Sir Architect Knows Best

        To quote from De Certeau, he writes that “words become the outlet or product of silent...a different world (the reader’s) slips into the author’s place.” Shortly following this, he articulates this theory in other words as “renters make comparable changes in an apartment they furnish with their acts and memories...as do pedestrians, in the streets they fill with the forests of their desires and goals.” I find this string of points to be very intriguing as it suggests that the author of an experience, in book form or built form, is the sole person of power. The author has full control over what the audience is meant to interpret and see; he is able to skew someone’s world into a new world from his lens instead. The author is able to manipulate one’s point of view in a skewed, forced, shaped, generated way with the introduction of tactics. The role of tactics that I see in this scenario, whether an author-reader relationship or architect-end user one, is all reliance on strength. The nature of tactfully designing for opportunities in spaces used by others (almost never only for the architect to occupy) is one that has to be very rational and orchestrated.

        Rather than assuming a long-term goal for public housing and designing in a way to accomplish this on a broad level, the architect must work towards smaller steps in a fashion that achieves simple benchmarks. These simple maneuvers can only work if they relate back to everyday life interactions of the people, and come together to provide a flowing city of networked connections. I’m saying here that I think the most important, and maybe arguably the rewarding part of being an architect that I am most excited to feel one day, is how fragmented design decisions cluster together to achieve a complex whole.  

Putting this in more simple terms to better clarify what I mean by this is that an architect designing a frame for everyday life is only as successful as a frame if the end user is able to understand that is what he designed for. In the realm of architecture, the highest level of intelligence can very well be overlooked if it is not illustrated. A strong visual language of organization within a space (a possible example being various program branches along a singular axis of circulation) is not always easily read by every resident in an apartment complex. This crisp programmatic organization could be instantly erased with the placement of a program shift within the circulation zone such as rotating the living room furniture 90 degrees. In this case, the architect would be strategizing how everyday life should work for the end user, yet the end user felt opportunistic in his space and rearranged this design suggestion. Although the end user ultimately has every right to fill voids in architecture in such ways where they can express and connect with THEIR space, I find the tactics of the designer to be the most powerful to everyday life. 

Without the architect fully aware how sometimes seemingly unimportant components need to be included in a bigger design picture and alluding to the power that he has because he understands this tactical projection, the modern world would be chaos. By generating a built environment for a society that is easily constrained to what they are given through housing and buildings to interact with, the author of the story is able to strengthen our function. The power of design in how people function everyday is inspiring to analyze and I find great beauty in trusting the architect, someone who finds passion in scripting an effective working society, to design my world (until I am one among these practicing architects, of course).