Solutions to Problems that don't Exist

During most of the semester, the school hosts a weekly lecture series, usually by an architect of note, and usually on monday nights. The upcoming lecture is advertized on a poster out in the main hall. This week's lecturer was Neil Denari, formerly the director architecture at SCI-arc and a practicing architect known for digital fabrication. His stuff is vaguely reminsicent of Hadid's work (I'm not as well rounded on my architects as I should be, so this was the first I'd heard of him to be honest). The title of his lecture really pissed me off:

Solutions to Problems that don't Exist

Fantastic, I thought, we are in an increasingly marginalized and constrained profession, in a world of problems that Do Exist, and this image-driven architect is going to give a lecture on how he's jerking off.

To his credit, he addressed the issue head on, from the onset. I've seen a lot of image architects, but few of them were willing to come out and say, yes, this is mostly about image. Actually he gave one of the clearest and most coherant defenses of image architecture I've seen so far. He went so far as to call out the architects who take the ideological position that architecture should not be media, that architecture should be a bulwark against transient culture. (He's framing it in very absolute terms to highlight his position, I don't think that architecture should be necessarily eternal or reflect universal, ageless values). He comes down very clearly on the side which says architecture should reflect culture rather than shape it.  In my view, he is making a kind of vapid architecture which panders to a vapid culture. Comes back to the old argument about the role of the architect in society. He seems to take the minority position, to say we don't have the authority to make or define culture.

Hmmmm. Architects must have authority to define or shape culture, a kind of cultural capital. Where do we get it from? Authority is ultimately given, it cannot be taken. So as an architect, I must get my cultural capital from... the producers of culture? It is something given by the design community to itself? I don't think so.  I think its society, which ultimately validates what it considers architecture and what is not. I think that architecture community is deluding itself if it thinks for a moment that our authority flows from our degrees or our professional status. They probably help convince society that we have the resources worthwhile of their investment of cultural capital, but its not the thing itself.

I'm more closed-minded then I used to be, probably a product of getting older and thinking I know more than I do. Bad habit.