[Framework Post] Week 13: Contextualism and Authority.

Michael Speak is not an unfamiliar figure in the contest for the production of architecture to shift away from theory to what he terms in much of his recent writing design intelligence. In Which Way Avant-Garde? (2000), Speaks begins his recent promulgation for architecture to stop “[recoiling] from the degraded world of business and managerial thinking” (78), seeing as how—as Speak claims in any case—“theory [..] has proven inadequate to the vicissitudes of the contemporary world” (78). In a more recent article “After Theory” from Architectural Record (05, 2006), Speak loudly proclaims in fact that “theory is not just irrelevant but was and continues to be an impediment to the development of a culture of innovation in architecture (“After” 74).

What is architectural practice without its traditionally thought brother in architectural theory? Speaks cites works and design methodology of the likes of Foreign Office Architects as an enticement. But it is this very breed of ‘design intelligent’ architects that has Reinhold Martin, in “Critical of What” (2005), up in arms. In Martin’s examination of the projective and forward-looking proposal of FOA’s, Martin takes umbrage in the office’s project statement:

Let’s not even consider remembering… What for? We have a great site in a great city and the opportunity to have the world’s tallest building back in New York. Ground Zero used to host 1.3M m² of workspace, and that is a good site to attempt to return to NY what it deserves. (qtd in Martin, 3)

In the following paragraph, and in response to FOA’s statement, Martin reproaches:

Though it remains unclear what New York “deserves” to forget, it is abundantly clear that such wilful amnesia refers not only to a salutary rejection of the often sanctimonious imperatives of memorialisation, but also to an active blindness to the historical conditions of which 9/11 was only one component. […] Accordingly, the professionals in the new world order is confined to facilitating the arrival of the “new”, while washing their hands of the overdetermined historical narratives—and the dead bodies—through which this new is named. (Martin, 3)

If anything learnt from the previous 12 weeks of contemplation on theories, it is that theories have only just begun setting the pace for a new kind of liberation. A liberation from a capitalistic force that we at once thrive on—wilfully or otherwise—but also fear for its prowess in flattening the identities of our individual culture. Yes, perhaps we are losing patience in “though that tethered us to fundamental truths [… preferring to move] toward thought that enabled us to act” (Gilles Deleuze, qtd in “In Which Way” 78), but is that a result of an impatience in our identity endowed upon us our fast-food chains, exemplary of the very thrust of Speaks’ “vicissitudes of the contemporary world”?

If this were the world Speaks wishes to walk with, I am not with him. And I don’t see anyway out of not following him but by turning to my theories to find means to alternatives, methods of uncovering hegemonic wools pulled over my eyes, and never before found freedom.



References:

1. Martin, Reinhold. “On Theory: Critical of What?” Havard Design Magazine, Spring/ Summer 2005, 1-5.

2. Speak, Michael. “In Which Way Avant-Garde?” Assemblage, No 41, Apr 2000. 78.

3. … “After Theory.” Architectural Record, Jun 2005. 73-75.