The Architectural Community and the Polis: Thinking About Ends, Premises, and Architectural Education (original) (raw)
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Architecture and Politics: Dissecting the Pretense of Political Architecture
We must repudiate the false pretense of “political” or “critical” architecture. Instead we must grasp and act upon architecture's own specific competency and related criticality. The stance of parametricism is sharply critical of current architectural and urban design outcomes, and my stance is doubly critical as I am also critical of many of the shortcomings of “real existing” parametricism. However, my stance as architectural researcher and paractitioner (as well as parametricism’s stance in general) is implicitly affirmative with respect to the general societal (social, economic and political) trends that underlie the criticized current architectural and urban outcomes. This implicit affirmation of the social order is a necessary condition of professional engagement with social reality. Those you are feeling that current socio-economic and political conditions are to be fought and overthrown and who are unwilling to fulfil architecture’s institutionally allocated role should consequently shift their activity into the political arena proper because they see the political system as the bottleneck for architecture’s (and society’s) progress. They need to test and win their arguments within and against political groups rather than within architecture. The currently fashionable concept of a “critical” or “political” architecture as a supposed form of political activism must be repudiated as an implausible phantom.
Architecture, Politics and the Public Realm
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 1981
A prominent architectural theorist recently complained that contemporary architecture is now stymied for our lack of a credible political vision .' This judgment serves to underline the conjoining of these two realms even if the relation is one which, for the most part, has almost entirely escaped the notice of thinkers in both disciplines. Doubtless each will account for such past indifference in his own fashion, but it is my contention that it is no longer a desirable or tenable state ofaffairs. For the political theorist, in particular, the promise expected at the intersection ofthese two fields, first highlighted by the Goodmans' early pioneering work, still remains to be realized.2 Although animated by a somewhat different set of concerns than those of the Goodmans, I hope that this paper will help reawaken interest in the political theory of architecture. To grasp this kind of subject, we must look first at the "politics" of architecture in past societies. I do not mean the politics and quarrels of individual architects, doubtless the usual modern treatment of this theme .3 The "politics" of architecture here will concern rather the inherently political role which architecture seems invariably to perform in one polity or another. This emphasis will mean of course that we must depress for our purposes the importance of the aesthetic or technical faces of architecture-and certainly turn our backs upon the historically vacuous slogan, "art for art's sake." Indeed, I propose to turn this epithet on its head so that-at least for the art of architecture-it shall read "an art principally for the state's sake".' Those who find such a remark provocative might begin by examining the world's architectural remains. For, in whatever antique condition they come to us and from whatever time and place, these buildings almost all betray a political or "stately" character, easily recognisable whether in the palaces of Versailles or Schoenbrun, the tombs of the ancient Pharaohs, the temples of the Acropolis, or the Gothic cathedrals of mediaeval Europe. Indeed, because of this intimate connection between architecture and the state's order architects have themselves argued that in the buildings of past ages we have the most reliable guides to the "life" of each civilization. In fact, the art of architecture has virtually always served principally public interests-large state or quasi-state institutions. This "public" character of architecture, evident in any chronicle on world architecture, can be seen by the continuous string of monumental works of architectural art focussing almost exclusively on capitols, courts, palaces, tombs, temples, and churches. These,
The Societal Function of Architecture
The question “What is the social function of architecture?“ is a necessary question, important for the self-regulation and self-determination of the discipline. This relates to the key premise of the theory of Architectural Autopoiesis—namely that architecture is a self-regulating discourse with no authority governing it, neither politicians nor clients have authority over architecture. Well, what are we doing as architects? We produce buildings. What do buildings do? The most general standard answer has usually been that architecture provides shelter, that it provides protection to keep us dry and warm. But is that what requires an academic discipline? Do we need Wolf Prix, Zaha Hadid or Greg Lynn to do that? I doubt it. So, what do architectural works really do for us? Are we perhaps creating beautiful buildings? So is that what it is? Are we artists, therefore? Or are we creating particularly well-functioning, technologically sophisticated buildings? Does that mean that we are engineers? Or are we just creating new original spaces? Does that mean that architecture is a kind of end in itself, a kind of play, autonomous like abstract music, as Eisenman and Kipnis sometimes assume? None of these answers are satisfying. I have a more convincing answer, and I will try to deliver it here today.
Mimesis: Lynch Architects, 2015
A book chapter from Mimesis: Lynch Architects, a critical monograph published by Artifice Books on Architecture, an imprint of Black Dog Press in 2015. The term "civic architecture" is explored in relation to its use in Renaissance architectural theory and in terms of the work of social and cultural historians such as Hans Baron. Mimesis was written at the conclusion of a PhD supervised by Joseph Rykwert, Helen Mallinson and Peter Carl, Practical Poetics (which you can find here) that became the book Civic Ground (also available here). This short essay is a summary of part of the doctoral dissertation, and although the book Mimesis is largely concerned with design methodology, on aspect of this might be described as hermeneutic phenomenology". One might say that architectural imagination is mimetic to the extent that it is an art of interpretation and experiential participation in the social and political life of a city, primarily as a citizen and as a visual thinker too.
In India, architecture is not seen as a discipline possessing any serious transformative social agency or critique either by architects themselves or informed critics. The article attempts to interrogate this situation, tracing and situating the validity of architecture’s political claims, and offering possibilities through an increased engagement with architecture’s Other—the city
THE PUBLIC OF ARCHITECTURE: CONFLICT AND CONSENSUS
San Rocco magazine, 2016
In May 1978 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London, Giancarlo De Carlo gave the inaugural Thomas Cubitt Lecture entitled “Reflections on the Present State of Architecture”. This speech is probably the most revealing text the Italian architect ever penned, for with the pretext of reminding the audience of the relatively unknown enterprises of Thomas Cubitt, De Carlo focused his discussion on four main subjects: architecture and morality; architecture and the client; architecture and large-scale programmes; and architecture and language. The key question he posed was: What kind of society are architects serving? De Carlo had a deep interest in utopia, particularly as a tool for helping to discard dialectical oppositions and reinvigorate contradictions, and thereby introduce room for conflict, which has the capacity to boost the imagination and generate beauty and grace.
Architecture Beyond Construction
Neo-liberalism and the Architecture of the Post Professional Era
The last decade of urban space-making practices in Turkey has been dominated by a construction frenzy caused by the neoliberal alignment of capitalist market forces and urban governments. Not unlike the current global architectural scene, the effect of this situation toward professional architectural practice in Turkey is twofold: On the one hand, architecture and design in general are becoming booming professions as creative forces of the construction industry that forms the core of the national economy. The job opportunities and commissions for practicing architects are proliferating, and the clientele profile has been expanding with national-international investors as well as the central and local governments promoting large-scale urban development projects. On the other hand, the architectural practice is so immensely dominated by the neoliberal policies focused on "building as a means for economic growth" that there is virtually no room for a professional discourse encompassing disciplinary ethics charged with social agenda, informed by spatial intelligence, formulated with public participation, aiming for the greater good. This paper aims to discuss the current state of the architectural profession and the practicing architect as a spatial intellectual in the globalized world, focusing mainly on the İstanbul experience and reflecting on the possibility of an architectural practice beyond the constraints of the construction industry. In the course of the paper, firstly a brief account on the condition of normative/conventional urban space-making practices at the age of neoliberal urban politics is given through the example of İstanbul. Then, a reflection upon the capabilities and capacities of the architectural profession in terms of producing alternative spatial practices is delved upon. Lastly, concluding remarks underlining the necessity for an architectural practice beyond construction are introduced.