FLEEING STASIS

We have all fallen susceptible to the ideologies of stasis within architectural practice. Modern architectural academia and the profession have taught us to envision order and stability in urban contexts through architectural interventions. This practice places the professional designer on a pedestal to command the activities of the everyday. The prescription of spatial usage imagined by an individual who is designing outside of a community has no cultural relevance and can deteriorate the beauty found in the everyday social experience of a place.

The act of predicting the usage of a space is comparable to predicting the future. Can we not instead, design for spontaneity and flexibility, all while discovering cues from public interaction? I find it more liberating as a designer to imagine “program-less” spaces or design interventions that are contextualized by the public interpretation of architecture, instead of the architect’s interpretation of the everyday. How can architecture become public? How can we break the mold of order we have been taught, and embrace the discontinuity, ruptures, and imperfections that make the everyday beautiful?