Where we at?

Sir Robert Walpole, First Resident of 10 Downing Street and unrelated to this post

“theoretical environment in the architectural discipline”

While conceivably within the domain of acceptable identifiers of critical interest and academic positioning “theoretical environment in the architectural discipline” is much more gestural than will be adequate for the task at hand. A cursory reading even might provide an inventory of intellectual jargon in which particular constituencies will find inherent implications of intellectualism adequate to create the expectation of genuine critical analysis. Readers who fall into this category vote straight ticket republican and should be ignored at a minimum and physically restrained from interactions with other members of the species.

Weather the notational gesture is to be allowed the privilege to stand for the statement of interests that it suggests is the subject of this post. First and foremost an investigation into whether the gesture has meaning of genuine significance is essential.

The historical significance intellectual trajectories and evolved heuristic structures play in crafting identifiable, although, synchronic critical events and the point where threesomes go wrong both being infinitely debatable we must concede that some avenues of investigation will be potentially available but beyond our scope. Here we will discuss three possible readings of the environmental component of the gesture.

In the first case the environment refers to any number of coalesced idea strings on the subject of architecture that have been given a name by those concerned with either the nature of cultural practice, or by practitioners of architecture. The result of this reading requires that the production of the architectural artifact follow from some dogma as dictated by conclusions established by pre-existing theoretical regimes. There can in this case be a rightness to the artifact as the artifact can be compared to how it compares to the regimental edicts. Every new regime having, then as its necessary first act the dismantelling of all previous conceptual regimes. The most accessible example of this is Johnson's “7 Crutches of Modern Architecture” from which grew what would come to be called post-modernism.

In the second case the environment refers to some particular intangible manner in which architecture might be practiced. There was a time when it was fashionable to refer to this manner of practice as paper architecture and it took the form of writing about an architecture which defied the requirement to become tangible artifact, the goal of this manner of production being not supplemental to the artifact, but a coequal partner in some craft identifiable as architectural.
In the third case, the architectural artifact and the ideas that cause the artifact to take form and have that form be interpreted in a particular way are connected temporally and situationally. The architect's hand may be drawn across the page in flashes of virtuosic inspiration but, either before or after the artifact is the explanation of the artifact will contribute to an ongoing discourse on the subject of production of artifacts.

Okay, It's late, I'm going to bed.