TBT: prosthetic
D/A: extensive
Mark Wigley's critique Recycling Recycling is a historical reexamination of how the concept of the house has been shaped by a complex interplay in the ecology of images that have come to define it over time. At the time of writing, he believes that much of discussion on ecology have already been recycled or discussed from a previous time. Specifically, he wants us to understand the legacy of parallel discussions taking place in architecture and ecology discourses from the (1960s -1970s) with John McHale and Buckminster Fuller.
After the article’s exhaustive chronicle of yesterday’s discourse, if Wigley actually has anything new to say, he polemically calls for the discipline to “rethink the house rather than the simply recirculated generic suspect image (48).” Wigley further claims:
It becomes increasingly obvious that architecture is literally carved into the flow of images. Ecological flows are more useful to the architect than ever before...(48).
For Wigley’s polemic to hold, we must agree with the two assumptions. First assumption: images have agency (see parallels with Corner’s Eidetic Imagery). Second assumption, the concept of a house was formed out of violence. This might seem plausible at the primordial level of a human being taking refuge in dwelling from the ‘violent’ natural elements, people, and other species. However, over time the concept of a house may have been forged during times of inequity or violence as a necessary socio-political deal that would likely have granted some sort of stability or prevention of further violence from occurring to the individual(see McHale’s post-political single family home).
Putting together these two assertions would mean that the concept of a politically correct house seems impossible. Our recent imagery of what we perceive to be a house is likely to have been churned and recycled images of yesterday into what we might define as a house today.
Wigley ends the article with a suggestion that perhaps the architectural discipline can help in monitoring the dominating ecological-design debate structure that is more “imperialistic and patronizing” which does not promote equitable distribution of resources:
“...rather than simply reapply ecological discourses to design, some of the the perennial enigmas of the house that architects explore could be used to rethink ecology. This discourse can be rewired (48).”
If architectural discourse on the house can actually impact the way ecologists talk in their discipline, what do we do!? Do we simply do anything different from what Whigly has done by pointing out the latent socio-politically driven biases in ecological concepts of a house?
If we are to rethink images of the house, maybe James Corner’s new eidetic representation techniques are just what is needed. His techniques can generate and extend other possible notions of the house. In many ways, his eidetic images are extensive in its ability to function like a prosthetic device: at once consolidating and dispersing images of the house.
However, this it can be presumptuousness to think that designers have a strong hand in the image creation process. It’s true that we have agency in those printed glossy images of the house but this begs the question of to what degree? The article clearly showed how the mass culture of internal and external technological extensions of the home have occurred without the help of the architect (see kitchen and appliances). This starts to have professional existential implications for the designers to be deployed and influence images of house in the competitive visual media business of print, online media, and film (see expendable icon). The task of influencing the image creation process then becomes at best, a journalistic endeavor takes up as the carrier of information as he seeks to write inspiring ‘truthful’ stories that can sell.
But I have to ask, why the house? Is it because this is the most iconic and basic typology of architecture? What about other typologies? If we are successful with rethinking house, does this mean other typologies need to be rethought of?
Finally, why is that we forgotten the recent past then of this recycling, recycling? Is an indication of our current state of society that is short sighted in memory or we simply visually overwhelmed by the amount of look-a-like houses out there? Wigley in his lecture alludes to a cynical view, that of an institutionalized influence that seeks to keep the image of the house as a core topic in architectural discourse:
Our job is to make sure that nobody looks at architecture too closely and the best way of doing that is by claiming to be looking at it while allowing certain things to slide on by. When faced with technological innovations, we make sure that the old image keeps going. We preserve the image of a secure house, for instance, which plays such a crucial role in the way our culture, let's say western culture, regulates itself. (Wigley Q & A lecture).
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