Responding to msg by dsucher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (David Sucher)
on
>sure, innovate. go ahead and try new things.
>but don't put the emphasis on 'innovation' but on
>making things 'work.' what i was commenting on in
>general is the dangerous and misleading quest for
>'innovation' as an end in itself.
This is a pretty constructive challenge that David has made,
for it raises the hoary conflict between creativity and
practicality in the design fields.
Is this not a nice replay of the fervent debate between Bonnie
PC of the BRF and modernist architects: the New Traditionalism
(or something) vs. the New Modernism (or something else)?
It's worth pointing, David, that the use of the melodramatic
word "dangerous" may be somewhat overzealously inhibitive
rather than supportive of the fragile creative adventure.
The need for support of innovation, creativity if you will,
seems to me paramount because so many other economic,
political, social and environmental forces will "work" things
out in non-creative ways. Say in the US, 800,000 lawyers,
citing case law, compared to 60,000 architects, striving to
cite nobody. (No offense to your other avocation, David, meant
by this example.)
My experience is that unless designers "work" hard at
innovation there will be little incentive from these other
forces to do so, although there may be much lip-service paid to
the need. On the contrary, too much is done by plagiarism,
theft of intellectual property, mindless duplication and market
follow-the-leader.
Post-modernism; mainstream preservationism; Krierism;
replication and adulation of Mies, Wright and the giants; few
of these contemporary hustles are innovative, though all derive
from imaginative, against-the-grain, beginnings.
For all its prickly peculiarities, decon at least is out on its
own limb, even as the hacks hack away at it.
Zaha, BlueSky Coop, Leb Woods and all the Bent Gang say no
genuflection to Windsor Wisdom. I say amen to that.
John
on
>sure, innovate. go ahead and try new things.
>but don't put the emphasis on 'innovation' but on
>making things 'work.' what i was commenting on in
>general is the dangerous and misleading quest for
>'innovation' as an end in itself.
This is a pretty constructive challenge that David has made,
for it raises the hoary conflict between creativity and
practicality in the design fields.
Is this not a nice replay of the fervent debate between Bonnie
PC of the BRF and modernist architects: the New Traditionalism
(or something) vs. the New Modernism (or something else)?
It's worth pointing, David, that the use of the melodramatic
word "dangerous" may be somewhat overzealously inhibitive
rather than supportive of the fragile creative adventure.
The need for support of innovation, creativity if you will,
seems to me paramount because so many other economic,
political, social and environmental forces will "work" things
out in non-creative ways. Say in the US, 800,000 lawyers,
citing case law, compared to 60,000 architects, striving to
cite nobody. (No offense to your other avocation, David, meant
by this example.)
My experience is that unless designers "work" hard at
innovation there will be little incentive from these other
forces to do so, although there may be much lip-service paid to
the need. On the contrary, too much is done by plagiarism,
theft of intellectual property, mindless duplication and market
follow-the-leader.
Post-modernism; mainstream preservationism; Krierism;
replication and adulation of Mies, Wright and the giants; few
of these contemporary hustles are innovative, though all derive
from imaginative, against-the-grain, beginnings.
For all its prickly peculiarities, decon at least is out on its
own limb, even as the hacks hack away at it.
Zaha, BlueSky Coop, Leb Woods and all the Bent Gang say no
genuflection to Windsor Wisdom. I say amen to that.
John