Architecture should invent programs for society. The discipline is in a position to do profound research on this. As some programs are invented and come upon us anew, others disappear. I don't think a 100-story office building, for example, is a program for our time. It has very little to do with our time.

John Hejduk, “On the Poetry of Buildings,” c. 1988

#john hejduk #poetry #building #architecture #invent #program #society #discipline #profound #research #dissapear #invention #office #generic #time #zeitgeist #position #anew

nickkahler

It is essential for a general to be tranquil and obscure, upright and self-disciplined, and able to stupefy the eyes and ears of the officers, keeping them ignorant. He alters his management of affairs and changes his strategies to keep other people from recognizing them. He shifts his position and traverses indirect routes to keep other people from being able to anticipate him.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War, c. 450 BCE

nickkahler

[Shih can be translated as] the strategic configuration of power [involving] first, the strategic advantage conveyed by superior position, and second, the power of the forces involved. ('Power' refers to an army's overall capability in all aspects - including endurance, spirit, discipline, equipment, command, and physical condition - rather than strength in numbers alone.) ... Strategic advantage has a pronounced temporal character; therefore, it should not be confined to exploiting the advantages of terrain as usually thought. Strategic advantage is of course in essence a comparative term, not an absolute one, although a vast force will possess great power.

Ralph D. Sawyer, “Introduction” for Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, c. 450 BCE

nickkahler

Architecture requires the displacement of conventions; the history of any discipline is about displacing conventions. … Architecture displaces in order to create what will be. Creation does not repeat what is.

Peter Eisenman, “On Architecture,” 2003

#peter eisenman #architecture #displacement #convention #creation #discipline #history #create #act #making #quote #new #novelty

nickkahler

The beauty of architecture [is that it] can promote interaction and create the possibility for collaboration without getting administrative approval. Even though academic departments are often insular, both physically within their building and practically in their academics, students are still free to move about a campus after all. … I can imagine two types of these spaces. The first is a space where people of different disciplines do independent work in close proximity to one another, much like an undergraduate Building 20. Basically, put people in one space and let the proximity do the work. The second is a space much like the d.school, where students gather to work together on tasks inspired by the world, not by a discipline. One puts students together, the other one invites them.

Jonathan C. Molloy, “How to Create Innovation,” 2013

nickkahler

All decisive events in the history of scientific thought can be described in terms of mental cross-fertilization between different disciplines.

Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, 1964

#event #arthur koesler #act #creation #history #science #scientific #thought #term #mental #cross-fertilization #discipline #quote #collaboration

nickkahler

Architecture in the postcritical, post-starchitect, posthumanist, postparametric twenty-ﬁrst century is changing, or perhaps has already changed, certainly into a scrappier discipline, if not one of actual scraps. In such times our youngest and greatest minds are encouraged to ﬁght, to scrounge, and to root for remains that might be used to cobble together any experimental construct at even the most minuscule of scales—and for free.

Mark Foster Gage, “Rot Munching Architects” from Perspecta 47: Money, 2014

nickkahler

Architectural experimentation has left the building. Literally. And instead of being a discipline that innovates through the practice of designing buildings, we now innovate through the practice of assembling leftovers.

Mark Foster Gage, “Rot Munching Architects” from Perspecta 47: Money, 2014

#mark foster gage #rot #munch #architect #architecture #profession #experiment #building #discipline #innovation #practice #design #assemblage #leftover

nickkahler

There is an extremely new domain being constructed, which partly undermines architecture or eliminates the reason for being of architecture - the electronic domain. Now is an existential moment for a discipline that will decide whether it will be a dinosaur or whether it will be reinvented.

Rem Koolhaas, “On Architecture,” 2000

#rem koolhaas #architecture #domain #construction #elimination #electronic #digital #digital design #digital technology #technology #existentialism #moment #discipline #dinosaur #reinvention #invention #design #creation

nickkahler

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.... The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.... The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.

David Foster Wallace, "On Life and Work," 2005

#david foster wallace #quote #life #work #freedom #sacrifice #effort #awareness #attention #discipline #truth #epistemology #myraid #consciousness

nickkahler

The Root "-logy" in Architecture (February 2010)

The root "-logy" (-λογία / -logía, f) stems from the root of λέγειν (légein, “to speak”); thus, “the character or department of one who speaks or treats of (a certain subject).” It is used in English as a suffix denoting the study of something, or the branch of knowledge of a discipline, whether this is a subject like science (biology) or a type of writing (eulogy).

List of Definitions of Important Architectural "-logies"

Phenomenology: Describes (A) a philosophy or method of inquiry conceived by Moravian philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) in 1905 and based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not of anything independent of human consciousness; (B) a specific field of academic research, based on the study and experience of building materials and their sensory properties; and (C) a philosophical design current in contemporary architecture as popularized by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) in the 1970s.
Typology: The taxonomic classification of (usually physical) characteristics commonly found in buildings and urban places, according to their association with different categories, such as intensity of development (from natural or rural to highly urban), degrees of formality, and school of thought (for example, modernist or traditional). Individual characteristics form patterns. Patterns relate elements hierarchically across physical scales (from small details to large systems).
Morphology: The study of the shape, as well as the capacity to change shape, of an object, be it biological, astronomical, or linguistic
Ecology: Describes both (A) the interdisciplinary scientific study of the interactions between organisms and their environment and (B) the study of ecosystems.
Epistemology: The study of knowledge
Ontology: The study of the nature of being, existence, or reality in general

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#discipline #ecology #epistemology #etymology #list #morphology #ontology #phenomenology #root #suffix #typology #favorite