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How to Make Unsolicited Architecture 1
Pro-Actively Find New Territory for Architecture
(begin with an urgency and/or opportunity)
Diagram: Andrea Brennen, Ryan Murphy, John Snavely
2
The absence of a traditional client, site, budget, and/or program, necessitates the transgression of status quo assumptions about these four cornerstones of architecture.
If your project does not demand a rethinking of the four cornerstones of architecture (If it fails the ‘Unsolicitedness’ test) you are doing regular practice >>> return to step one
3 Design
a) the architectural object b) the marketing plan (reading of...) c) the financing plan (implementation of...)
If you design the object without the financing, you’re an academic; If you design the marketing without the object, you’re a politician; If you design the financing without the object, then you’re a capitalist. >>> repeat step three or return to earlier step
4 Reflection
upon reaching the ‘turn-key’ stage
If you can’t stand by it ethically, if you don’t have the resources to execute it, or if you think it’ll be boring to do, >>> return to earlier step
but tell us about it first, someone else might want to do it.
5 Action
Volume 14
Solicit and tell us about it!
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OUA Method Transgressing Architecture >>>
OUA engages not only in a departure from accepted standards of practice, but in fact in the deliberate transgression of those standards in order to expose a new and unsolicited mandate for architecture
>>>
architecture is, to our minds, characterized by definition to the adherence to four cornerstones of practice: the program that justifies it the site that grounds it the client who engages it the budget that pays for it
>>> >>> >>> >>>
Client (who engages it)
Program (that justifies it)
Site (that grounds it)
Budget (that pays for it)
>>>
in an effort to enlarge architecture’s operative domain, each project undertaken by OUA can be understood as a transgression of at least one of these four cornerstones
>>>
in an effort to establish for ourselves a method of transgression (in and of itself, an ironic task), we have embarked upon an investigation of how the four cornerstones of architecture have been previously transgressed
>>>
this heuristic reading of architectural history has helped us identify four general types of transgression: rejection reinterpretation recontextualization reclamation
>>> >>> >>>
Ways of Transgressing
Reclaim (find new)
Reject (deem unnecessary)
Reinterpret (find new interpretation of or new context for)
Volume 14
>>>
Image: Lena Vassilev, Andrea Brennen
Cornerstones of Architectural Practice
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