This has got too intense and deep for me to respond immediately. So I am
tuning out of this discussion and will possibly return once I have had time
to digest things a bit.
Intuitive thoughts at the moment - one needs to incorporate some structure
of ethics. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 is
interesting to me because it is the first attempt to declare human rights as
intrinsically embedded within the human condition, as opposed to the earlier
doctrine of rights being granted and codified by the state. This imposes a
need for symmetry - whichever way one looks rights / ethics should be the
same. Symmetries would need to be local before they could be viewed
universally. I also find Salingaros overly mathematical, but if you took
his notion of scale hierarchies and applied it to ethics / local
symmetries - then is there another potential way of looking at the structure
and constituents of the profession?
Prem
> -----Original Message-----
> From: in-enaction-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [
mailto:in-enaction-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of
> Architexturez.
> Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 11:49 PM
> To: Concerned about habitat and the professions.
> Subject: Re: [in-enaction] Professionalism (con'td) Bunker's right!
>
>
> brian, keep the criticism coming, i think it is important for Indian
> architecture people to know more about the situation in .us. they make it
> sound as if things are great out there in the states, and the mainstream
> media publications.... well. you know!
>
> // long mail with digressions, read at your leisure,
> // if at al!
>
> \>>>> digression
> Salingaros, i don't agree with a lot of his politics (me being
> non-american -- if you remember my categories from Design-L), but
> he was the
> first to shout "Let the .US gracefully bow out of the tallest
> skyscraper in
> the world race, we have nothing to prove by this" and this was before
> 9/11/2001. i don't agree with his overly mathematical approach, but
> appriciate the integrity of his work. my differences might be
> because i come
> from history and hagemonies (or "theory") so my preferences run more like
> ...
>
>
http://www.nexusjournal.com/MarRos-en.html
>
> neverthless, i think Salingaros' work is important, as is Christopher
> Alexander's early work (before Pattern Language) and Habraken's current
> work. have you seen it? Itten, now if i can find somebody who can
> teach math
> at this level! whoops! all my problems will be _over_ in Delhi! there is
> already the greatest basic design and art teacher i ever met here, he does
> some Itten exercises (draw your left hand on paper with soft
> pencils without
> ever looking at the paper. look only at what you are drawing.
> disassociate....)
>
> so this is where i come-in from, i guess there is no disagreement, just
> different approaches. i also want to see architecture driven to
> the point of
> dissolution ("writing a history of its own demise", as i used to call my
> exercise, the On Typology / Mapping Heterologies studies), but at the same
> time, architecture is an industry -- it has organisation(s), modes of
> production and economies, it involves people. i feel it is
> important to take
> into account this resistive mass. just got back from a factory
> tour (we were
> assessing the long term prospects of business), and i was
> surprised to find
> ordinary workers able to elucidate technologies that were Top
> Secret (on the
> pain of death) in Nazi germany and scandinavia -- so i realise the
> potentials of another action, of driving productive means into the ground,
> where they become another craft.
>
> a worker said "so-and-so manufacturer from jaipur is good, there is 'life'
> in the metal dust he makes (is main to jaan hai)" -- he was
> explaining high
> technology using an artisan's language. and this is wonderful. it
> was funny,
> of course, because he was explaining how parts are grown through
> a sintering
> process, and we were looking at viscous metals -- or machine
> components that
> become fluids at performance levels. so we had two levels -- at the same
> time, an engineering level and an artisan level!
>
> we do not have similar operabilities at various thresholds in
> Architecture.
> we see entranched groups at every level who say "THIS, and this
> only!" now,
> the 1994 amendment to the indian Copyright Act, which reduced the scope of
> Architecture, seems to come from the Dominant Doxa of 1980s (alternate
> technology, festival of india, emergent -- rampant -- socialites, the myth
> of a humble nameless egoless sthapati, interdisciplinary studies that
> subsume architecture, newly confident planners). i sense a
> curious alignment
> of interests, i am discussing a comissioned study in some parts of
> architexturez. should someone want to take this up!
>
> question: what happned in 1975-1994 (before-emergency -->
> "liberalisation")?
> digression ends >>>>\
>
> so to answer questions implicit in your and prem's posts: i
> looked at IPR to
> see what constitutes the work of architecture, what is the
> _identity_ of an
> architect's work in the eye of law (or as prem says it, the least
> denominator). now, the American and United Kingdom laws are
> wonderful, i can
> map the Libeskind paper right on the least denominator. and they
> already say
> architecture is a media, but _not_ the representation-bearer, it is a
> representation, but _not_ the common features. so the work of architecture
> is transmissible, manipuable, transformable and wholly seperable
> (alienable
> is a better term, somewhat marxist -- though i am not argueing from that
> school) from the end-product (building, code) and the architect. so
> architecture is a recording, and this i like -- it goes against the
> prevailing "myth of the architect".
>
> ok. so i am running out of depth here -- i am not a lawyer. but let's see,
> if Bunker was taken to court.., Prem, he can say...
>
> "note the subtle nuances, the Indian law is _written like_ the
> British law,
> but it is not. the work of architecture has to have artistic attributes.
> now, i have given due credits and much more to the 'architect', i
> have said
> he was the designer, but Architecture -- that, the suddenly you touch my
> heart business, was the illiterate artisan's contribution. so
> yes, mr. raina
> is the designer for sure, we paid him and even gave him a certificate for
> design; but architecture was done by the artisan -- because that is where
> artistic stuff comes in. look at the wonderful steel doors, for
> example. the
> plan! in comparison is lousy, it is just a workeable design. and
> we left the
> door ajar, in case he wants to barge-in (rather than challange our
> authority), and barge-in he did! so we, the institutions, stand affirmed;
> and the next mr. raina better watch out because it is our
> judgement against
> a trained architect's (who is not an Architect)"
>
> and it'll work.
>
> Prem, as i understand things, and i might be wrong....
>
> in indian IPR, the drawings are loaned by the architect to the contractor
> for construction (he is supposed to return the blueprints, in good
> practice), and the client can retain a copy of the drawings for reference.
> they are not the property of the client. the building is, however, and the
> client may raise an architect-designed structure to Architecture by
> comissioning an artist!
>
> paradox, no?
>
> also, Prem, any coded work (be it art, software, building) tends to be
> context-sensitive, architecture is in-situ; but the others are no
> less CS. i
> think. the UK and US laws seem to imply architecture can be detached from
> the site, and re-contextualised in another ambit. which i think is
> wonderful, and something we don't seem to have here.
>
> opinions? everyone?
>
> Architecture, Practice, What Constitutes the Work of Architecture: i am
> struggling to articulate some underlying themes -- common to what Foucault
> called the middle practices -- perhaps i should leave that articulation to
> somebody competent in that domin. a question like What is Not a Pipe!, to
> play on Maguritte/Foucault
>
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