As a practitioner and teacher I would add:
Regrettably, architects' infatuation with immutable categories
(classical canon, archetypes, typologies) seems to apply to
their own professional idealism. The nostalgic attempt to
'save' the architect's role based on a fixed archetype -
whether the model is the architect of the 16th, 19th, or
mid-20th century, is bound to fail.
To the extent that they consider themselves a profession of
quasi-scientists, architects would do well to consider
mid-19th century biology, when the essentialist concept of the
fixed species was discredited by Darwin's theory describing
the mechanism underpinning the species' evolution.
The mechanism underwriting the evolution of the architectural
profession should be similarly reckoned with. As has dawned on
the more thoughtful practitioner, this transformation is
occuring on a level more foundational than that of aesthetic or
morphological novelty. Inexorably changing conditions of
society and marketplace should be confronted with contemporary
insight and courage (eg. the agile and adaptive tactics of the
beetle or guerilla), not with escapism into the static
categories of the past.
Deborah Natsios
Regrettably, architects' infatuation with immutable categories
(classical canon, archetypes, typologies) seems to apply to
their own professional idealism. The nostalgic attempt to
'save' the architect's role based on a fixed archetype -
whether the model is the architect of the 16th, 19th, or
mid-20th century, is bound to fail.
To the extent that they consider themselves a profession of
quasi-scientists, architects would do well to consider
mid-19th century biology, when the essentialist concept of the
fixed species was discredited by Darwin's theory describing
the mechanism underpinning the species' evolution.
The mechanism underwriting the evolution of the architectural
profession should be similarly reckoned with. As has dawned on
the more thoughtful practitioner, this transformation is
occuring on a level more foundational than that of aesthetic or
morphological novelty. Inexorably changing conditions of
society and marketplace should be confronted with contemporary
insight and courage (eg. the agile and adaptive tactics of the
beetle or guerilla), not with escapism into the static
categories of the past.
Deborah Natsios