These are people that were taught exhausting theories in school. They attended universities during the most exciting time for critical thinking and postmodern theories, and were taught by people who were a part of the 1968 generation. They learned first hand, the dangers of thinking too much. And so thinking took a break. We let computers do our thinking now. Of course, in architecture school, one is always taught that a computer is a tool, second only to the hand that draws. But that doesn’t stop students from tracing computer-generated models and faking their drawings. In some cases, students even know Google SketchUp before they know how to draw a technical perspective. Yet, these details are not the problem. The problem is the shallow attitudes and general atmosphere that has begun to plague higher education disciplines. Architecture can’t do anything. This is what I once heard an instructor say to our studio. Yet, architecture students are so deluded by some utopian notion that “architecture can change the world”, that they fail to question anything. They are caught up in a process of idealistic problem solving that gets them nothing more than an A. Then they move on to the next studio, as happy as can be. This is what is failing our higher education system: complacency. Complacency fails both the educators and the students. For educators, they are products of a generation that overwhelmed themselves with questions. They questioned everything from politics to existentialism, and applied theories to any discipline. The result of which being the reification of existence, and a sense of satisfaction with appeasement. For students, they see their instructors at ease with understanding that they accept it. Because their instructor thinks he knows what architecture is, they accept that knowledge as truth. The current architectural climate is also too complacent with itself. As soon as an architect thinks he knows what architecture is, architecture dies a little. When an architect says “sustainable”, “global”, “conceptual” he’s in that mindset that students are in, where they say that architecture can do everything. It’s not naivety; it’s a delusion. It is better to be in the
mindset that architecture can’t do anything. At least from this point of view, a discourse is still possible. After all conflict is the essence of drama, and discourse is drama. A once culturally relevant aspect of society, discourse has become the realm of the hipsters. We have reduced discourse to such a small level that it is cool to like it. Philosophy is not discussed in giant symposiums at John Hopkins University anymore, it is discussed in coffee shops by students. This is what we have turned theory into: a fashion. This is where fake architecture becomes relevant. Fake architecture is not conceptual architecture. It is a response to the lack of thought to which I have been exposed. It is a rebellion against complacency. I of course, cannot bring back discourse; not me nor my hipster brethren. What I can do is follow traditional canons of architecture and exploit their fallacies. In a manner resembling an iconoclastic attitude, fake architecture denounces any definition of architecture. It furtively mocks real architecture. In an effort to question and provoke theoretical thought, it makes claims of architecture being “a rain-soaked piano”, or “a story that never existed about a man who never built a house”. Fake architecture is an attempt to release architecture from the shackles of satisfaction. Architecture is not a trade, but a part of the human experience. It is related to literature, myth, cultural production, and it cannot be simply, what a pragmatist might call “shelter”. We are at the point in technology where computer algorithms can tell us everything we need to know about the world, and so why not about architecture? Can a computer algorithm tell us what architecture is? If architecture was as easy as mere building, computers would be doing it by themselves now. Oh wait, they are.
This was a conversation I had with one of my more distinguished professors at the University of Colorado College of Architecture and Planning.
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