SHAWN DUKE
ORIGINALITY IN ARCHITECTURE an essay on APPROPRIATION
ORIGINALITY IN ARCHITECTURE an essay on the role of appropriation in Architectural design
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Originality - A Manifesto
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I am not a writer. I have never been one and I probably will never be one. What I am though is a creative being, a person who relishes the thought of coming up with something new and innovative. I could tell you that I am constantly sketching out new ideas and multiple iterations of designs in order to make up for my lack of literature, but that would be lying. What I do is paint mental pictures. I think of the best possible solution to whatever design problem I have and try to solve it all in my head before I even pick up a pen. I am a perfectionist, I cannot stand the sight of things being out of place; that is probably the reason I would rather solve the problem in my head first, where no one can see evidence of my multiple iterations but only the perfected, finished product. My mind is my own private sketchbook. Design is a challenging subject, one that branches out into many fields, writing included. Though it might not be considered a visual art, writing in fact is, as it is a representation of ones thoughts but in a more literal and comprehensible manner. I am a creative being. And as one, it is my desire to express my opinions in one visual form or another ranging from small quick sketches to large paintings. But this time I want to do something different, I want to paint you a picture of my thoughts with words. I want to take you into my mental sketchbook and express my opinions to you, unedited, unfiltered‌ Original.
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O.rig.i.nal /əˈrijənl/ Adjective: Not dependent on other people’s ideas. Inventive and unusual. Noun: Something serving as a model or basis for imitation or copies.
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The Primitive Hut. Marc-Antoine (Abbe) Laugier. Frontispiece for Laugier’s Essay on Architecture, second edition. 1755.
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O
riginality is something every creative being
searches for. From painting a work of art to writing a novel or a symphony, designers and artist’s alike search through their imagination to come up with the next big thing – that piece that has never been seen before, that combination of notes that has never been heard before. People often try to think outside of the box in an attempt to come up with something new and innovative and in doing so, they end up creating what they think is original, only to later find out that it had already been done somewhere by someone else.
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A
rchitecture is a subject that has been studied
and practiced for as long as people have been around and in all that time it has gone through multiple “movements”, from the Neolithic period all the way up to Structural expressionism today1 . Through all this the general rules for architecture, according to Vitruvius, have stood still – all good buildings should satisfy these three principles, Durability, Utility and Beauty2 . A building should stand up strong and have the ability to fulfill whatever purpose it was designed for, all while remaining aesthetically pleasing.
Norwich, John Julius. “Great Architecture of the World: From Ancient times to the Present.” N.p., 01 Apr. 2001. Web. 24 Mar. 2016. Page 10 1
Norwich, John Julius. “Great Architecture of the World: From Ancient times to the Present.” N.p., 01 Apr. 2001. Web. 24 Mar. 2016. Page 5 2
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Given these rules, all architects have the freedom to come up with whatever shape or form in whatever manner they see fit and you would think they would use this to the best of their abilities but that is not the case. Architectural critics constantly assess and praise works based on how distinct they are and this affiliation with individuality could be a problem; as architecture today has no sole author3 . Take education for example, students slave day and night to come up with designs for projects they believe fit the categories of an aesthetically pleasing form
Lee, Victoria. “Making by Taking: An Investigation of Architectural Appropriation.� Surface.syr. edu. Syracuse University Press, 06 May 2014. Web. 03 Apr. 2016. Page 2 3
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and a purposeful function, but still take advice and design suggestions from their peers and educators, not because they do not have the ability to be original and design the entire project themselves but because that is how society works. Architects are all trained in a sharing environment and it has lead us to a place in which information is passed from one person to another. People also reference their own past works and take cues from things they did wrong because realistically, we all learn from our mistakes, so in a sense everything in society is
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advanced through appropriation and references to the past, architecture included.
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A
fter the Post modernism movement, a
negative light began to shine on formal appropriation as it was seen as counterfeit4 . However a large number of artists and architects today use appropriation as their primary means of design and this could probably be traced back to technology and the use of the internet. Nowadays the use of technology has triumphed over all other means of creating – it allows designers to make reference to works created previously, either by themselves or by others and gives them the ability to replicate it with ease.
Lee, Victoria. “Making by Taking: An Investigation of Architectural Appropriation.” Surface.syr. edu. Syracuse University Press, 06 May 2014. Web. 03 Apr. 2016. Page 2 4
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In other words, a lot of designing today is copied and pasted. Even going down to details in architectural drawings, in the past every single item that was hand drawn was original, it could never be exactly the same as the next thing. Nowadays you would rarely find a piece of furniture in a render that has not been seen in someone else’s and this is because of the networking culture that we live in today, everything is stock piled in some database online and is accessible to everyone. We have been provided with various means for
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architectural reference, websites like archdaily and deezen give us unlimited access to information that we would never have otherwise been able to reach. They have become a digital library, storing information and news on virtually every important piece of architecture dating
back
decades.
These
unrestricted
sources could arguably be the fuel driving the use of appropriation, which raises the question, what is archdaily as a source really?
