Do Good

Above is the video from a discussion between Jeff Kipnis and Reinhold Martin on agency, held at the GSD earlier this year. I know it's long, but it's definitely worth the watch. If you want a so-so canned version that's readable in 10 minutes, this is by a GSD student who was present, posted on Archinect.

Before I get into it though I'll throw something in for contrast, and that I think speaks to my last post:

"A sense of space is closely connected with purposes. Even when architecture attempts to elevate this sense beyond the realm of purposefulness, it is still simultaneously immanent in the purpose. The success of such a synthesis is the principal criterion for great architecture. Architecture inquires: how can a certain purpose become space; through which forms, which materials? All factors relate reciprocally to one another. Architectonic imagination is, according to this conception of it, the ability to articulate space purposefully. It permits purposes to become space. It constructs forms according to purposes."

This is from Theo Adorno's "Functionalism Today", where he addresses the false separation of purpose-free form purposeful in Adolf Loos' distinction between ornament and functionalism. Purpose implies practical effects or usefulness. As Adorno argues the inseparability of the two (purpose-free and purposeful), it becomes interesting to consider that purpose can also imply ends or goals...

Geography

Above is a map of the world according to the Greek geographer Strabo (64/63 BC – ca. AD 24), it represents a projection of all places known to the Western world during his time. In context (distance and configuration aside) it was entirely correct as a map. It would be impossible to include what was not known at the time.

Conceptually the map is interesting as it makes manifest what is known by experience as opposed to rigorous measurement. Strabo relies on his memories of journeys throughout the Mediterranean and other accounts to write the Geographica. In a sense he is relaying a personal geography. I use that term to refer to an intimate understanding of places, the places that are known to a person through their own experience. Just as Strabo intended with his work, this geography is made up of a combination of material, cultural, and phenomenal features. A personal geography is made up of the places one has been to, the experiences of those places, the activities; geography becomes a metaphor for memory.

Determinism

Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 pm (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite.

-Charles Jencks, The new paradigm in architecture: the language of post-modernism

One of the implications of Jencks famous pronouncement on the death of modern architecture is that of what might be termed architectural determinism. The growing problem of substandard public housing in the 1960s—underfunded, caught in political wrangling at the highest levels, and rife with mismanagement—could be boiled down to a simple problem of poor design. Jencks critique of arid landscaping and crime ridden hallways was linked to CIAM and Le Corbusier. "Good form was to lead to good content, or at least good conduct; the intelligent planning of abstract space was to promote healthy behavior".[1] While ostensibly denying the power of architecture to accomplish such feats, he later cites Oscar Newman's Defensible Space, which is conversely a claim that architecture is capable of promoting unhealthy behaviors.[2] Not mentioned were the deep budget cuts and political pressure the architects had to contend with while they eschewed ideological views ascribed to them.

Jencks aside, there is a larger problem within and outside of architecture in attributing certain powers to architectural space. In the case of Pruitt-Igoe, the notion that a style of architecture had graver effects on the people of St. Louis than deindustrialization, poverty, and racism, obscured these real problems and deflected criticism away from the political and economic institutions that were to blame.[3] In accepting the blame architects were free to offer new architectural solutions to solve these architectural problems, thus the problem of architectural determinism remained unresolved.