Week One: Beyond Architecture Musings

The chapter, Beyond Architecture (Sadler, 2005), regales the story of Archigram, an avant-garde architectural group established in the 1960's that was futurist, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist and drew inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality, solely expressed through hypothetical projects. The article outlines the theoretical underpinnings, beliefs and publications of the group.

Of interest to me, was the notion portrayed that the consumerist lifestyle is simply a mirror of the natural life-cycle: birth and death.  The idea of design for obsolescence was particularly confronting- as a designer the time, effort, emotion, blood, sweat and tears put into a design is huge, and the thought of that design being temporary and disposable is almost heartbreaking. I asked a friend who designs packaging of his thoughts, and he responded that the purpose of his designs was not to last, but to entice people to buy the product.  Once it had been purchased, the design had "done its job" and was no longer relevant.

As an architect, however, the purpose of our design is to create containers for human experience- so then does the changes in the experiences requested render our designs obsolete? Do the breakdown of the container, or the passing fashion and fads determine this?  Should we design for resilience to these, or accept that what we create will be brought down, perhaps even in our lifetimes?  Or do we design for a future which we predict and hope that we "got it right"?

In the case of Archigram, it seems that the latter was the case- the group purported designs for a future possibility, however they overplayed their hand.  Certainly, some of their ideas for the future exist now, but not to the extent to which was predicted. Perhaps the group got so excited about future possibilities they forgot one fundamental issue- human beings are naturally resistant to change, and will therefore, be resistant to any major changes in their lives.  Certainly, the technology is there, and the adoption of new technologies is rapidly increasing, however, the fundamental ways in which we live has changed little over the years.

So what does this mean for DAB810, and for me?  It means that in designing for the future one needs to consider not only the advancement of technology, or the change in political and social norms, but the people involved and whether or not they would be receptive to these changes, and whether those changes are cost-effective enough to be implemented to a large scale.

Sadler, S., 2005. Beyond Architecture. In. Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. pp90-138