Architecture as a Cultural Practice (1978)
Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas
The practice dealing with the value of form should not be confused with simple linguistic games nor with formalistic exercises nor with stylistic entertainment. It implies the understanding of the practice of architecture as a critique and transformation of architectural languages.
Design as reading implies that the formal production does not start from scratch, that it should be rather seen as work developed as a critique of previous designs, a critique of the history of previous formal developments or coming from other cultural practices. It is not a typological approach which implies most times a non-critical acceptance of existing typologies.
In fact, the notion of typology, architectural or urban, functional or formal, as it has been used and as used in our days, it is not enough to explain—does not explain in an exhaustive way—the cultural complexity of the meanings condensed in the architectural configurations. More than typology one should consider the symbolic performance of types. Not only of buildings considered as isolated objects but of public spaces produced by the action of both history and the subject through the relation and transformation of the different types, of buildings and places.
This position presupposes a double action—theoretical and practical—maintaining the differences between these two practices and allowing for their necessary dialectical articulation.
Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas
The practice dealing with the value of form should not be confused with simple linguistic games nor with formalistic exercises nor with stylistic entertainment. It implies the understanding of the practice of architecture as a critique and transformation of architectural languages.
Design as reading implies that the formal production does not start from scratch, that it should be rather seen as work developed as a critique of previous designs, a critique of the history of previous formal developments or coming from other cultural practices. It is not a typological approach which implies most times a non-critical acceptance of existing typologies.
In fact, the notion of typology, architectural or urban, functional or formal, as it has been used and as used in our days, it is not enough to explain—does not explain in an exhaustive way—the cultural complexity of the meanings condensed in the architectural configurations. More than typology one should consider the symbolic performance of types. Not only of buildings considered as isolated objects but of public spaces produced by the action of both history and the subject through the relation and transformation of the different types, of buildings and places.
This position presupposes a double action—theoretical and practical—maintaining the differences between these two practices and allowing for their necessary dialectical articulation.