architecture is useful emptiness.
architecture is the physical and implied limits of emptiness. architecture is something i am in but not touching.
i could touch it, if i wanted to. there's something there to stop my fingers moving through the emptiness... but architecture is only useful in the space it does not itself occupy.
unlike so many others, utility seems to me like the only metric to compare these remainders left by different architecture. of course, there are other things that go into it. there are lots of things to consider and a lot of decisions to be made. architects don't make architecture, they make decisions; but ultimately the only thing all architecture has in common is utility. ultimately, all architecture has to do is function the way that is expected.
architecture is a body of knowledge. it's a process of how to make decisions; how to solve problems, how to make or adapt a place to use. it's a ubiquitous extension of human evolution. it's a tool. we make it to provide us with what we can't provide for ourselves. where there are or used to be people, there is or was architecture. people will bring architecture to where they will be. it's in this association and necessity that i find the rest of what architecture is or means. through use architecture becomes tied to the more interesting matters of life. those who did not make the decisions about what it should be like are the ones that use it figuratively or definitively. they create architecture out of poche.
without use, architecture is empty of meaning or significance.
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Liz, after reading your post I wanted to disagree with you, but then found I had some trouble doing so. That led me to a couple more questions that I do not readily have the answer to.
ReplyDeleteThe first was I wondered why I had immediately reacted negatively to the claim that architecture without use is devoid of meaning/significance. I think in some sense use can be a dirty word in architecture school. I think to some extent after four years of school I've been left with the impression that to focus so much on use means to relegate your architecture to that which is boring, uninspiring, or even utilitarian (gasp, the realm of the engineer). After the initial reaction subsides though, you realize there are plenty of examples where this is not the case, in fact my favorite piece of architecture is essentially an exercise in program. Which brings me back to questioning why I had the reaction that I did.
Secondly I had to question the validity of architecture that has changed uses, if the facilitation of use (generally in architecture projects, a prescribed use) is the architects primary concern. Or even more so, what of architectural monuments that are relegated to sites of tourism, i.e. the pantheon, devoid of any use (and thereby meaning?), outside of the maintenance of its own existence.