The first two paragraphs are excerpts from comments that have prompted my response.
Mark Wigley: “…If you could say what the problem is you wouldn’t hire an architect…You call an architect in when you have a very complex situation in which you have a lot of information that doesn’t really connect, and the architect just goes in there and sees or projects or imagines a possible form of organization that allows that complexity to continue…naiveté is crucial…because to know that you don’t know, to have a sense that you don’t know and therefore to be in awe of what you are experiencing and full of love and respect for complexity, this I think is the genius of architects and why I think they have an enormously important role in society.”
“Are
you kidding me? This is the clarion call of obfuscatory mumbo jumbo. The
endless excuse-making about a serious lack of thinking, deep respect for
learning and knowledge, and the final recourse of the scammer. The idea that
ignorance is a qualification … is bizarre... No wonder the idea that architects
have some special design thinking to contribute is only of interest to those
trying to bail water out of this Titannic (sp). Architecture is too great a
discipline to be permanently held down, but the jury is still out if this
recovery is just over the horizon or only where there be dragon’s (sp).
Walter Hosack:
Architecture records complex owner requirements and desires in a document it calls a program. It solves the puzzle defined by the program with logic it calls schematic design. In the military the program would be called a policy and schematic design would be called strategic planning. Architecture has made the mistake of calling its entire effort fine art.
Mr. Vyas talks about seeing over the horizon to reach a remote destination, but the skill required an abstract ability to calculate latitude and longitude. Unfortunately, architecture earns a living from its project orientation and has no incentive to consider a horizon beyond the cell it calls a lot, or the cells that are combined to form a larger project area. It will take a different form of calculation to pursue an attempt to cure metastasizing sprawl that is consuming our source of life.
A building is the shelter nucleus of a cell we call a lot. Cells collect to create a Built Domain that is expanding through annexation of the Natural Domain. The form created is called sprawl to shelter the activities of growing populations, and there is no correlated mathematical language or political priority that can lead to healthy, symbiotic urban form within geographic limits.
Zoning is a collection of uncorrelated, conflicting design specifications that cannot predict the shelter capacity of cells and their aggregations. As a result, it cannot lead to the formation of healthy urban anatomies that avoid excessive intensity with correlated shelter capacity and economic activity. At the present time, zoning contradictions combine with activity misallocation to abet sprawl searching in vain for elusive economic stability through annexation.
Land use planning is a two dimensional exercise that cannot correlate the shelter capacity, intensity, and activity of urban form. This is critical because shelter capacity measures the gross building area per acre present or planned. Shelter is occupied by activity and the combination determines revenue yield per acre of land area consumed. When thought of collectively, average economic yield per acre consumed must equal a city’s average expense per acre to avoid budget cuts and a declining quality of life.
Since shelter capacity can be occupied by any activity, the ability to predict shelter capacity per acre and the economic yield per square foot from occupant activity is crucial to economic stability. At the present time, a city cannot balance the shelter capacity of its land with occupant activity to meet the average yield per acre it needs for operations, maintenance, improvement, and debt service.
This is a problem that begins with architectural inability to comprehensively and accurately predict and compare shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance options at the cellular level of urban aggregation, but it is not a problem that can be assigned to architecture as we know it. It is a problem for city design leadership with a new version of latitude and longitude prediction.
The goal is shelter capacity, intensity, and activity in proportions that will protect a growing population’s economic stability and quality of life within geographic limits that protect their source of life. This is our new destination over the horizon. It will require the ability to calculate another version of latitude and longitude and the power of a captain sailing in a universe without end.
Pete Pointer
Science is good but principles, values applied in process locally
is more important.
Like "Pete" Pointer FAICP, ALA, ITE’S comment
Walter
Hosack
A
strategic plan to correlate shelter capacity, intensity, and activity for
economic stability throughout a city begins at the cellular level of building
mass, pavement, and open space. Conversion of this cellular recipe to
composition, context, and appearance is a more detailed, tactical level of
physical design that you refer to as "local". I would not prioritize
the effort. It is all needed to contribute to our quality of life within
sustainable cities that are capable of contributing to our symbiotic survival.
Drake Waters
The world needs good architecture more than ever by a factor of 100. So much is changing and has to change and the brilliance and creativity good architecture brings is priceless. Good architecture is not wasteful useless and comatose through aesthetics alone. It is a way of thinking that encompasses everything to support society. We are done for if current trends in architecture continue. We must enable AI to force multiply our impact and integration of disciplines has to be the norm. None of that is possible in gate keeper lock down, our status quo. Sink or swim? We are sinking fast.
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