These were supposed to be posted last week, but I didn't really get around to it. Lame. There are two scenes are elements of Middle East culture (Historical and Contemporary Business) that I think need to be continued in a series. The last perspective is very literally a man approaching technology; it's involvement in the project will be very important, but the implementation of it is not clear. I'm leaning towards the use of spaces not explicitly programmed for the education of visitors about the development of the building.
....wow, I had to get that manifesto out first. I sat down intending to write about how freaked I was by the fact of my most huge of tasks.
In talking with Rami, Mary-Lou, and my peers about my potential thesis I got a swift kick to the head. The boot had a tread that etched "TOO BROAD" onto my forehead.
I'm attempting to infuse the creation of architecture with a sense of democracy. This is based on the development of our Urban Design Build Studio (website coming soon, we're working on it!) project and the Participatory Design process it was based on. That interaction was an amazing opportunity and privilege to be a part of. I feel we can go further. I'm excited by the prospect of a democratic design process but utterly scared of the prospect it might reduce to anarchy or a bureaucracy. Either case would stymie a project forever - not my goal. The increase of ownership in the eventual result for all parties. The fostering of common individual and global goals (sustainability, local greening, water management). That's what I would aim for.
The Open Architecture as I manifesto'd it suppresses a bit of the democracy in the design process in favor of a vibrant discourse post-production. (I need to run to entropy before it closes, I'll pick up this thread later this week)
I believe in openness. Openness allows the free flow of information.The beauty of (pure) information is that it is itself unbiased. The transmission of information only becomes subjective when passed between interpreters. By acting as content filters, we allow ourselves to spin information into a form of argument which is useful and critical to deductive/inductive reasoning. However, it is left to the observer to interpret a sometimes opaque filter; This is true in Architecture as it is in writing. With written work, we're given the tools to penetrate the potential writer's bias. We know these tools as footnotes. It's through the citing of sources and the reader's pulling at the original threads of the writer's interrogation of the topic that we can understand the development of the author's work and their bias. Analytical writing is about argument - it's why we take Interp & Argument as a freshman fundamental course. The process of making an Architectural Object - be it building, urban plan, room or another type - contains the Architect's argument about the making of building; How it should be implemented, how it should meet the ground and sky, the degree of smoothness for transitions, the performative quality of materials and enclosure, the aspect of all things. These many arguments are layered in spatial and sensual phenomena to which they are inextricably linked. This is the opacity of the Architectural Argument. Part of the academy education we undergo is dedicated to the study of precedent for this very reason - we strive to understand the rationale of buildings so as to better our own designs. While the public is not trained in this manner, they must participate in our internal discussion of the Architectural Argument for that discourse to remain relevant. Too often do these discussions take place in an ivory tower of our own making. At a minimum, our Architecture needs footnotes. An example: we are now so familiar with wikipedia that many take its workings for granted. In looking at the wikipedia page for "Architecture"(1), we see (in order) a palatable summary, the table of contents, the content, and notes, references and external links. By feeding off the collective knowledge of the world, wikipedia has become a massive source of information. Most choose not to delve into the inner workings of that mechanism, ignoring the tabs at the top of the page - "article", "discussion" and "history". These are published records of how the article was formed. Most "completed" articles have lively discussions going on in the background and constant re-evaluation of what knowledge gets presented. Proper form is to footnote key points and relevant information, creating further inroads to the topic. In this sense, Wikipedia is an Open community. The development of Open Source software such as Linux and the Firefox web browser, while developed and managed by a dedicated group, is accessed, improved, and re-evaluated by a massive group of programmers on a daily basis. An Open Architecture at a minimum creates its own footnotes. It would open the process of designing to public involvement. It would comprehensively publish the making of the Object. It would educate visitors on the process of its making and offer a forum for the discussion of its future.
