Comments on: Architectural Myopia: Designing for Industry, Not People

By: Paul Downton

Paul Downton — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:07:59 +0000

This is an excellent article. There are architects, like myself, who try to practice in a way that fits “a contextual world of harmonious geometric relationships and connectedness” and some of us have spent years in academia trying to bring a connected way of thinking into an environment that continually promotes disconnection, but there’s a big machine at work here, and it prefers to engage you as a cog.

Most clients, funding agencies and arbiters of architectural taste conspire, quite unconsciously, to favour the aesthetic of industrial product; they are victims of what is essentially a fashion industry. There are exceptions, of course, but as the article makes plain, they are few. Too few.

There has always been an alternative to the modernist, objects-in-space way of thinking about buildings and cities and it fits broadly under the terms of ‘organic’ and, more recently, ‘critical regionalism’. But mention the word ‘organic’ to most architects and you’ll see a look of panic in their eyes…

I chronicled some of the best ‘organic’ thinking about architecture and cities in my book ‘Ecopolis: Architecture and cities for a changing climate’. I thought of it as an antidote to the prevailing neo-modernist view of urbanism, which, sadly, continues to damage the idea of ecological cities and green buildings by employing tokenism and, frankly, outright falsehoods, to maintain business-as-usual in the guise of sustainability.

It’s tough work, bucking the trendy, and it needs many more people to do it, not just outside the architectural profession but within it.

Thank you, Nikos, for your article. I hope it encourages a lot more people to have the guts to make a stand against the architectural fashion industry.

By: Louise Pen y Graig

Louise Pen y Graig — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:06:28 +0000

The Master and His Emissary is a fascinating book but I found it very hard going! It’s the combination of difficult (or unfamiliar) words and the amount of thought it provokes!

By: Øyvind Holmstad

Øyvind Holmstad — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 06:29:24 +0000

@Louise Pen y Graig

Thank you for this interesting viewpoint and for the book you recommend!

The same authors that wrote this article are for the time running a series in Metropolis Magazine: http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/author/nikos

By: Louise Pen y Graig

Louise Pen y Graig — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 19:08:48 +0000

Fascinating!I’m in the process of reading a book called ‘The Master and His Emissary’ by Iain McGilchrist. It deals with the different ways the two halves of the brain view the world and how we are living in an era where the left brain view is becoming dominant in the world. This phrase from the article really sums this up – ‘Instead of a contextual world of harmonious geometric relationships and connectedness (right brain view), architects tend to see a world of objects set apart from their contexts, with distinctive, attention-getting qualities (left brain view).’ The premise of the book is that at times, like the Renaissance, when arts and science flourished together both halves of the brain worked together in harmony but the ‘right brain’ view was dominant. Other times, like the enlightenment and now, the left brain view dominates. He argues that because the left brain sees the world as separate disconnected objects this will tend to lead to the sort of environmental breakdown that we are seeing. He is also afraid that as we live in a more and more ‘left brain’ world this will become self perpetuating. In other words the more we are surrounded by ‘left brain’ architecture and machines the more ‘left brained’ society as a whole will become and the pendulum won’t swing back. In this case new ‘right brained’ styles of architecture are vital for society.