relevant social "science". the ideas do not cross in any meaningful way. on a campus, separate buildings delinate separate ways of thinking. there is Space between what architects think about people [general public] and what social "scientists" think about people.
architecture students frequently postulate the most naive shit that would be laughed out of any serious social science class. as a practiced tradition, it's business model that demands business. it depends on market forces and is separate from the third of the county that does not directly participate and any other supernumeraries.

If you are going to propose wacky shit about moving/ordering/holding people, then you ought to know a lot about how people work. If you aren't outright proposing wacky shit, too bad, there are implicit powers structures under foot in your work and you ought to be aware of the implications. its kinda like "leave the campsite as you found it, don't leave your trash- but don't really change it unless you get native plants/are an arborist"

basically I am advocating for a mo-dern archigram.

"faucauldian" ...foucauldian

theory is dead?
death is a theory.

the paradigmatic formulation of a theory - "birth", its ascension -"childhood", its syntagmatic genealogy - "adulthood", crisis in theory - "old age", abdication of theory - "death", neo theory - "ressurection/reincarnation".

theorists avatarizing theory

the paradigmatic formulation of a theory - "birth", its ascension -"childhood", its syntagmatic genealogy - "adulthood", crisis in theory - "old age", abdication of theory - "death", neo theory - "ressurection/reincarnation".

theorists avatarizing theory

i dunno fondue, your citation and and the Colquhoun quote made me think of this. i wonder if eisenman is more freud than jung?

in my view, colquhoun's comment betrays a lack of understanding about how digital modelling systems work.

i thought he was saying that you can like a form because it's sexy without needing to know anything else about it - or even needing to know why. eye to pleasure centers directly - do not pass through intellect. will have to think a little more about the implications of this hypothesis, whether for good or bad.

It is really interesting to see how similar the contemporary architecture trend is to that of the early modern time: New generation struggling with "design" oriented existing generation.

In both cases, the "design" of existing generation is based on really shrunk reality only for their stubborn and useless ego.

So you guys really think nobody has been doing post-structuralism? Isnt that what theyve been doing for about the last 30 years? I mean granted, they never got it down, but has anyone ever 'got it down'? Most of the post-structuralists are working from a world of text. We arent. Maybe Im going too easy but I cant help but expect some translation loss. I mean Eisenman was novel at the time, but hes no Derrida. It actually seems unfair to expect him to be.

Its always hard to get a good bearing on the present. It just takes time for all that information to percolate into everything else before you can gauge whats moving what. But if Im going to take a stab in the dark, Im going to guess the gift of all that investigation and consternation in the 80's and 90's has at least opened up the possibility for architects to go back into the bag. Once youre no longer so obsessed with progress, with adding incrementally the grand linear arc of history, you have the freedom to look back or in or out and extract ideas from a much larger intellectual space in order to suit your purpose. People round these parts love Zumthor, but hes just doing phenomenology, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, stuff thats most of a century old. People like Predock and Chipperfield are just doing minimalism, fed by cultural symbolism and formal architypes, still really old stuff.


Im honestly not convinced the computer people have really figured out what theyre doing yet, that theres anything like intellectual rigor going on there. It still seems like "Hey! Look what we can do!" Except, they cant, because its too blooming expensive to custom-mill every surface of anything but an exhibition showpiece. If I take Vagueness' opinion, (or, lack thereof?) then there really isnt meant to be any real thought there. While I appreciate the honesty, I do have to wonder, dont you run the risk of just accumulating what amounts to a mountain of expensive fluff? Experiential novelties with the substantive value of a piece of jello? Whos social relevance and emotional satisfaction last about as long? Does it really behoove us to mask our lack of depth and our inability to achieve real, effective, incisive strength in our work with formal nonsense?

Very well said oe!

LearningFromDasVagueness,

thanks. that's a good quote.
I like Colquhoun, fascinating still.

So, Woody Allen as the new theoretical guru for architecture...I always thought he would fit in more with Koolhaas' Delirious New York, but since he also moved his filmsets to Barcelona and London, maybe it really is Whatever Works...