60 THESES on the Discipline of Architecture/Design

60 THESES on the Discipline of Architecture/Design

Note 1: The 60 theses presented here flow from a coherent, comprehensive account and forward agenda. Elaborations and argumentations explicating and justifying these theses can be found in the author’s book ‘The Autopoiesis of Architecture’. Theses 1 – 24 relate to AoA Volume 1, and theses 25 – 60 are treated in Volume 2.  

Note 2: Architecture here stands in for the totality of the design disciplines, i.e. all theses put forward here pertain also to all other design disciplines, i.e. metaverse design, urban design, architecture, interior design, furniture design, product design, fashion design, graphic design, web-design.

THESIS 1  Architecture as Autopoietic System

The phenomenon of architecture can be most adequately grasped if it is analyzed as autonomous network (autopoietic system) of communications.

THESIS 2  The Unity of Architecture

There exists a single, unified system of communications that calls itself architecture: World Architecture (the autopoiesis of architecture).

THESIS 3 The Evolution of Architecture

Architectural theory effects an immense acceleration of architecture’s evolution.

THESIS 4 The Necessity of Theory

Architectural theory is integral to architecture in general and to all architectural styles in particular: There is no architecture without theory.

THESIS 5  The Emergence of Architecture as Self-referential System

Architecture observes and constitutes itself as distinct domain within modern (functionally differentiated) society claiming exclusive and universal competency with respect to the built environment. This demarcation is ultra-stable.

THESIS 6  Foundation and Refoundation of Architecture

The emergence of architecture over and above building constitutes a significant evolutionary gain that elevates society’s self-transformative capacity to a new level. Resolute autonomy (self-referential closure) is a prerequisite for architecture’s effectiveness within an increasingly complex and dynamic societal environment.

THESIS 7  Avant-garde vs. Mainstream

The distinction between avant-garde and mainstream is constitutive of architecture’s evolution (autopoiesis). Only by differentiating the avant-garde as specific subsystem can (modern) architecture actively participate in the evolution of society.

THESIS 8  Architectural Research

The avant-garde segment of architecture functions as the subsystem within the autopoiesis of architecture that takes on the necessary task of architectural research by converting both architectural commissions and educational institutions into substitute vehicles of research.

THESIS 9  The Necessity of Demarcation

Any attempt to integrate architecture and art, or architecture and science/engineering, in a unified discourse (autopoiesis) is reactionary and bound to fail.

THESIS 10  Architecture within Functionally Differentiated Society

In a society without control centre architecture has to regulate itself and maintain its own mechanisms of evolution that allow it to stay adapted (within the ecology of coevolving societal subsystems).

THESIS 11  The Autonomy of Architecture

There can be no external determination imposed upon architecture  -  neither by political bodies, nor by paying clients  -  except in the negative/trivial sense of disruption.

THESIS 12  The Elemental Operation of Architecture

The self-determination (autopoiesis) of architecture must provide credible criteria and processes that can absorb the risk of communicating design decisions that project into an uncertain future.

THESIS 13  The Lead-distinction within Architecture and the Design Disciplines

The lead distinction of form vs. function defines the discipline and has universal relevancy with respect to all communications within architecture. As the difference between architectural self-reference and architectural world-reference it represents the difference between system and environment within the system.

THESIS 14  The Evaluative Codification of Architecture

All design decisions are evaluated along two dimensions: utility and beauty.

THESIS 15 Architectural Styles

Architecture needs (new) styles to streamline the design decision process and to regulate (anew) the handling of its evaluative criteria (code values).

THESIS 16  Styles as Research Programmes

Avant-garde styles are design research programmes. They start as progressive research programmes, mature to become productive dogmas, and end as degenerate dogmas.

THESIS 17  The Rationality of Aesthetic Values

Aesthetic values encapsulate condensed, collective experiences within useful dogmas. Their inherent inertia implies that they progress via revolution rather than evolution.

THESIS 18  Double-nexus of Architectural Communications: Themes vs. Projects

All architectural communications must contribute to both themes and projects. This indispensable double connectivity of architectural communications is a hallmark of architecture as a practice steered by theory.

THESIS 19  Medium and Form

Architecture depends upon its medium – the drawing/digital model  -  in the same way that the economy depends on money and politics depends on power. It sustains a new plane of communication that depends upon the credibility of the medium and remains inherently vulnerable to inflationary tendencies.

THESIS 20  Medium and Time Structure of the Design Process

The evolution of architecture’s autopoiesis involves the evolution of its specific medium. The introduction of the medium established the capacity to progress the architectural project while maintaining reversibility. Each further step in the development of the medium increased this crucial capacity to combine design progress with the preservation of adaptive malleability.

