Eric Chin May 15th, 2012

A Dilemma of Ethics by Surface in Architectural Progressivism

With the explosive exponential advents of technology from the beginning of Modernism up to the

contemporary state, any form of intellectual enterprise has gradually begun to settle itself within a

relativistic framework. This is to say the advanced or “evolved” nature of our being is more often than not

compared to the technological scenarios we are associated with; and not the levels of cognitive inquiry

that have been universally agreed upon or accepted. These statements are a small example of

testaments that prove contemporary intellectual coherency is rarely present and that ever changing

orders are a result of the complexity and instability of being human. The human condition is the factor that

encompasses the nature and rates of change within society and how we decide to respond to these

changes. Throughout history, responsiveness was determined usually by a decisive ethical trend;

whether it was conjured by a natural zeitgeist or merited scholar/intellectual. By bringing up the topic of

ethics, a thorough investigation of theoretical and philosophical means need to be prescribed in order to

clearly argue how it has been a lens for responses in technological and social progress. This broad topic

however is more complex and dense of an investigation that cannot be aptly argued in concise linear

fashion. Therefore, a specificity of an ethical argument can be set up in terms of an architectural context

with degrees of critical ideas to be taken from those who first and foremost were architects, and whose

work provides an agenda or commentary of ethical sides. If Leon Alberti and Adolf Loos were advocates

of a critical ethical agenda during their respective epochs, it is with reason to engage Patrik Schumacher

in the focus of the argument as a similar figure, but with a comprehensive treatise regarding the situation

of 21st century architecture with ethical polemics. These connotations are to be dissected and critiqued by

dilemmas that are inevitable to ethics in contemporary relevance and a future application.

To delineate an ethical argument in the contemporary state, reiterating the distinctions of

previous ethical views stage a proper transition into the 21st century notions. Loos’ primary disposition

regarding architecture can be summarized by what are called conditional paradoxes1; these paradoxes in

summary, are twofold. The first is the paradox of inconspicuousness. The second is the paradox of

autonomy. The degree of specificity to which Loos sets this paradox regards the house. Within his writing,

Loos condemns the fetishism that is ornament and distinguishes the definitions of the reading of

architecture based upon a style. The style, Loos claims is the means of recognition of a particular

decorated product. Style, in the context of the Loos “false prophets”, was only recognized by the nature in

which it was decorated. The paradox that arises in this condition of style is one about the reading of

architecture. While Loos claims that the façade is something that is to be determined by the undermining 1 Adolf Loos, Architektura, 1910.

principles of functions behind the wall2, he also states that architecture is to be designed with volumes

and upon their resulting relationships. If this is the case, a contemporary dilemma arises in terms of the

relationship of interior, exterior, surface, and volume in architecture. While Loos states that the home that

is most modern is the one that is least conspicuous, it is so in an extrinsic context. It can be argued that

Loos’ critique aggressively focused on exterior concerns such as ornament in relation to a façade, or

superficial readings, yet Loos’ thoughts are more reflective of an interior condition. This dialectic is proven

by the constant seriality of entries within a Loos space via raumplan and the lavish nature of a particular

mise en scène3 within the house. Therefore Loos, with conviction, resisted In the contemporary state,

the ethical dilemma of surface/style in architecture is one that is found in both architecture as artifact and

in the pedagogical framework with the switch of analog craft to computational craft being the essential

counterpoint that distinguishes this dilemma.

Patrik Schumacher’s attempts at defining a new epochal style are without a doubt thorough as

they are controversial. However, his overarching agenda of parametricism4 as a global and universal style

needs to be heavily critiqued and debated if it is to stand testament to its claims of being of a true epochal

manner. This means that the extensive polemic must be subject to inseparable architectural

commentaries such as ethics, theory, and various political/social/economic devices regardless of whether

or not it deems these commentaries to be relevant or not. While Schumacher argues that parametricism

offers a credible and stable solution of these devices to a fragmented “stylistic” plurality of sorts5, this

proposed unification still remains a question similar to Loos’ paradox of inconspicuousness. This paradox

is favored by Schumacher in its reciprocal state. Although not explicitly stated by Schumacher, the most

contemporary building is one that is most conspicuous in its extrinsic context. This may be attributed due

to the oeuvre of works of Zaha Hadid in collaboration with Schumacher. The work that has been

produced in response to a so called codification of architecture has proven to be somewhat distant from

the socially and culturally involved artifact that Schumacher claims it to be a product of. The

contemporary architecture sphere has found itself in a split of a separation between space and surface.

Surface has become the dominant focus of contemporaries and consequently the reading of architecture

finds itself to be dealing with superficiality. This dilemma of superficiality and surface has become very

complex, as an accusation cannot be easily drawn from the contemporary situation. Surface has become

so focused on multi-functionalism and performance that it has evolved into a sub-genre architecture of

sorts. While it is not a true Loosian argument in the sense that façade obsession is a sophisticated

application of ornament, this separation of surface from the spatial totality is equivalent to a Loos crime.

The surface then, in the case of extrinsic factors distills architecture to a two dimensional work of signage.

