Architecture as a discourse

05

Some days before I wrote this text I was talking to a friend of mine about

future plans and some things that we might do in the next years. I was

telling him that I will do whatever it takes to go to New York and spend at

least a month in there, his reaction was not that positive about this wish

of mine. He started to question me why would I want to go there, if the city

was made basically of traffic and inconvenient skyscrapers, I decided not

to argue about my position, instead of it I just said it would be nice for my

career and that in New York there is a whole lot more to experience behind

skyscrapers and crazy traffic.

Architecture is more. In the common sense people think about architecture

and usually think about nice building, houses. Unfortunately most of them

cannot see what is behind those single elements that they see. Many cities

around the world, even if destitute of projects of renowned architects,

have their own architectural experience working as network and involving

many elements of the urban space.

A single skyscraper when inserted in determined urban environment can

lead to different outcomes. It happens because the city is made of

different elements, each one of them with its different meanings,

different aims, working in this network that defines the urban space.

Architecture and its product has to be seen in a context, independent of

the way that it is thought, as a form of art, as a symbolic realm, or as

spatial experience. The person that think about architecture has to be

open-minded and think about it as an important element with a huge power

of interaction. Power because the modifications caused by the product of

architecture can revolution determined space, society, city, or country.

Imagine Paris without the Eiffel Tower.

Even the crazy traffic in New York, the yellow cabs all around, are part of

the city network, and above all, are part of its identity. The world is not

made of single positive elements, the interaction between all of them

generates the networks life. And it is this life that surrounds architecture

and its product in society.

“Above all, architecture ought to be seen as discourse. Buildings as material facts are small part of the overall field of architecture, a field which is

better regarded as a network of practices and debates about the built environment.”

WILLIAMS, Richard (2005). 'Architecture and Visual Culture', in Exploring Visual Culture: Definitions, Concepts, Contexts,

ed. by Matthew Rampley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), p. 115

Part 01 - Case for Innovation - W1