Discrepancies in Theory and Practice

In the debate between critical and projective architecture, many theories emerge. First, a critical architecture achieves a balance between two contradicting positions, void of contextual connection yet reflecting reality all at once. Projective architecture is just the opposite – exchanging autonomy for a multiplicity of different contextual, real elements that constantly change and move in a dynamic relation to one another.

Through their discussion of these two architectural theories, Burns and Taylor acknowledge that architectural theory and practice are very different – theory creates the rules, and practice implements them. In my opinion, theories can only accomplish so much in the workplace. The only time one would usually employ a specific theory is when a project approaches the unknown or unreal and needs prescribed rules to help make sense of reality. Therefore, by nature, theories are not derived from an individual instance or the realities of practice, but even projective architecture comes from an externally fabricated, general set of assumptions about design.

As we have discussed many times now in class, our knowledge of architecture and its practice has been influenced by any number of theories like the two presented above. It may be easy to understand them individually on paper, but is there a way to exercise any one independently in practice? Is this something worthwhile to explore, or should we keep operating on the accumulation of architectural theories we have come to understand?