Why do we need a new paradigm for architecture and how would it look?
Architecture requires an update.
And there have been several attempts to do so in the 21st century.
To fit into the modern challenges, we face as a species.
Unlike the 20th century, where Architecture was about making monuments, making the world work for everyone or coming up with an international style, we in the 21st century face an almost existential threat.
Almost every conversation about architecture you have this coming up, climate change, global warming etc.
Therefore now we talk about sustainable practices.
Green building paradigms are where we do what we can to ensure that the building has a “zero carbon footprint.”
Several bye-laws and rules regulate this.
The problem here is that we might just be throwing the baby with the bathwater.
A metaphor apt in this case because we seem to move away from the promise of architecture.
If you look a little longer and listen to how we talk about sustainability and “green buildings”, you notice an unavoidable implication we are reinforcing again and again.
It’s a presupposition, a truth that we all agree upon to begin with, that human beings are cancer on this planet.
Please consider that this idea going forward is causing us more trouble than we think it’s helping us.
Next time you are on an architecture journalism website, I invite you to pay keen attention to their language; read between the lines, I am sure that you will find almost misanthropic undertones in their message.
Whether it is criticizing Gehry’s large scale designs or whatever Bjark Engels (YES IS MORE) seems to be doing.
Now, I am pretty clear we need to bring in a higher level of planning in our design principles and construction practices, but we are missing out on serving the people who use architecture.
It is a problem that may affect us and have further ramifications as time moves forward.
The cities we are building seem to be far removed from the countryside.
This was one of the significant points in Christopher Alexander’s “A Pattern Language”.
This book may have come from the 20th-century era post World War II and the atomic age, and I argue that it is relevant to the zeitgeist we live in.
What pattern of language was criticized in the 70s with modernism? We can use the same to knock post-modernism as well, which seems to be the paradigm piggybacked on sustainability.
To falsify a theory to defend my own would prove counterproductive to the final analysis of architecture.
So what we need to do is synthesize what came before, an integrated, holistic view into building practices of the past, and work with the technology that we will innovate in the future.
To dismiss modern technology ultimately would not be feasible, and some early adopters might take the risk of adopting them anyway.
This new paradigm marries the exponential technology in the future and intuitive design practice localized architecture built up over the years.
And Pattern Language, I believe, is the key.
It has the capabilities to merge these new paradigms to help us navigate the diverse range of problems that are posed by climate change and the exponential growth of technology.
And I believe that this might also shine a light on the declining mental health issues we see around the world today, such as the rise of suicide rates.
The way we build the world can help mitigate this, and it all comes from how we see the world and how we approach it while keeping in mind that we have been a part of it all along.
