Over 20 years since the Kyoto Protocol, over 10 years since the Global Financial Crisis, and in the first year of the global Coronavirus pandemic, there has been no real change in the architecture of architecture itself. That will only happen when it stops connecting everything with itself, stops beginning with itself. When it admits the revolution into its own citadel. — Volume
Ole Bouman writes a Volume piece on 'Solipsism of Architecture' where he discusses a revolution will not happen in architecture until...
...Until then, in an inversion of Le Corbusier’s most notorious epigram: Architecture or Revolution. Architecture can be avoided.
14 Comments
The Deus Architectus complex writ large
i would wish you'd elaborate/expand a little more Thayer-D, I know you can.
It's a ridiculous essay, but peddling the falsehood that the architect has or should have the kind of power he talks about is delusional at best and profoundly undemocratic at worst.
You are getting it the wrong way. Kind of reactionary way. I shouldn't solicit or expect such a lazy and misunderstood response but sort of reifying most of your posts here.
You said you knew I could elaborate, except it's not what you wanted to hear, so now you call me lazy. I'm glad you where never my professor. So why don't you elaborate on the essay...I know you can
*were
I wasn't asking you to elaborate on the article but what you said in street Latin.
I see no need to additionally elaborate on the article other than what's written there. I appreciate its provocations I can visualize most of them. And, I enjoyed reading it. There're always editorial choices in distributing news.
Google deus and architectus in latin, lazy mon (street Jamaican).
Thanks for posting!
"Whatever the crisis, there will be no action before due consideration has been given to what the situation means for architecture. And ‘for the role of the architect’. In other words, what prevails is the egocentric question of ‘what’s in it for me?’"
So it would be better if architects just dove head first into things without considering how it may impact their own profession? I'm not saying we should be looking out for only ourselves, but there is enough self destructive behavior in the field already...
We make the unimaginable imaginable...if your client is not on board at first, try to convince them, come up with the arguments, the tactics, the scenarios, the visuals. The unsustainable is only surviving because not all costs are factored into it, and because a lot of clients don't realize it, and because architects don't dare to put their foot down and only look at the short term (goes for clients too). What if banks stopped providing loans for unsustainable developments, what if there would come a carbon tax? Talking about self destructive behavior, doing nothing to change the course of events, that's self destructive on a global scale!
Until architects start becoming owners / developers, shit ain't gonna change. And that will never happen. I get it - we have a role to play - but how deluded do you have to be to think that we're going to have ANY effect whatsoever, when 99.9% of clients could not give less of a shit? I feel like I've been reading this same article for twenty years.
Pretty true. I've been having this conversation with people about the whole classicism executive order thing, and I keep pointing out that nothing is stopping clients from choosing that type of architecture now except for their desires and their purse strings. Architects have nothing to do with it.
I do think there is an impact. Architects are not without any power, it's just limited to within their influence over the owner. The fact that owners often don't care about things is partly what provides the opportunity some of the time.
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