ANALYSIS OF TEXTS
Rory Hyde engages in direct conversations with architects, artists, festival directors, and a host of other ‘activists’. Hyde discusses individuals who have invoked change in the urban environment, indicating that not all outcomes need to manifest themselves as an actual physical product:
“(Architects) are mainly perceived as working to create buildings and urban spaces, yet buildings are not why cities exist; they are simply a side-effect of cities.”
This notion is echoed by muf_aus (who interestingly describe themselves as both architects and artists) when partner Mel Dodd states that “there is an objective to make something”, however, that “could be a moment, an event, a video or whatever.”
In recognition of our practices’ ethos, we read around the subject of community-minded projects, and further identified texts that explore the role of an architect in forging a dialogue between themselves, and users of a given space.
In Future Practice and Architecture Depends, Rory Hyde and Jeremy Till, respectively, critique the role of architects/designers in establishing change.
A Venn diagram portraying the different disciplines necessary to be an artist/architect, and how these disciplines overlap.
The diagram examines the
client-architect relationship. Legislation protects the client's interests, but often omits the architects responsibility to the large group of users.
Architecture Depends propels Jeremy Till’s belief that architects deny the dependency imposed on them by “external factors” (“other people, circumstances and events”), in order to present a “false truism” of the architectural profession – namely, as a singular effort, devoid of compromise.
Furthermore, Till argues that architects present aesthetics and ethics as a united theme; that a beautiful design, by default, will unite people, creating an ideal environment just through its aesthetics. “By all means (…) worry over the detail” Till remarks. However, an architect’s utmost “ethical responsibility” lies in being a “contributor to the creation of empowering spatial, and hence social, relationships in the name of other”.
Using the idea of the architectural scale, Till asks the reader to consider 1:100 as “one architect to one hundred citizens”. The scale increases and decreases, changing from one to one contact, upwards to 1:10,000 - the city scale. Till aims to enforce the idea of responsibility, that an architects design is not their own personal exploit, but an outcome that is viewed, used, built and demolished by real life individuals.
Exploring the relationship the architect has with the user at different 'architectural' scales. The smaller the scale, the more likely an architect is to have direct contact with the user.
Architecture that fulfils its role to the co-locality, and the client, ought to respond and adapt to the demands set by both. ‘Conventional’ architects choose not let new information filter into their design process.