u/IdealSpaces

‘The architectural form separates itself from nature’, said Eupalinos, a Greek engineer in the 6th century B.C. According to Vitruvius, an influential Roman architect for coming epochs, architecture and technique are the things nature cannot produce. With the help of technique, architecture is able to create something that does not exist in nature - even an artificial nature.

Today, in the age of technologically perfected green cities, the emergence of an artificial nature is actual more than ever. The idea of amalgamating nature with culture, that is, with architecture, can look back to a long tradition, in particular in many occidental utopias and construction of ideal cities. The aim was to bring back nature into culture, and through that to alleviate the artificial aspects alienating the human being in society. Today, in times of climate crisis, loss of biodiversity and ecological endangerment the wish for regaining nature has achieved a climax.

Your thoughts? 

Not the stones, but people make up a community (Isidor from Sevilla). In line with this, one could argue that in terms of community, architecture is less important than the individuals that make up the community. 

At first sight, it seems as a contradiction to our last posting, the quote from Jim Rohn: ‘Whatever good things we build end up building us,’ about the influence of architecture on humans. But it is not a contradiction, it is a different perspective on the relations between people, community, and architecture. Amongst others, a new kind of architecture emerged, an electronic, internet-driven architecture that exists as a substructure in today’s societies. What could be perceived is that this substructure, as a psychological construct, is in fact an illusion of reality. It is an irreal reality. But it is architecture, composed of electronic stones. Can community as we know it really be part of an irreal reality?

Are you living in an irreal reality, or in a real reality?

‘I believe that the way people live can be directed a little by architecture’ (Tadao Ando). What does this mean today, for the bulk of architecture we are surrounded by? What kinds of architecture are forming our perception and hence, our consciousness? Are we aware of architecture at all? Or has architecture become a commodity like everything else, in our normal daily life, a commodity we don’t even notice? Is the true architecture influencing us today that of social media and AI, invisible architectures of algorithms directing our everyday life?

What is the role of physical architecture, in the contexts addressed above? And, even more important: what it should be, in the future?

An important aspect of an occidental heritage is the linkage between two related images, ‘ideas’ in literal terms: the one of the city, and the one of democracy. For an occidental understanding and its cultural heritage, democracy is aligned to the city, the home of the human being as a city-related, “political” animal, a zoon politikon according to Aristotle. To live in a democracy (or not) finds its expressions in city architecture. Central for democracy and citizenship are conceptions of the communal, and the idea of community. It is the question in which kind of society we live in, and want to live in, alongside its expressions in architectural settings. It is about how we live, and want to live in a societal and urban context. Which is a question of reality, in particular a modern reality with its aligned image of the human as both a real and conceived conditio humana, and of hopes and aspirations, of “utopia.”

What is your concept about the future of democracy and the city, and of utopia?