Catching up Part 3: Scarcity
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“I am arguing for a different kind of activity in which the creativity of the designer is focused not on objects but on the processes that precede and follow the making of objects.”
-Jeremy Till
I really liked Till’s take on our current mode of sustainability and austerity, and how scarcity might be a better way to think about things. In scarcity, as Till mentions, we might better focus on the processes and systems in the built environment. He gave the example of the secondary school that could avoid construction simply by a soft programming/use readjustment. I think this is really helpful to think about and gets at the core of what architecture is about - the programming and use of buildings, but more importantly: the systems of life that interact with material objects. I think as designers, our takeaway might be that architecture should be about spatial intelligence, not just construction intelligence. This spatial intelligence might serve as a critical lens to filter our work and begin to edit out. And maybe, in our age of sprawl, it might serve as a guide as we try to make buildings more scarce.
I would say that right now we're in a "construction intelligence" renaissance of sorts. We are effectively hitting the next (potentially last depending on how this all plays out) Industrial Revolution of computation and information. We've been in it for forty to fifty years now perhaps, but recently it's taken off, especially in how we design. Think about our accessibility to ever innovative design tools, physics simulators, access to information. Anybody can be an architect today without much training and they can follow through in the motions. A necessity for us is to not lose our way in the process and to make sure that the key aspects of architectural experience are maintained. Like you said spatial intelligence will be vital in maintaining a hold on our profession as material technologies increase and computation continues to provide stronger and more capable softwares and hardwares for any person to achieve what they need for a design.
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