Once, when giving a man the address this site, I described my blog as everything I’m into besides architecture (this isn’t really true but it’s a start). He responded with “but isn’t everything Architecture…” EVERYTHING IS ARCHITECTURE. Next he asked me to define architecture, in three words. It actually went something like “three words, ok go”. Me (at least my initial reaction, appropriate for such a vague conversation): thing, built, for people. Ensue and insert an ongoing philosophical debate here:
I was stumped. I knew that I disagreed, but it’s almost impossible to win an argument against such a statement. It’s akin to an argument like “Everything is Art”. I told him I’d get back to him. Staying up all night, working on some of my own godforsaken architecture, I thought ok well if I can’t simple say why everything is NOT architecture I’ll try to refute this argument.
What isn’t architecture?
Food is not architecture
Love is not architecture
… yea no joke, that’s all I could concretely argue. Both, I believe, would exist if man had never found some means of sheltering himself from the environment, controlling his environment, creating historically dependent forms of culture etc etc.
So next I started asking passers by (imagine me in studio at 6 am asking the other slightly delirious archi-nerds to define Architecture).
Me: Forrest Popkin, define Architecture.
Fo Pop: Well, everything is Architecture.
(jaw drops… are we really all brainwashed?)
Me: Cole Major, define Architecture
I don’t remember Cole’s exact words but his ideas were somewhere between mine and Forrests/my antagonist’s however he agreed to an extent that philosophically Everything is Architecture.
Others were asked but my point is, I was shocked to find how many people believed this dooming statement.
I started thinking about this again this weekend and the more I thought the angrier I got. Seriously, I was angry.
EVERYTHING IS NOT ARCHITECTURE!
First of all, I hate generalizations. Yes, we all do it and it’s important to make judgments because it enables us to understand the world. Generalizations are convenient and organized. That’s fine. But, when we start laying down these philosophies we turn off the part of our brain that is open to reinterpretation. I think people in our society need to constantly reassess and reevaluate our MO and we don’t. We pick our beliefs and down that path we trample. This preludes my approach to life:
1. The two ways we must form opinions and interpret the world
a. Everything
First we must understand that things are related, and more importantly that most relationships (and sometimes the most important relationships) are beyond our perception. The best decisions are made/ ideas are had when we are understanding and analyzing cause and effect, symbiotics, past-present-future. (This argument will get confusing now. I’m doing my best.) In order to understand relationships we have to be able to define the parts… think a nice proportional venn diagram. My issue is that this Everything is Architecture mantra kills the proportions. From the get go we are putting ourselves inside the Architecture bubble of the diagram, and viewing the other bubbles from within it. This disables us from thinking purely objectively (no I don’t think that purely objective thought is possible but we should try to get as close as possible, right). I went to see Across the Universe last night. It was great and my favorite thing about seeing anything “designed” (i.e. any kind of art) that isn’t architecture is that I can take the things I’ve learned by studying architecture and use them to interpret decisions made by the makers. The movie was beautifully filmed, and I appreciated so many more artistic aspects of it based on some of the things I understand now after all of my recent architectural education. But this movie is not fucking Architecture and it shouldn’t have to be because it’s a beautiful FILM, and I’ll use some of the inspirations from seeing it to influence my own designs… they are symbiotic and not synonymous.
b. Architecture
Second (and this ties into the former) we must be able to isolate institutions. I think that to make a philosophy credible it must be definable. Music is fundamentally perception of sound. Dance is synchronized movement. Pizza is flat and made with dough and layers of toppings. I want to know why it is special. What makes this thing a thing to be discussed, developed, investigated and revered. Everything is Architecture totally denigrates Architecture and honestly, eff that because I love it and hate it for what it is as an entity separate from art and music and sociology and psychology and dance even though I think that all of these things have crucial symbiotic relationships with Architecture. You’ve totally ruined it for me. You’ve made me want to say… well if Everything is Architecture then I want nothing to do with it. There’s no way to achieve “Everything”. Its almost easier to revolt against it. You made me want a world without Architecture. How could you?
2. Linguistics
a. Everything (msword says… “eve·ry·thing pron
1. all the items, actions, or facts in a given situation
2. used to emphasize that somebody or something is the most important person or thing there is
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.”)
Everything is a word for a reason. It’s all encompassing and that’s a concept scary enough in itself. That’s why I hate these “Everything is…” ideas. Everything is the only everything. Lets not confuse things.
b. Architecture (msword says…”ar·chi·tec·ture n
1. the art and science of designing and constructing buildings
2. a particular style or fashion of building, especially one that is typical of a period of history or of a particular place
3. the design, structure, and behavior of a computer system, microprocessor, or system program, including the characteristics of individual components and how they interact
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.)
I forgot to mention that I came up with my own definition of architecture, less vague than the three words aforementioned.
Architecture is the historically specific manifestation of man’s ability to live on earth.
Still fairly vague, I know, but I think that “historical” and “man” are really crucial in this definition because Architecture defines our adaptation and sophistication at a specific point in time and it’s made a the human scale, always, even if it doesn’t appear so.
…
Sarah Stein: "it's my own personal struggle, is what it is."
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6 comments:
it is interesting you mention film. there was a lecture two years ago about film juxtaposed with architecture and how there are inherently different. More to come about that later, and maybe that would help with the clarity of the arch. def. I think that i is important to have a WORKING def of architecture. because so many do not and therefore revert to the easy out "everything is architecture" there done answered that question, moving on... whats next. However, just as people familiarize themselves with topics, ie. architecture they start to perhaps understand parts. Never the whole "everything" there for you can not understand "everything" about a topic then the statement "everything is architecture" is false. One of the greatest things about this topic is its vagueness. It allows for change and adaptation unlike other topics that may not be able to do so as easily. So therefore, short story, architecture can not really be defined and there for no one really knows what it IS. Many stride, but no one really has been able to concretely concluded an answer due to the parameters.