Signage can be deemed an ethical and effective design mechanism only when a higher degree of

2 Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, 1908 3 Mise-en-scène, commonly associated with cinema, is used in this context as overall interior composition. 4 Parametricism is a phrase coined by Schumacher in The Autopoesis of Architecture, 2011 5 Patrik Schumacher, Conceptual and Operational Definition The Parametricist Epoch, 2010.

social/political/economic orders demand it. When one’s way of looking at it is changed, then signage is

not seen as a commodification of architecture, but a tool to enhance or carry out more complex orders of

human conditions. To introduce an example, Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao presents a clear use of

signage as result of a first and foremost cultural agenda and ideal. However, the issue is not about the

extent to which signage becomes a project, a mere abstraction of stylistic means through Gehry, but how

it is utilized as a productive tool to shape it. This means that parametricism should equally be thought of

as a fundamental tool in today’s hyper active field. It is without a doubt that a parameter based

contextualization of information is a prominent way of culminating efficiencies and resource

managements. However, it should be kept as such, not transposed to an end product that is associated

as an audience surface “style” that Schumacher is emphasizing it must be (as evident in the work, not

theory).

The arguments of why in the contemporary discourse are often weak due to the complexities

mentioned at the beginning of this argument. Therefore, it is necessary to shift all arguments, not

restricted to ethical facets, to the how. By phrasing emerging technological and other conditions in

architecture as questions of how allows productive discourse to emerge in the implementations and the

extents of these conditions. Once this aspect of a universal tool of information negotiation simply

becomes a universal codification of form, architecture loses its very nature of complex expression. Unity

in a formal style will lead to a desensitization of cultural stimulus and will and should be avoided.

Nevertheless, unity in an ultimately formal language is unacceptable if the idea of cultural diversity and

expression is to be treated uniquely and as rightly unstable. Technology poses an asset and danger to

the field of architecture. It is important to note that in order to tame it (or for the artist to have control over

the technology, not the reciprocal) levels of difference need to be untouched. The overall argument of a

separate semiology within the effects of this new “epoch”6 must be taken more seriously if it is to be

distinguished under a particular mode of operating. Although, this modus operandi may not ever appear

so long as architecture and technology progress in a linear fashion, it is with utmost importance to create

architecture that is responsive to human conditional institutions in order to prevent cultural hegemony.

6 Suggesting at Bruno Latour’s social network theories, We Have Never Been Modern, 1993.

Eric Chin

_Writing Sample from

THE RETURN OF HISTORICAL FORM

The Post-Modern stage of architectural history is a rather tumultuous period where the notions of

reference, disorder, surface, and aggression all combined in an attempt to reignite a western zeitgeist

style of the late 20th century. Here in these characteristics resides the commonality of the importance that

historicity, historicity of form, or historical form has on Post-Modern projects.

Having built his larger reputation and intellectual/theoretical gestalt by 1966 with the publication of

his manifesto Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi (joined with partner Denise

Scott Brown) and his odd fascination with visual subtly and complexity (or trickery if more suitable)

brought the postmodern style to prominence with the Vanna Venturi House (Chestnut Hill, PA 1964). The

house is a significant anomaly to the housing typology and incorporates a number of architectural

paradoxes through the execution of common architectural components and form. The front façade of the

house is a graphic representation of the common house, with the profile depicting the simple sloped roof

forms of old Midwestern typologies. The size of the façade in relation to their parts distorts the visual

scale of the house, with oversized randomized fenestration and oblique entrances to further maximize this

effect. The staircase is fused with the hearth and confuses the reading of the house to a larger extent.

Picturesque and the graphic in this sense are subject to historical continuity as a whole in the house’s use

of platonic geometries and reference to a bygone housing type. The intention of Venturi’s architectural

paradox in the house also carries into his attitudes regarding historicity, and ideological novelty. Venturi

ventured into the architecture of what can be considered of the layman. Strip malls, semiotics, and

architectural provocations such as oversized columns, garish signage etc. proves that he analyzed what

was critically immature and developed a cohesive discourse around them.

Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center (Columbus, Ohio) also addresses historicity through the use of

historical and bygone forms. Although it is a museum that houses and curates artifacts, the center is also

arguably an artifact in itself due to its conceptual continuity of being a mechanism for resurfacing

historical traces. Eisenman’s use of an excavated grid of a previous site as a foundational organization

principle connects the campus into the existing city-scape. By re-surfacing a previous site, regardless of

arbitrary notions or not, a new critical connection from the intervention to the city arises in an attempt to

question and articulate the temporal nature of the project. This off kilter circulation along with the use of

sheared castle forms (related to the history of the site) define what was, while the new intervention axis

defines what is, and the city grid oriented scaffolding grid defines what is to come. The project challenges

the notion of regularity that modernism so desperately advocated both in part and whole and operates as

a building for referencing different times in history. Sign, Index, and Icon become large parts of

Eisenman’s discourse in the Wexner Center and reflect a time in architectural history when intellectual

futility was favored over the modernist ethic of duty and service.