A Theory About Theory
A Theory About Theory
Mark Baughman
It’s not an original idea, but I believe that nearly every architectural theory piece I can remember reading over the past fifteen or more years is an advertisement for whatever the designer has come up with to make themselves stand apart from the herd – a Ted Talk sales pitch in black suit, black t-shirt and round Corbusier eyeglasses. The more syllables, one is supposed to think, the more insightful. I confess to owning the suit, shirt and something close to the eyeglasses myself, but that is me conceding that if I don’t, I look like I’m going to ask if you want fries with that slider and if I don’t my firm will be no more.
Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright were exceptional self-promoters, redefining architecture so that their work could be seen apart from the march of history, but they were not theorists. They were exceptional designers and urbanists borne by massive changes in society, and they gave us pattern books to follow and make them live as long in our culture as Vitruvius or Palladio. I have read their books, marveled at their ability to resolve spatial and construction problems sensibly and often poetically, and I eventually came to see the dead end to which they pointed.
I also came to realize they were very close indeed to what they were searching for, but they didn't know.
The pretenders to theory these days alternatively take up the mantles of saving the Earth or healing the wounds of victimhood. It’s a marvelous strategy if for no other reason than you don’t need to be particularly smart or gifted to be seen as a “Thought Leader” so long as you are flogging one or both of these donkeys. Both my undergraduate and graduate architecture schools were chock full of students and faculty desperate not to be found out; disguising themselves in the senseless window dressing prescribed by Michele Foucault where you can safely go anywhere, and be greeted with fawning accolades, without thinking it thorough and solving the problem.
This problem of Theory came to a head for me because I was looking for blog posts where I might direct followers to serious people who have serious thoughts about what architecture and urban design are in our world today, and I was sorely disappointed. So, this post is an attempt to identify the forces that are shaping our perception of the built environment and how we live together on this planet and see if we can at the very least define the problems that need addressing.
We Interrupt This Program
It was not that long ago when there were three commercial television networks, PBS and newspapers that read each other’s content and adapted for their readership. We all saw the same movies at the theaters, the same TV shows, heard the music that belonged to our generations and knew the ones that came before. Those of us over a certain age swear we remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, watched Armstrong step on to the Moon, saw Bobby Kennedy lament Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination shortly before his own, watched in horror as fully laden airplanes flew into the Twin Towers.
Now we share very little with the people next door, at work or in the city park. The touchpoints of our collective memory are fading; we said “never forget” and now a new Holocaust is taking shape. And as if to sharpen the point, we all wear headphones and stare at our cell phones to make sure our bubble is not penetrated. This was as inevitable as Antifa or Kim Kardashian.
Our problem as the designers of space people inhabit is understanding who these people are and what do they value; what do they see through their lens? I feel the temptation of being comforted by the warm blanket of sustainable design or righting the wrongs of a century ago. But these are technical things, they are not the underpinning of anything meaningful. A building should be as respectful of the materials and energy needed to create it, and it should not fall down.
The Multiverse We Inhabit
One might reasonably argue that the Renaissance started with the conception of buildings as seen in section or perspective from an omniscient point of view. This change in the relationship of creator and his environment was a wormhole to a totally new universe to be discovered. Every answer begged a thousand questions. And so now here we are, so saturated by decades of questions and answers that we can’t distinguish the important from the insignificant. Many of us are aimlessly searching for, or even defining, truth. Just as we can’t go back to a time when we saw buildings as they did in the 6th century, we can no longer perceive our world as a resolved whole. It is a collage of space and time. Scientists have discovered that every time we remember an event, our memory of that even changes and so over time the multiple accessing of events and places makes the memories increasingly unreliable. On top of that, all of us inhabit many places at the same time.
Given this backdrop, designing satisfying and enriching places for people to live, work and play is going to take a lot more than a checklist or wearing a tribal scarf. Future posts on this topic are going to attempt to stay more Platonic and less pedantic.
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