Tom Wiscombe's Aplomb is Wrong

Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance, Kenneth Framptom addresses avant-garde in the world of architecture and how the modernization of technology has influenced the forms of our cities. 

Recently, there has been news about Tom Wiscombe and a few other faculty members at SCI-Arc whose teaching methods are now being questioned. An uproar by the student body occurred after a Round Table conversation event where a few of the staff got together to speak on how students should act when entering into the career of architecture post-graduation.

Now I won't be talking about the incident here, as it doesn't relate, but it did make me curious about Tom Wiscombe and his philosophy. I had never heard of him before and was curious about his approach. If you look him up on youtube, one of the first videos is "Tom Wiscombe: What is Architecture" where he drives at architecture, its place, and his interests in it. At one point, he remarks on a project that, in viewing it, you almost don't believe that it's there, like its a rendering, and what if he strove for all projects to feel this way, otherworldly. If you put his name into google images or go to his website, this is precisely the type of projects you see. Obviously, the implication here is that there is value in ignoring regionalism, existing characteristics of a city, and exploring the new materials, technologies, and forms. I don't necessarily disagree, but it certainly isn't the style of work I want to be a part of. I think it's probably childish to avoid consideration of older practices, and I think it assumes that modernization in the way we're doing it is singular and linear, meaning that there is only one way for a city or society to grow. Tom Wiscombe seems to follow, in his own way, from the short segment I saw on him, all that was wrong with Modernism and post-modernism, where cost, labor, and user were to be ignored for the sake of someone else aesthetic vision.