Trent Sexton Conflict of Interest

CONFLICT OF INTEREST Trent Sexton, M.Arch

Do I have your attention?

We live in a time where everything is competing to be the object of our desire. As more and more receptacles of entertainment open up, as more and more books are released, as more and more political scandals are uncovered, we have to be more and more selective of the information we consume — that, or consume it all more superficially. Even when this book is released, I won’t have time to read through every project. I will likely flip through until something catches my eye. The same goes for the firms reviewing our portfolios.

The structure of selection for architectural merit favors speed of comprehension. A project is more likely to be selected if it can be appreciated quickly.

We know this, and thus we design for it, and this is perhaps the most critical issue of architecture we face today: the singular image rules. Buildings that look good from one specific angle, at one specific moment, and have one clear, simple concept have advantage over those designed for multiplicity, simply because it takes more time to dig into a plan than it does to appreciate bold colors in a render. Architectural representation is becoming more meme-like: snappy, sardonic, ironic, because a chuckle goes farther than a “hmmm.”As representation becomes more consumptive than reflective, room for subtlety is being lost.