THESIS 21  Architecture as Societal Function System

All social communication requires institutions. All institutions require architectural frames. The societal function of architecture is to order/adapt society via the continuous provision and innovation of the built environment as a system of frames that distinguish and define the myriads of social situations that make up the societal process.

THESIS 22  Innovation as Crucial Aspect of Architecture’s Societal Function

Everything in architecture’s communicative constitution is geared towards innovation: Its elemental form of communicative operation, its elaborate communication structures, and its specialized medium of communication.

THESIS 23  Strategies and Techniques of Innovation

Radical innovation presupposes newness. Newness is otherness. The New is produced by blind mechanisms rather than creative thought. Strategic selection is required to secure communicative continuity and adaptive pertinence.

THESIS 24  Key Innovations: Place, Space, Field

The concept of space was the conceptual mainspring of modernism. It is now being superseded by the concept of field as one of the conceptual mainsprings of parametricism.

THESIS 25  Functions

While functional typology remains indispensable as initial orienting framework, functional reasoning in architecture has to upgrade towards a conceptualisation of function in terms of action-artifact networks.

THESIS 26  Order via Organisation and Articulation

Architectural order is symbiotic with social order and its effective realisation requires organisation and articulation as crucial registers of the design effort.

THESIS 27 Organisation

Proficiency in establishing compelling new form-function relationships requires a system of abstract mediating concepts that can guide the correlation of spatial with social patterns. This calls for the expansion of architecture’s organizational repertoire and intelligence.

THESIS 28  Supplementing Architecture with a Science of Configuration

The task of organization today requires a more explicit and more elaborate repertoire of organizational concepts and patterns, and more explicit measures, as well as precise criteria for their evaluation than what can be reasonably expected from the tacit knowledge and accumulated wisdom of an experienced architect.

THESIS 29  Articulation

The degree to which the effective functioning of architecture must (and can) rely upon articulation rather than mere physical organization is a barometer of societal progress.

THESIS 30  Phenomenological vs Semiological Dimension of Architecture

Phenomenology and Semiology address different dimensions of the task of architectural articulation that are equally indispensible for the built environment’s functionality: the perception of spatial order and the comprehension of social order.

THESIS 31  The Phenomenological Dimension of Architectural Articulation

Within the avant-garde stage of a style articulation strategies must emphasize the phenomenological dimension as independent, pre-semantic arena of articulation that gives scope to creative appropriation beyond fixed meanings.

THESIS 32  The Semiological Dimension of Architectural Articulation

The semiological dimension significantly contributes to the architecturally inspired process of social structuration that occurs all the time, on all scales.

THESIS 33  Architecture’s Semiological Project

Contemporary architecture must push the expressive power its architectural language far beyond the simple correlations between forms and designations that have usually been considered under the heading of ‘meaning in architecture’.

THESIS 34  Semiology as Crucial Component of the Discipline’s Core Competency

The semiological dimension of architecture engages most directly with architecture’s unique societal function. It is the leading dimension of architecture’s task. It is the expertise in this dimension that is most required to succeed in the provision of effective communicative spatial frames.

THESIS 35  Design Process Theory Revisited

Design process theories (with rationalizing methodological ambitions) make sense only during the cumulative periods of disciplinary advancement, under the auspices of a hegemonic style. The time has come for a new theoretical investment in design process theory with the aim of advancing contemporary design methodology under the auspices of parametricism.

THESIS 36  Reconstructive Design Process Reflection

At a certain stage within a maturing avant-garde style prevalent processes have to evolve into self-critical methods. This requires the rational reconstruction of the prevalent processes rather than the invention of new processes, or the imposition of abstract ideals of rationality.

THESIS 37  The Design Process as Problem Solving Process

Within a design process theory that intends to probe and enhance the rationality of design, the design process must be theorized as problem solving process. Problem solving  -  especially on the level of such a complex endeavour like designing the built environment -  can only be adequately theorized as accomplishment of an autopoietic communication system, geared up with its whole panoply of communication structures.

THESIS 38  The Superiority of Computational Design

Design via scripted rules is replacing design via the direct manipulation of individual forms. Scripts can uniquely combine the enhancement of the design process’ generative power with its analytical power. The ability to combine the explorative potential for surprise discoveries with the guaranteed adherence to key criteria is the unique advantage of the new computational techniques. Through these techniques the design process simultaneously gains breadth and depth.

THESIS 39  Design Process Self-stimulation

The architectural design process is self-determined. There are only very few, very general, open constraints that are accepted in advance. The design process then proceeds by continuous self-stimulation on the basis of its own intermediate states. This self-determination is a direct correlate of the autonomy of architecture as autopietic subsystem of society.

THESIS 40 Differentiation of Problem Spaces

The rationality of the specific characteristics, affordances and limitations of the various, radically different problem spaces a project typically moves through can be broadly aligned with the three fundamental dimensions of architecture’s task: the organizational, the phenomenological and the semiological dimension.

