Summaries

I.Radically Public Architecture by Dana Cuff

Radically public architecture opposes architecture as a symbol of capital. According to the author, architecture should create a relationship of trust among people. Hence, architects should build trust through sustained engagement. This article calls attention to an active relationship to the public. Architecture’s discomfort with political agendas is countered by radically public architecture like that of both Medellin and East Japan. The earthquake on March 11, 2011 killed more than twenty thousand people resulting in some $2 billion in damage and leaving the Tohoku region shattered. Within this structure, however, there was no formal role for architects or architecture.

Architects formed collectives to go beyond the basic emergency shelter provided by the government. ArchiAid and Home for All are some examples. ArchiAid intended to facilitate community building among relocated residents. Home for All built sixteen small demonstration projects that act as a small living room for the people affected. The “living room” was intended to house community rather than individuals. The recovery efforts after the Great East Japan Earthquake demonstrate a radically public role for architecture.

Equitable space, adaptive futures, and fresh engagement are the qualities of radically public architecture. The author describes universal design in some depth. In architecture, universal access is first considered through spatial mechanisms like turnstiles, gateways, or doors. According to the author, the architect is less of an author than a director who recognizes that a creative work depends on the resources, inspiration, and collective enterprise in a dynamic performance.

II.Indigenous Modernities by Fernando Luiz Lara and Felipe Hernandez 

Grids are ubiquitous in the Indigenous space of the Americas. They can be found in the layout and decorative carving of the citadel by the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan (Mexico), in the planning of Ollantaytambo (Peru), or in Inca textiles and pottery to name a few. Grid is prompted by a material logic; the accumulation of repetitive blocks in construction, or the weaving of strands in a textile, blocks. Grid-an instrument of colonialism and settler colonialism-was mobilized to map and bound the landscape inhabited, labored upon, by Indigenous people in order to transform that landscape into property. Scholars have speculated that these symbols might reference social-religious concepts or perhaps even spatial divisions.

According to this article, the Inca grid was not as an imposition over the landscape, but rather as a different type of abstraction: one that encoded and mapped Andean cosmology. The casta paintings illustrate the ‘dilution’ of Spanish blood in a series of combinations with Indigenous and African peoples. These paintings were most often organized as a grid in which every new racial combination or caste (castas) occupied a space. The opposite impulses-to understand one’s position within the totality, on the one hand, and to cover and dominate the whole, on the other—stand at the importance of the modernity of the grid. While the grid has been mobilized towards settler goals, it has also participated in the formulation of Indigenous cosmologies and Indigenous resistance.

III.I mean to be critical, But by Kim Dovey

The author suggests that critical architectural practices can be seen to operate along two dimensions: the ‘formal’ construction of meaning and the ‘spatial’ mediation of everyday life. In this article, Dovey suggests that a critical architecture maybe one that unsettles the architectural field. The conceptual oppositions (form/function, representation/action), and the separations between them, are clues to understanding the ways a supposedly ‘critical’ architecture is neutralized. Architecture that is meant to be critical becomes incorporated into a current economic, political and social order: the ever-the-same returns in the guise of the ‘critical’. The author emphasizes the importance of how and in whose interests architecture constructs identities and stabilizes meanings.

Architecture is deeply involved in habit. It is a production of habitat and a set of structures, dispositions and rules that frame everyday life and the ‘sense of one’s place’ within it. Kim Dovey also looks at architecture as a field of power. He believes that art and life are two different discourses. His point is not to target individuals who produce good work in a formal sense. Instead, he suggests that all that work exists and all these components operate within a structured manner which enables a seemingly ‘critical’ architectural practice to thrive. A critical architecture must plant seeds of desire for a better future.

Critical Response

In “I mean to be critical, But’’ the author mentions that it may be useful to ask the Deleuzian question – not what architecture ‘means’, but what it ‘does’ and how it ‘works’. I found this to be very important because architecture shapes our world and it impacts the physical, social, cultural, and economic aspects of our lives. It creates a sense of identity and place by representing the culture and values of a community. Architecture is both art and science. Good architecture progresses with the times and encourages us to develop healthier and more efficient habits. Building, bridges, and other structures are essentials not because of what they mean but because of what they do. They connect cities, shape our environment and have a profound impact on the way we live and interact with each other. Also, by designing buildings that are sustainable, we, as future architects can reduce the impact of buildings on the environment and promote a healthier future.

Application

On “I mean to be critical, But” reading, the author mentions a correlation between art and architecture. While I was reading this article, Zaha Hadid came to my mind. Zaha Hadid was an Iraqi-British architect, artist and designer, recognized as a key figure in architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Zaha Hadid considered herself an artist above everything else, even when she became a fully fledged architect. The importance of being able to set out her artistic vision was fundamental to being able to create the three-dimensional architectural forms Hadid wanted. Her astonishing contemporary art led to some of the most beautiful and artistic buildings in the world, such as Azerbaijan’s sinuous Heydar Aliyev Centre.

Situated in the heart of Baku, Azerbaijan, this eye-catching cultural center was built to symbolize modernization and development in the country after it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The shell-like building cultural venue is set on a public plaza on Heydar Aliyev Boulevard, a main throughway in Baku that connects the international airport to the old city. The undulating building features exhibition spaces, a library, a museum, and concert venues where a rotating program of art exhibitions, performances, conferences, and workshops showcase Azeri history and contemporary culture, both local and international.

It is mind-blowing to me how legendary architects like Zaha Hadid had find a way to blend art and architecture to create masterpieces like Heydar Aliyev Centre. I have been doing art since I was 10 years old. Painting is my main language and form of expression. Now that I have entered the field of architecture, it is challenging for me to drastically shift my way of thinking into a more analytical way, rather than the intuitive way of looking at things. However, it is inspiring to know of other architects who had successfully achieved to mix art and architecture into one palette, bringing so much life to an architectural piece.

Take Aways

•  Acritical architecture must at least plant seeds of desire for a better future
• Good architecture is all too uncommon
• Equitable space, adaptive futures, and fresh engagement are the qualities of radically public architecture
• Grids are ubiquitous
• Art and architecture CAN coexist