marketing architecture for an open-ended future

Stan Allen is marketing a position for architecture to remain relevant as the intellectual direction of the world shifts. It is something that Charles Jencks, Le Corbusier, Wittkower etc. have done, as the world of ideas slowly morphs from one fascination to another. First, he opens the concept of diagram, giving it “multiple functions,” and “instrumental abstractions.” Diagrams create possibilities. He then jumps to information technologies, the force which is changing the way the world operates. IT requires lighter, more responsive architecture… performance…”a field in which diagrams matter.” Here we see what we need for the future, but before going on to explain how architecture, rearticulated, can fulfill those requirements, Allen stops to historically ground the discipline as predisposed toward this type of thinking: “architecture is already implicated in a number of media, and the architect is out of necessity constantly moving from one medium to another.” As he pushes his new ideas about architecture forward, he is careful not to let the age of the discipline impede its flexibility. Architecture “does not insist on historically sanctioned definitions,” but its technological skepticism gives it the freedom to use tradition alongside innovation. According to Allen, architecture “travels light, leaving the heavy stuff behind.” Therefore it is the perfect response to what IT requires, and a relevant discipline in the 21st century. It behaves like a diagram, loose fitting, transposable, multiplicitous…it allows for flaws, imperfection. It’s open-ended. Society is changing so fast it is impossible to tell where it is headed; therefore the best way to stay marketable is to offer critique without taking a firm line, to generate and not limit or control. I agree with his calls for generative design, and with the usefulness of diagrams. But regardless of whether I like what he says, I think he has done a marvelous job of articulating a form of logic for a discipline on the border of academia that propels it into the midst of academic exploration and makes it receptive to any number of shifts in theory or technology.