on altering architectural discourse

Isaac Mathew
3 min readMay 14, 2022

#architecturaltheory existed a while back only as books. Manifestos of architectural practices. They were business plans, aesthetic ideologies, or projected aspirations. It built a body of work. It is formulated for practice in practice. Architecture is a profession where a tradition is carried down, knowledge of a culture of building extended on. The position of note, what is architecture for a generation? If a set of ideologies worked for a time, can it work or be carried onto the next? What resources are required to prolong a culture of making? Conservation as a frame of making has a different lens of problem-solving and is not addressed in #alexanderkoolhaas. For now, this is an interim proposition. Like physical building alteration, spatial theory propositions also are altered, is a hypothesis deduced. Ways of seeing land, landscape, and spatial aspirations change. An architectural theory can become old and also discarded subject to very many causes. What was grand becomes plebeian. Is theory restoration possible or indeed feasible? Reproduction is not possible, how much of a modified form can an architectural theory exist is a proposition to address. If architecture is only a virtual construct to what degree can a theory of past work in another context or practice. Here in this case can #alexander’s patterns or #koolhaas’s bigness work in situations outside its intended frameworks? Every generation has a different world-view of spatial practices is one, and the other is reusability of practice architectural theories. Where styles were in vogue graphic patterns were easier to apply and build on since there was clarity on what was possible. With abstract ideas measurement of alteration is difficult to pinpoint. Can a theory transform into something else, almost how building revitalizations happen? What else could you do with pattern language other than the 253 suggested or can XL be redrawn as S?

is reusing architectural theories more sustainable than writing up new ones?

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Isaac Mathew

i think #architecture #art #planning #design #engineering