ISSUE 016

JAMES AMICONE B.S. Arch 2015, M. Arch 2018 Brief Reflections on Issue 13 Three years ago One:Twelve and its staff ushered out Issue 13, simply titled Politics and Architecture. It wasn’t particularly unique in that architects in the academic discipline have, for some time, prioritized attempts to define the sometimes forced relationship of architecture and politics. What made it especially unsurprising is the fact that most student-driven, architectural journals felt quite obligated to put out at least one issue dedicated to the topic during the heightened attention to political upheaval during the Trump presidency.

This particular issue of politics and architecture rightfully acknowledged the difficulty of providing any real succinct narrative to the topic. Rather than define the relationship between architecture and politics from a collective stance, it attempted to showcase condensed readings of various positions shared across the school: embassy projects, graphic interpretations of Ohio congressional districts, and developing thesis statements from graduate students exit reviews and Baumer Seminar essays. An instigating force that year was the Baumer seminar that borrowed from the spirit of Caroline Levine’s work entitled Forms, a book that challenges the literary concept of forms and politics in such a clever and digestible way that its attitude could find very real interest in a school that has dedicated so much airtime to form in architecture.

It’s really no secret that architecture reports politically in words better than it reacts politically in form. It is after all, the slowest of art forms. (If you don’t mind me being so broad, I find the categorization of architecture as art fairly unattractive.

But it works for this analogy.) Art has always had the ability to respond with appropriate haste to political agendas. Architecture, on the other hand, is bound by them. We’re most often left with attention to the quicker-moving project rather than the built form when discussing the topic as architecture responds to it. This is a shame, seeing as how the built form and the correlating boundaries that make up or impose order are the most politically oppressing elements in our urban and rural spaces. Borrowing from Levine, “...there is no politics without form.” (Levine, 3) She is speaking on a broader scale in her book, but for us, form represents a whole hell of a lot concerning the discipline we take part in. This is also why the destruction of buildings and the physical environment is often a direct result of 48