The Value of Paper
Alejandro Zaera Polo challenges the value of paper architecture as a political architecture in his article 'The Politics of the Environment: A Political Critique of Materialism.' He notes that because it is restricted to pure representation, it lacks a value and an agency that would render such design as valuable from a political standpoint.
I would disagree that Paper architecture doesn't have effectiveness as a political vehicle. Paper architecture, that which is speculative, imagined, and created knowing it will never be built, can include a whimsy and a criticism that built projects simply sometimes can't. In suspending the reality of contractors and construction, of accepted conventions, paper architecture affords the opportunity to blatantly criticize, to challenge the norm, to ask the question "why not?" rather than to reiterate a convention offered by pre-determined Revit materials or zoning restrictions. In this way, I think that paper architecture is afforded the luxury of political criticism in a way that built architecture is not. While built architecture is in many ways political, it simply cannot possess the sometimes cynical or dystopian commentary, or point out utopian ideals. Utopia was never meant to exist, but the idea of pushing toward it, of identifying what utopian ideals are in a particular time or place, is important in understanding the social, political, and economic values of a culture. The same could be said for what a society views as dystopian.
I think that the debate on the value of paper architecture is not unlike the conversation about the difference between architectural academia and practice - academia is criticized by practitioners by being idealistic and lacking the pragmatism of how to actually get projects built, how entities like budget and difficult clients and codes and schedules come into play. It is written off as inaccessible to the masses, as architects write and create for architects, not for the layman, in a school environment. On the other hand, practice is sometimes viewed as banal and lacking imagination by academics.
The issue with paper architecture, to me, is not so much that it is not political, but that it is perhaps inaccessible in a way, not unlike the way that academic architecture is considered less accessible than less conceptual or more pragmatic architecture of practice. Paper architecture the dissenter, who, even if he is not of the majority, even if his projects are not those that are to be built, is important to consider when examining the politics of a place.
I would disagree that Paper architecture doesn't have effectiveness as a political vehicle. Paper architecture, that which is speculative, imagined, and created knowing it will never be built, can include a whimsy and a criticism that built projects simply sometimes can't. In suspending the reality of contractors and construction, of accepted conventions, paper architecture affords the opportunity to blatantly criticize, to challenge the norm, to ask the question "why not?" rather than to reiterate a convention offered by pre-determined Revit materials or zoning restrictions. In this way, I think that paper architecture is afforded the luxury of political criticism in a way that built architecture is not. While built architecture is in many ways political, it simply cannot possess the sometimes cynical or dystopian commentary, or point out utopian ideals. Utopia was never meant to exist, but the idea of pushing toward it, of identifying what utopian ideals are in a particular time or place, is important in understanding the social, political, and economic values of a culture. The same could be said for what a society views as dystopian.
I think that the debate on the value of paper architecture is not unlike the conversation about the difference between architectural academia and practice - academia is criticized by practitioners by being idealistic and lacking the pragmatism of how to actually get projects built, how entities like budget and difficult clients and codes and schedules come into play. It is written off as inaccessible to the masses, as architects write and create for architects, not for the layman, in a school environment. On the other hand, practice is sometimes viewed as banal and lacking imagination by academics.
The issue with paper architecture, to me, is not so much that it is not political, but that it is perhaps inaccessible in a way, not unlike the way that academic architecture is considered less accessible than less conceptual or more pragmatic architecture of practice. Paper architecture the dissenter, who, even if he is not of the majority, even if his projects are not those that are to be built, is important to consider when examining the politics of a place.
"Politics is the art of nothing is possible."
A speculative etching by Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utin,
who used paper architecture to dissent from
sanctioned design in the Soviet Union
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