Toward An Architecture Of Engagement
Author(s)
H M Steinberg
Abstract
The architect as artist is the model that has pervaded architectural education for several generations. In this model, it is the pursuit of beauty that separates architecture from the more technical professions such as engineering. Today, formal aesthetics dominates the discourse of criticism and theory. The ideal of the ‘architect as artist’ with the reliance on beauty has served to render the professional marginal, away from the realm of decision-making. A change in paradigm might become the ‘citizen-architect’ and a new criticism and theory might be developed derived from the human experience in architecture.
1 Design: A conversation across the generations
Architecture is a response to a fundamental human need, as human beings need places to sleep, stay dry and celebrate life. As a profession, architecture is the creation of places of social association. What, how, and where we build is a critical reflection of our cultural values. How we use our resources directly impacts the quality of our lives. As John Frohnniayer, head of the National Endowment for the Arts under President George H. W. 13ush has said, \“design is a conversation across the generations” [1].
Consider the following observations: The proliferation of gated communities across America in which the ideals of a New Urbanism create old-fashioned towns primarily for upper middle class nostalgists behind locked gates. What (does this say about our society when many of our real towns and cities are crumbling? How far have we come as a society from the original English settlement at Jamestown that was an enclosed fortification in the wilderness?
The destruction of the American landscape through the unbridled commercialization of the ‘edge city,’ We create places such as Tyson’s Comer, Virginia with sleek office structures elbowing the latest super-box, category-killer lumbering beside an hotel masquerading as Art Deco-lite with 8-lane freeways, no side-
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