Architecture On a Scale of 1-5 (1 Being Gary Larson and 5 Being Taliban Toyotas): I Give it a 3.5.

“Architectural firms of course manage to live with the conflict between ideology and reality. They could not be in business otherwise. But while they do, they are often apologetic for compromising the ideals learned in their student days and often repeated in professional discussions and by critics of architecture. Caught in the tension between self image and reality, they lack an intellectual support system that only schools can provide.”

John Habraken

Doesn’t that suggest that architecture needs to be better about looking outside of itself for validation? Architecture, by its nature, should be a generous profession. I think, anyway. But it’s also a pursuit that has traditionally traded heavily in stocks of aesthetics and, thus, attracts individuals who are particularly invested in them, in the creative process, and in its results; it’s hard to give up creative control when you care so much.

Gary Larson (cartoonist of The Far Side fame), of all people, captured the sentiment pretty well in an open letter/post/whatever he wrote a few years ago asking fans to stop reappropriating his cartoons. He wrote that

 

“These cartoons are my ‘children,’ of sorts, and like a parent, I’m concerned about where they go at night without telling me. And, seeing them at someone’s web site is like getting the call at 2:00 a.m. that goes, ‘Uh, Dad, you’re not going to like this much, but guess where I am.’”

Image not included; request acknowledged. Here’s a link instead:

https://www.thefarside.com/2021/02/16

How could the sentiment not be the same in any other creative pursuit? The problem is that this feeling, it’s not scalable. IMHO it doesn’t really work at any scale because once you put something out there it’s out there, man. But whatever. Anyway, at the level of something like a cartoon it’s as least a feasible logistical request that your work not be reappropriated because cartoons don’t really have to do anything then be cartoons.

This is my "That's a damn good question" face

Then, at the other end of the scale, you’ve got the Toyota Hilux problem: the ubiquity and durability of these little pickups has, infamously, made them the go-to tool for realizing the errands of the nogoodnik terrorist demographic. It’s probably a bummer for the team at Toyota who designed these things to see them used for the forces of evil, but at least they know that for every one of these trucks driving around with a machine gun bolted to the back of it there’s about 1 million others just going around doing normal, honest truck stuff. Plus, they got this whole bit, one of the most famous segments of one of the most popular television programs in the entire world, the original BBC Top Gear:

A classic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&feature=youtu.be&v=xnWKz7Cthkk

Architecture’s problem, or one of them, in my opinion, is that it’s kind of the worst of both worlds: it’s too big and has to do too much for too many; it can’t not be interactive, you can’t ask people not to reappropriate it. At the same time, most buildings are prototypes, so if someone else takes your architecture project in an unintended direction it’s not like there’s another one out there that’s still flying your flag.

 

Well, that’s tough shit, I guess. But we’re all grownups here, and we’re just going to have to deal with it in our own way. Maybe that means just letting go and accepting the reality that people are going to change your plans (literally and figuratively) and maybe obsessively documenting your project in its unaltered state needs to be enough. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe though, it’s helpful to remember what architecture actually is. It’s not (usually) a profession that builds buildings, it’s a profession that produces instructions for buildings for someone else to build. Why not try to embrace the fact that the building won’t stop once the initial construction is complete?