Reading #2: The Muses are not Amused

I was promised to be irratated reading "The Muses are not Amused" by Jorge Silvetti. However, with my mind pre-blown, I think it failed to fully live up to the hype. Though it is meant to be provocative and garner a sharp rebuttal, I actually agree with the central point which is, that recently, architects try to pass off the 'authorship' of form in the search of rigor. This search for the grounding of form-making into some deeper apparatus: data (or worse, the representation of data), software, history, or metaphor, is widely implemented, and Silvetti simply exposes it as a cold fish, a tangental path away from the real thing. While this may be a fair criticism, I think it is mostly a framing problem and not a process problem. While these architects focus on their project's connections to sci-fi movies or claim that they are more 'chemical engineer than designer', the implicit and more direct connections back to form-making are still there, just not articulated. The tendency to remove authorship is only dangerous when it is coupled with some claim to perfection. When Joshua Prince-Ramus claims that seattle public library (a supreme example of Programism) is a completely rational structure, that it only works in its final configuration, he takes it too far. Instead, this technique should be treated like a blindfold exercise, if the results are useful, go with it.

Willfullness or "intuition" will always be part of the architect's process, but sometimes it lies deeper than putting pencil to paper. In computer science, the programmer is constancely weighing algorithms against other algorithms that produce the same result: while one is faster, it is also more memory intensive, etc. Here, intuition lies in the negotiation of these factors. Architects encounter similar issues all the time: an optimal use of materials may not be cost effective, a structural system may conflict with spatial configuration. This is where the muse comes in, the metaphor or the computer program or history may help you answer seemingly arbitrary questions as well as intuitive conflicts.

Response to "How to Draw Up a Project" by Jose Luis Mateo

In this essay, Jose Luis Mateo defines the architectural process as series of steps with a specific direction. He explains that a project will begin as a vague idea, gain a structure, and finally assume a skin and spatial condition. In his conception, buildings today are composed of skin and bones, separate entities combining to define space. While this may be a successful approach to framing a process, it leaves out possibilities of feedback between structure, space, and skin. Because these elements are hierarchically separated, the project loses its ability to form hybrid and novel architectural conditions.



In citing possible dangers to the process, Mateo argues that projects need ideas that do not restrict formal explorations. My professor last semester would reiterate a similar sentiment: Don't let the project become a building too soon. In Mateo's first two steps, a "phantom" pairs with structural logic. For me, the "phantom" is the set of potential relationships between users, environment, and context that the project must content with. The structure is not the physical members tasked with overcoming the force of gravity, but a framework of decisions that organize space. The interaction and feedback between data (the phantom) and decisions (the structure) produces the hierarchy, rules, and specific geometry necessary for defining space, skin and physical structure. The architectural process is then about gathering data of various types (environment, program, occupancy, codes, etc) and coupling them with analytical tools and form-finding algorithms that translate data into workable architectures.