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B
efore the initial design of a project is even
thought of, the first thing every good designer does is research. This is standard practice for any field of design; you have to know what you are working with and what requirements you need to fulfill. In the past the primary means of doing this would be to look up a book or an article on whatever topic necessary and this would sometimes require a trip to the nearest library. Today with smartphone technology, all the information is at the tips of our fingers, we do not need to move a muscle and we could have
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everything we need to begin a project. With all the material provided by these architectural reference websites, one just looks up whatever program the new project requires, picks pieces from a few places and in a matter of minutes could have a new design for a building. It is normal to think that this is fine because it is just a much faster method of assisting architects with designing in the same way a book would, but this is not true. It could be argued that the amount of references that have been given freely to the new generation of architects is making them lazy
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as all it takes to design an acceptable building is stitching pieces of similar projects together. This is a situation in which architectural critics turn their nose up at, but do they really have the right to do so? Design today is no longer what it used to be because of what we have in our grasps, this method of collaging projects to make a new one is just another means of creating, but the fact that it is so easily accepted by society leads to the questions, are we designing anymore? And if we are, is appropriation design?
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Fountain. 1917. Marcel Duchamp. Tate London. Replica 1964.
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A
ppropriation is defined as the act of taking
something for ones own use, typically without the owner’s permission. The very definition of the word itself is theft, so if this is what design has come to, we might be running into a huge problem. Appropriation is something that has been done in art for a very long time and can be traced back to the Dada movement, but is especially seen in its precursor “anti-art”, a term coined by the artist Marcel Duchamp when he created his readymades5 . These were a series of pieces that were made from,
”Marcel Duchamp.” Www.theartstory.org. Www.theartstory.org, 20 Mar. 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2016. Page 1 5
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sometimes modified, objects that would not normally be considered art, usually because they already had a function. The most notable of these would be Fountain (1917), a urinal turned on its back with the words “R.Mutt 1917” brushed on its side. It was submitted to the 1917 Society of Independent Artists under the alias R.Mutt in which the R stood for Richard, a French slang for “moneybags” and the Mutt was a reference to JL Mott ironworks, the manufacturer of the porcelain urinal6 . The society rejected it on the grounds that it was immoral,
”Marcel Duchamp.” Www.theartstory.org. Www.theartstory.org, 20 Mar. 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2016. Page 1 6
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but this decision lead critics to dispute the claim because as far as they were concerned, the object gained new significance as soon as it was selected by an artist to be displayed7 . If critics are praising appropriation when used in art, then why is it such a problem when brought into architecture? The answer to this is quite simple, appropriation in art and appropriation in architecture are seen as two completely different things.
�Marcel Duchamp.� Www.theartstory.org. Www.theartstory.org, 20 Mar. 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2016. Page 1 7
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A
rchitecture is recognized as a subject that
should be practical with zoning restrictions, building codes and budgets, while art is seen as more free and expressive. But in reality architecture can also be an emotional experience, especially with the amount of power a space can have over human psychology. Architecture speaks to man in the same way all arts do and in some ways even more, so if appropriation is acceptable in art, shouldn’t it be the same in architecture? In music, appropriation has been employed so much to the point that there are
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now technical terms used by producers and disc jockeys when referring to certain methods of appropriation, like covering, sampling and remixing. A cover of a song is one in which artists different to the original sing the same song but in their own way. A sample is when minor, sometimes unnoticeable, parts of other songs are altered and used in or put together to make a new one. And remixing, perhaps the most popular of them all, is the term used when something has been altered, either by subtraction, addition or a complete change of pieces to end up with
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a different but similar result to the original. One thing that a lot of architects do is remixing; they take design cues and methods from previous projects and adapt them to fit the next. This is what leads to architects having a “style�. Take the late Dame Zaha Hadid for example, a large sum of her works have a similar aesthetic to them, up to the point where you can tell it was designed by her just from looking at it. Some critics have a problem with this as they feel it is repetitive, but the rest of the world just sees it as her signature.
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rchitecture students today design using a
method that can be considered sampling; they take inspiration from projects designed by others and alter them in order to fit their designs. Now this isn’t really such a bad thing as we are all meant to learn from each other and push each other foreword. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and Space X, when asked why he released the patents for his designs for Tesla, gave one of the best responses possible; “ If we are all on a sinking ship and I have come up with a good design for a bucket to bail us out, it would be foolish of me not to share that design wouldn’t it? If the ship goes down, we are all going down with it”.
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rchitecture has become a very large
community, one in which information is freely passed on from one party to another, we should learn to utilize that information and use it to our benefit, instead of looking down on those who do.
Bibliography
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1 - Norwich, John Julius. “Great Architecture of the World: From Ancient times to the Present.” N.p., 01 Apr. 2001. Web. 24 Mar. 2016. 2 - Lee, Victoria. “Making by Taking: An Investigation of Architectural Appropriation.” Surface.syr.edu. Syracuse University Press, 06 May 2014. Web. 03 Apr. 2016. 3 - “Marcel Duchamp.” Www.theartstory.org. Www.theartstory.org, 20 Mar. 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2016.
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Map of 16 critical thinkers. Lecture 2.
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Map of Rational v. Expressive. Lecture 2.
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Map of Post Master Narratives. Lecture 3.
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Map of Subjective v. Assertive v. Extract. Lecture 5.
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Final Map of Thinkers. Lecture 8.
SHAWN DUKE
613-608-9099 shawnduke00@yahoo.com