"The Function of Fiction in Shaping Reality": How Architecture Engages Society but Not Becoming Commodity

Paul Ricoeur's wording "the function of fiction in shaping reality" can be used to describe an intelligible way for architects' engaging with society. On the one extreme, modernist utopian social aspirations have proven to be unrealistic. On the other extreme, architects become conspirators to capitalist social logic and produce only commercialized artifacts. They act merely as clients' technocrats and submit completely to marketing rules. Between the two extremes of social utopianists and specialized technocrats, architects' viable approach is to engage society by programming fictional scenarios.

Fictional scenarios must be understood in regards to reality. However, fictions reveal concealed liberating potentials in reality. They uplift reality by demonstrating the implied concordance out of the sheer discord, chaos, and congestions of reality. Just like fictions are accounts that transform social reality into a beautiful story, architecture can be a machine that orients social functions in unexpected ways. Made in Tokyo provides some excellent examples: supercar school, golf taxi building, and electric passage.