Jorge Silvetti is a very eloquent writer and clearly very passionate about this topic. As well he should be because his writing is concerned with the apparent death of Architectural form-making. Not "form-making" meaning "willful design", but as it concerns creating meaning in a profession that must be embedded in the culture it is designing for. The issues he tackles, Programism, Production Modes, Thematization, Blobs and Literalism, in his opinion all undercut the ability of an Architect to make forms that are relevant and insistent to their culture. I would absolutely agree, given his portrayal of the State of Architectural Form-making. Programism and Literalism belong together. They are both symptoms of a lack of imagination on behalf of the Architect. The symptoms use a program diagram or a description of how culture works ("Flows" and blobs) as the originator of the Architectural Gesture. He describes this as "a first example of a process that potentially exonerates the architect from his or her creative role" and that the synthesis of data into form is "the quintessential and minimum ability that an architect ought to display".(23-24) Amazingly, Architects seem to be looking to give away responsibility for the Architectural object. When a flow, or system, or diagram becomes the generator, the Architect is no longer the author of that building, the representation/diagram is. To be an Architect is to continually evaluate the needs of the client/site/community/environment/culture and to craft a building that is as in keeping with these sometimes disparate goals as possible. "Thematization" does a rather similar thing to the others, though I separate it since it might result from Postmodernism more than a lack of imagination. It has the similar goals to
shorten the distance between the model used as referent and the architecture produced to invoke it, and aims to elicit in the beholder either the pleasure of a momentary, playful, and contrived enactment or the delusion of the restitution of a whole way of life and its values.(24)
Pretty sad. Silvetti is saying that thematization is the result of the Cultural Revivalist in all of us. The quote distinguishes itself from the section on Blobs, where the goal was to establish an Architecture without referent. I assume that we do not build into a void. The system is full of ideas not my own of what Architecture is and does, some good, some bad. The idea of architecture without precedent cannot be engaged fruitfully as it is a bad form of naivete that will stifle creative alternatives to precedent. To reduce it to an aphorism, you cannot create a future without a past. I enjoyed the reading very much, as it took to issue the creative failures of a lot of contemporary ideas that had good intentions. The idea that once an idea is posited, it is pure is false, and Silvetti recognizes and addresses that in his postscript.
In the process of researching ideas of Open Architecture, I came across Cameron Sinclair's TED talk, where he outlines his desire to create an open network of designers linked in their desire to affect change (essentially). If you don't know, he's the co-founder of Architecture for Humanity (along with Kate Stohr)
The TED prize awarded him this wish in 2006 and out sprang the Open Architecture Network! www.openarchitecturenewtork.org
This was where my 1 + 3 + 9 was going....awesome. It's great to see this initialized, though I need to study the implementation more. I want a greater access for the non-architectural public to have a voice in the implementation of projects, and I'm unsure how submission of ideas works with OAN. I hadn't thought about the format of submissions, and the competition format works really well to focus the collective efforts of the design community, which is great and absolutely necessary for Open projects on their way to Critical Mass. example: Wikipedia is maintained now by a HUGE collective user base, but it took concentrated time to get there. (I should look that up, the actual time....)
Anyway, the TED talk Cameron Sinclair gave is fantastic, you should watch it!
The quote and symbol come from the variety of Linux called Ubuntu. An Open Source operating system which maintains its userbase through frequent updates, forums and a total commitment to free open source software.
1: Contemporary Architecture needs to be open to the world in order to benefit the Contemporary world.
3: By opening the process of Design in collaborative and diverse ways, architects can initiate change on an entirely new level. The fusion of diverse ideas will naturally hybridize many new forms and create opportunities for new discourse on a global scale. Such discourse will create the vectors along which the future of Architecture will develop.
9: The coordinated development of Open Source Software, Creative Commons Licensing and other Open Frameworks has proven the high-functioning potential of open systems. Integral to these frameworks are Open Development, Open Distribution and Open Education, which engage the complete lifecycle of a project. Architecture has made forays into these topics with Participatory Design, lifecycle analyses and performance-calibrated design, but has not unified them holistically. By considering them together, the production of Architecture will maximize its output. By incorporating diverse collaborative design, we will change the world for the better. By tapping into existing communities to feed the process, we can accelerate the process of developing local solutions. By creating a forum for new communities, we can revolutionize the production of Architecture. By developing human potential on a global scale, we will foster the next generation of the Creative Class. And by allowing our Architecture and the process that creates it to cross the closed threshold, we will create living objects in the collective memory exponentially more integrated with the world's needs compared to their pristine ancestors.
