Architectural Gibberish: Confusing "How" & "Why"
"A symptom is the transformation of architecture, now often incomprehensible and lacking in syntax, and playing on the terroristic effect of its incommunicablilty to hide the underlying confusion of ideas and purposes."
What architects say and what people hear are two totally different things. Even in architectural education, as a student just starting out, you almost have to reestablish your personal vocabulary and transform the dictionary that you have been using since you started preschool...just to be able to talk with other architects...or professors. If it takes this much of a transformation as a student, how are the users of architectural space (almost every building that people use every day) supposed to comprehend the architectural ideology that went into each space? They sure can't ask the architect for his/her explanation.
Is this where the translation between how and why are lost upon architectural objects that are supposed to be architectural spaces?? I fear that even more so today, than when De Carlo approached the subject of participation and communication with the end user, we are still struggling with the translation and participation of the end user. Big improvements have been made to get closer with the user...but this technology has also allowed certain architecture to distance itself even more from the user, making people scream; WHY?! Is this something that can be controlled...or are architects and students alike just going to do whatever they want?
Devin,
ReplyDeleteI agree that architecture has an esoteric language (fenestration vs window), but I think that's where the participatory role comes into play. If we can include the users in the design process then we will better understand their language, and in turn, they will better understand ours. It's a dialogue that we have to initiate with every project; but has no fail-safe. We have to accept that people who use the building 50 years from now won't fully understand, but we wouldn't understand their language anyway - we have to ask in 50 years...
I watched a video recently (and it may have been one for this class, I can't remember) of an architect telling future architects to draw a picture or write a paragraph of what they imagine a beautiful building to look like. Then keep that piece of paper and open it again once you have graduated architecture school. You will most certainly have a completely different view of what beautiful architecture is. So it is not only our language that changes as a result of architectural education, but our whole mindset as well. And of course we think we are right... that we have finer taste in design than the average person because we have been educated in it. So I think it is a question of how do we simply educate the general public? Maybe the answer is we stop using architectural gibberish.
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