Research Firm:
What [not] to Do
The history of humankind, like one's own personal history, is filled with mistakes. Unfortunately, even those most learned in history seem doomed to repeat it. The afflictions of habit are not simply studied away. We revolutionize agriculture only to find ourselves threatened by our decadence. We graduate from serfdom only to self-impose a workaholic lifestyle.
Yet we still have hope. I've been told that architecture is, by it's nature, an optimistic profession. It requires a vision for what the world could be - manifest as utopian dreams, pragmatic problem solving and everything in between. From the successes and failures of others, I've gathered a few things to take forward from our 207b lecture series - what to do, what to avoid, and what problems I'll face along the way.
Raumlabor Berlin: Never Stop Playing
Play. The range of definitions for the word affirm, as cultural historians have suggested, that ludic modes of being find their way into a wide range of human and animal activity - some serious, others frivolous. Raumlabor Berlin do not seem to discriminate between the two - often engaging serious issues through playful means and vice versa. Their photo galleries suggest that children are their principle client. Even their lectures can take the form of game shows.
Can all architecture be approached this way? Can our lives be approached this way? It isn't all fun and games - there's work to be done. Though it is strange to me that we've clawed and scraped our way out of the dark ages only to push our toil to extreme levels - 80 hours a week, 100 hours a week, no sacrifice of body or mind is too great in service of architecture.
Maybe we need to lighten up a bit. Since we're not up to the task of saving the world, the least we can do is build a nice playground.
Deborah Berke: Playwrighting
"I believe that being an architect is more akin to being a playwright than a painter." Deborah Berke is speaking here about architecture as a collaborative endeavor. This aspect of building projects is often overlooked in school - as much as we strive towards logical cohesion and conceptual thoroughness in studio, a built work is more likely to succeed or fail based on the interaction between various stakeholders and collaborators.
The similarity, though, runs deeper than project execution and can occupy a theoretical realm. Buildings are directly involved in the drama of human life, sometimes as actors, sometimes as sets. Some architects have a knack for creating buildings that can function as both - I believe Deborah Berke is one of them.
Jimenez Lai: Commentary
As Randal Monroe and Kate Beaton have taught us, humor is the best way to make people think. It may seem like a lazy way to absorb knowledge, but when given a choice between CSpan and the Daily Show, I know which one I'm going to pick.
The stories of No Place often end in some kind of punch line, running the risk of being pegged as "one liners." Not only is this inaccurate given the resonances and details throughout Lai's work, but it does a disservice to the noble art of the joke. Duchamp showed us that art can be both the subject and delivery method of a joke. Archigram did it with architecture. Other people followed, inadvertently turning architecture into a joke.
Lai is a bit more refined, and stays within the realm of architecture criticism. He and colleague Robert Somol are champions of a new intellectualism, a practice made up of two parts designing, one part teaching, one part talking and a half-part coining phrases. Now that our revolutions have been canonized, what is left to critique but the critics themselves? Do we make comics because we like comics or like seeming hip? If the latter, then we really should work on our Twitter presence.
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