Stream of ”Architecting” Consciousness

Imagine architecture is a person, “architecting” is his/her stream of consciousness. Instead of serving for functions and social needs, “architecting” seeks pure architectural form. Normally when designing, we always ask ourselves why we design this, what is this used for. however for “architecting”, that question is who am I.

“Architecting” has no meaning, but itself is the meaning. It is a representation of spiritual philosophy, more like sculptures, paintings or performance art. It might not do actual good to the society, but it evokes people to think about themselves—who am I. In the fashion industry, the high fashion design leads all the principles of commercial design even though high fashion is not wearable. STEM is popular in the US, but we still need people learning literature, philosophy and other “unprofitable” majors. The architecture also has sensibility, such as effect, ambiance and atmosphere, not simply function and program.

                                                        Issey Miyake "Staircase Pleats"

We had a cave project in the first year of M.arch. The mission is to create a pure architecture reflecting the cabe story. At first most of us got lost because no one had idea how to design without programming. After several desk crits, we got to know that it is a process from darkness to enlightenment. We used spatial dimension, light and shadow, change of levels to represent different phases of the story. That project help me understand what we read this week. “Architecting” is a natural stream of consciousness. It does exist but we do not use it everyday. Always check with ourselves “who am I”.