As usual, F-Pop is a genius...well almost. While the phrase "Everything is Architecture" is susceptible to (irrelevant ;)) accusations like Marek's that such a generalized statement is just "the easy way out" and false because one cannot possibly know "everything", I think this misses the point completely. The statement "Everything is Architecture" has nothing to do with pedagogy or the architect's own working definition.
It has even less to do with the classic epistemic skeptical argument that "one cannot possibly know everything" (which could be applied to any statement of certainty).
What if we take instead the statement "Architecture is in everything" or in other words, "everything can be considered architecturally". I think that it is DANGEROUS to confine architecture to "the science of constructing". Even if we impose this constraint, where "constructing" is defined as the human act of designing for construction, what aspect of life is not open to consideration for design that humans interact with? Food? Love? Are these not part of human existence, and therefore architecture? If we confine the definition of architecture, aren't we also confining architectural interaction and discovery?
Maybe its just the path B in me, but I wanted to study architecture in the first place because I thought it was a such a wonderfully open venue for studying, discovering, and interpreting any and all aspects of life (human and otherwise) through design (My personal definition emphasizes design). This doesn't necessarily mean that everything is relevant to architecture (although I think food and love are), so while we may be able to identify topics which are not especially relevant to architecture...we cannot be selective w/o first considering them architecturally...
it's the new way i think about things, but not everything. therefore, architecture is not everything. the moment you make it everything is when you shut out everything else, and everything includes everything.
That last response is pretty concise. It is my loogy of thoughts compacted into one solid statement.
What is architecture? Everything is architecture. Really what does that response even mean? Im asking myself. When Katie asked me this question I eventually landed on that air-filling generality as well. First if all, architecture is not an adjective. And for it to apply to the said EVERYthing, it would have to act as a descriptor. Something that already stands as a noun, cannot inhabit two equally veritable nomenclatures at the same time, but it can convey characteristics representing one, while it nominally remains the other. Blah blah so we can’t say that everything IS architecture, but if we really want to, we can say that everything shares common characteristics as architecture. But I don’t think we really want to do this because now that puts us on first base trying to define for this purpose what architecture even is. I don’t really want to stay standing on first base. I want to run home and see the ball field from each base along the way.
I guess at this point I’m going to talk about the humanistic reason for why one would respond that every thing is architecture. Well, part of the reason for its popular response could be simply that it is an impulsive response. If someone asks you “hey, how are you?” you respond based on your stomach, your hormones that day. But you don’t immediately sew together how your moods of late differ with your disposition a year ago, how your decisions have placed you how your are.
Architecture is everything because my “everything” gets overcrowded by my immediate. My “immediate” is what my brain feels most near to, most consumed by. And as an architecture student that means a day full of studying architectural-related things. At this point I am lazy about running to second base to see what other vantage point could influence my response.
In unnoticed moments I don’t recognize my paralysis. I don’t realize that my feet are dug into the dirt at first base. This veil has resulted from a learned system of thought which causes me to analyze the pieces of my life by a new standard. Why was my first year of studio so hard. Because I didn’t used to stand on first base and look into the outfield. I stood on first AND second, and third, and home, and even in the bleachers, depending what I was driven to do that day. But now I have learned to filter every thought by this process. I was given a secure spot on first base and therefore see everything, i.e. my “immediate” from this vantage point. True, KT, we are surely in the architecture bubble defining what architecture means. So if we are being true about its identity, then that view should be universal to all the bases. (p.s. sorry for the nauseating metaphor…its not over).
A dancer should be able to give the same accuracy to a response regarding the meaning of dance. Or should he? Isn’t that, in fact, everything that makes up his life? Every movement he, she makes, walking down the street, hiking up the stairs, picking up a wine glass, taking off her tights, lying down in bed, this is getting hot. Even the way he thinks about his own thoughts can be related to his systematic process of dancing. All is passed through a filter that has relearned the processes essential to life in a new way. Every mental journey is married by this carrier of nerve impulses.
…then why is the architecture studio still so difficult for me?
-Because even as the dancer’s, my brain is still fighting against a set way of thinking.
-Because we are not owned by this way of thinking and should not be ignorant to its incongruity with other ways of forming thought.
-Because naturally, my brain has functioned by filters that my mom instilled, kids on the school bus corrupted, colorful picture-books inspired, and the world of nature oversaw.
The question is not even a philosophically rigorous one if we just step off first base and answer when we get to second…or third, or home…or based on our experiences from all four. Architecture is a filter through which I have learned to respond. to a question. a problem. a feeling…I could go on forever. But that last response is still one that comes while standing on first base. THAT I can’t escape right now. It is my immediate. What I’m getting at is, let’s just recognize the view from the other bases.
Check out this post I found on another blog. Not sure I totally concur with everything he's got going on, but he asks the same question: "what is architecture?"
http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/what-is-architecture/
There's some vailidity to his thought... "Architects do not build–rather, they make designs that instruct others what and how to build, if those others should so decide."
But his argument resides on the fact that there's a definitive difference between "buildings" and "architecture", mostly based on concept. The vernacular concept - warehouses, garages, etc.; and the architecture concept - those buildings that change (or attempt to change) our contemporary world.
His isolated thoughts are prodigious, but tend to disagree with his cognitive conclusions. "I would say that architecture, as we understand it today, differs from building in that the concept, or ideas, it embodies are formulated in a unique, and not merely generic, way. In order for this to be so, it must originate in a single mind–the mind of an architect."
Who says architects are the only ones who can make architecture? Sounds egotistically ignorant.
Thoughts?
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