FIDDLING WHILE THE WORLD BURNS
Neil Spiller argues that capitalism and consumerism awards selfishness and shortsightedness, it also has created an overcrowded world. (He blames religion too). Spiller believes architects and architecture students run the risk of transferring the mistakes of formal architecture onto "parametric" architecture, by ignoring the opportunity to use architecture as a force for meaningful cultural and political change. That actually, the real parameters that influence the form of the city are politics, sociology, demographics, ecologies, procurement and dynamics of capital... "All of which benevolent patterned facades don't do." In a lecture given today, Richard Goodwin stated that the world is in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. Architects, and students of architecture must acknowledge and embrace this, and not "fiddle while the world burns", as Spiller puts it.
Goodwin also talked about the need to create parasites that grow and respond to the changing city, that it is too expensive to pull down every poor bit of urban design and architecture. Spiller too believes that there needs to be considerable thought put into retrofitting old buildings, "and start seeing the existing built environment not as blight but an opportunity to use cities as massive factories for environmental good."
Extending from these concepts of politically, environmentally and socially aware architecture, David Gissen writes about Territorial Architecture that "both investigates it world and infuses its immediate surroundings with particular concepts, patterns and sensations... Territorial Architecture suggest a role for architecture as a strategy of tinkering versus one of accommodation with, or refusal of, an external natural environment".
Spiller, N. (2010), Fiddling While the World Burns. Architectural Design, 80: 116–117. doi: 10.1002/ad.1087
Gissen, D. (2010), Territory: Architecture Beyond Environment. Architectural Design, 80: 8–13. doi: 10.1002/ad.1068
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