The following words are to be viewed as characters in a collective narrative whose story will unfold through the working of architectural research and projections. Like any play or novel, some characters are more central, and some only flirt with the driving theme, but all are crucial to the progression of the plot, to the progression of intention.
* Construction -> Constructive Deconstruction (definitely not deconstructivism a la Hadid, Gehry, Koolhaas, Libeskind, Eisenman etc..)
In a world requiring 150% its own volume to endure the current industrialized processes, adding more physical matter of any sort to the equation seems counter intuitive. As the fiscal systems often state, you can’t solve debt with more debt; as such can you really solve problems of the built environment with even more built environment? It’s time for the architect to use the existing fabric, to become skilled in the removal of the physical, in the actual sculpting of space and not the double negative notion of sculpting space as an additive process. The architect is to ultimately become versed in the manipulation of what is available; an analytical poet. Into what is removed then, can be placed built sustenance; systems of materials that breathe life into the old, that address energy and technology; a retro surgery of an ecological nature. Take Mies’ Brick Country Villa, inspired by the paintings of Piet Mondriaan, a leading figure in the de Stijl movement and central influence of the Bauhaus. It can be read as much as the dissolution of a more complicated plan as it can be read a minimal insertion of verticals and horizontals, which was his aim. Take Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West (1937), which appears to be abstractly inspired by the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky, a core member of the Bauhaus (1922 – 1933). Although they display an obvious evolution beyond the abstract simplicity of sole verticals and