Projective Architecture is Loos on steroids

     


Architectural language, like the living English language, is ever changing. Symbols have meanings that come and go over time. From one generation or civilization to the next these symbols are appropriated and perpetuated based on the meaning they had, which is often lost. Adolf Loos took an early swing at this in his lecture ‘Ornament and Crime’. He argued that ancient ornament was derived in a society in which it had a deep meaning, and that meaning had been lost. The language of the architecture at that time was an appropriated language that may as well have been gibberish. It “meant” something to the people but it was serving no purpose and it was a meaning they didn’t really understand. Loos argued that it was time to drop preconceived notions of what architecture is or was and begin a new architectural language that served the present day. He proposed that applying ornament that was borrowed from yesteryear was crime, and further was detracting from what architecture could be. Projective architecture smells eerily similar… the idea that understood building typologies should be abandoned in an effort to make a building exactly what it needs to be. Allowing the architecture to make a language of its own rather than using a language that exists, borrowing for a kit of parts. I argue that these ideas are not that different. Its “same shit, different theoretician”. Good architecture, architecture with a capital “A” is constantly looking forward, constantly searching for a new language that will better serve it… new materials, new forms, new symbols. Loos was not the first to look for a new language, and projective architecture will not be the last. Architecture is on a never-ending quest to drop preconceived notions and find purity in a new approach.