THESIS 41  Styles as Precondition of Design Rationality

A historically well-adapted style is a necessary precondition of any credible design process rationality.

THESIS 42  World Architecture within World Society

Contemporary architecture exists as a single, unified World Architecture.

THESIS 43  Autonomy vs Authority

The autonomy of architecture implies its discursive authority but without the power to impose its authority. Within a poly-contextual societal environment architecture needs to sustain its autonomy precisely to be able to respond to all the disparate challenges of the different societal subsystems. However, its proposed solutions are no longer backed up by power.

THESIS 44  Architecture’s Working Conception of Society

Architecture must periodically adapt and upgrade its internal representation of society. To do this it must draw on external theoretical resources.

THESIS 45  Architecture/Design in Relation to other Societal Subsystems

Architecture co-evolves with all the other major autopietic subsystems of society in relations of mutual facilitation and irritation.

THESIS 46  Professional Career and Oeuvre

Architecture no longer tolerates that the bearer of architectural reputation has any outside ambitions.

THESIS 47  Stabilizing Social and Conceptual Order

Architectural figures offer the arche-typical paradigm of any concept or order. The emergence and stabilization of any social order requires that the spatial traces of social interactions ossify into a sedimented social memory that acts both as an organising framework and as system of signification.

THESIS 48  Political Architecture

The notion of a political architecture has transformed from a tautology to an oxymoron.

THESIS 49  Architecture Expresses rather than Argues Politics

To respond to hegemonic political trends is a vital capacity of architecture. It has no capacity to resolve political controversy.  Political debate within architecture overburdens the discipline. The autopoiesis of architecture consumes itself in the attempt to substitute itself for the political system.

THESIS 50  Architecture adapts to Political Development

Architecture responds to resolved and thus depoliticised politics. To bind architectural positions to an ongoing political polemic is counter-productive. The intransigence of political positions operating in the medium of power leads to communicative disfunction within the architectural discourse.

THESIS 51 The Limitations of Critical Practice in Architecture

The vitality of architecture depends on its ability to register and address the political agendas empowered within the political system. Those forms of theoretical politics that can merely be desired or hoped for cannot become productive within architecture.

THESIS 52  The Autological Self-inclusion of Architectural Theory

Architecture, as a self-reflective system of communications, is trying to steer itself via theoretical self-descriptions that attempt to theorize and define architecture’s role within society. The complexity and sophistication of the contemporary societal environment demands increasingly complex and sophisticated architectural self-explications. Convincing autological self-inclusion is now one of the indispensible conditions that any serious candidate for architectural self-description must fulfill.

THESIS 53  The Necessity of Self-description and Self-simplification

Like all other great function systems architecture tries to unify and orient itself via self-descriptions that reflect/define its raison d’etre and identify/define its tasks within its societal environment. Although necessary, these self-descriptions, like all descriptions, are fallible and risky self-simplifications. The fact that these descriptions might become influential and thus might indeed seem to shape the reality of what they describe, this fact does not vitiate the prior fact that the reality of architecture’s autopoiesis always already exceeds its simplified descriptions.

THESIS 54  Classic Treatises as Epochal Self-descriptions

All classics of architectural theory are self-descriptions. Only this theory type explicitly addresses and interprets the general, underlying, permanent problematic of architecture. The continued relevance of the classics of architectural theory is based on this stability of their underlying problematic even while the more particular historical problems/solutions that have been formulated within these theories are no longer applicable.

THESIS 55  Architectural Historiography

Architectural historiography is always committed historiography. It is an integral part of architecture’s self-description. It is a reflection theory rather than a science. Its organizing principle and coherence can only be derived from a principle that identifies a particular historical problematic and task for contemporary architecture.

THESIS 56 Architectural Criticism

Architectural criticism provides the interface (structural coupling) between architecture and the mass media. The results of architecture’s internal evaluation processes are supplied with a new set of reasons satisfying the values and criteria of mass media communication. Therefore architectural criticism can neither share in, nor convey architectural intelligence. Instead it can productively irritate this intelligence.

THESIS 57 Parametricism as Epochal Style

Parametricism engages in an ongoing cycle of innovative adaptation – retooling the discipline in order to elaborate its capacity to adapt the architectural/urban environment to the demands of the socio-economic era of Post-fordism.

THESIS 58 Rational Hegemony

The eventual success of grand, unifying schemes in science relies on the underlying coherence of reality. The rationality of a style’s claim to universality lies in the advantage of a coherent built environment. Modernism did achieve hegemony during the course of the 20th century. Parametricism aims for an equivalent achievement in the 21st century.

THESIS 59 Precursors of Parametricism

Frei Otto’s is the only true precursor of Parametricism.

THESIS 60 Elegance

Elegance is the aesthetic expression of complex order.