toward an architecture...[1st draft, fr. 200A seminar]

There is a struggle in contemporary architectural practice between a desire for and claims of authenticity, as against a strong sense of the arbitrary nature of most design proposals. Everything we do as architects falls between varied readings of what is (and what is relevant) and how it came to be so, and an ever expanding realm of possibility in structural, material, and cultural (or referential) expression.

To win projects and inspire confidence in clients, we have to argue that our proposal is the right one, the best solution; but in truth we are not so naive, schooled as we are in problematics. Sustainability advocats' tightest calculus has physical phenomena as denominator, but Greenough/Sullivan's dictum becomes unsolvable when we try to expand the already elaborated triple bottom line to include subjective aesthetic notions. We are left with the nagging sense that every proposal is a not a true thing-in-itself but rather (unless we fall into self-deception) an academically sheepish 'toward an...'