Campo obligatorio; no debe dejarse en blanco.

Today I was thinking about the idea of the self and that of accountability. Both I find complicated, but for the sake of simplicity I'd say that I frame these front he viewpoint of the practice of architecture and the architect-artist never-ending dualism.

If not wrong I posit dualisms or binary oppositions at the birth of the institution of marriage (Foucault) and the obsession in the West to parcel off genders and biological forms; practices of desire as well as their formal relationships. To counter this I suggest a process of unlearning, disremembering, disassociating, etc. Along with a reformulation of language, haha! Forgetting a dual framework requires also a sexual revolution, or a way to challenge how we relate to each other across all scales of desire (from the intimate to the institutional).

This said, I don't challenge here this dualism of the architect-artist, since we currently do hold a professional or occupational division, which many like to reinforce even thought in practice surely can't be so readily asserted. To this I wanted to add another dimension, that of the social (so much needingly decanted) and it's relationship with personal agency, which is so much glorified in contemporary culture, aka American c(v)ulture.


The Artist is always associated with unfettered expression of ideas, reified in object form(s). The Architect is associated classically with its ability to control form, and how it sits together, i.e. Tecton. Contemporarily, in his ability to intercept current flows of global capital, to somehow find for them a form of expression (which usually follow a minimalist mantra), or that of architectural engineering as we currently despise any non-allegoric forms of utility, the utmost expression of a modern morality. The social, thus, becomes another organ in the asocial, apolitical body. As given by nature, he has, ouch! stumbled upon the Social. So mush despise I hold for this word that I capitalise to reinforce its artificial, and surely unnatural, unauthentic authenticity. Here my conception of the social is quite limited, but its shaped around our own experience and forms of relating to others, the forms of our interactions and of our concerns for others. For many this is delimited to the institution of the Family. For others is their friends they see that as their-albeit unconsciously-political formation. Others in addition to these, they have a respect for their country, a unifying geography of desire and ambitions. Their concerns spread upon a hole expanse of territory. To me, the most interesting, defying and involving form of membership to the social is the definition of the human being, and the human rights as defined in Forensis. Although here the courts, hence the state, warrant a form of membership based on the most basic condition, that of the human being. It seems then hopeless to make a separation between the social and the political. Politics then per my definition, is the arrangement of things in space and their forms of relationships, their distances and proximities, their isolations as well as their connections. Since all we experience has an arrangement of many scales, it is intricately politic.

Why I have my doubts about the idea of a political architect? Or a political practice of architecture?

I will answer the first one, first. The architect is mostly a, lest blame them again, a construct of the media, and a whole load of propagandist publications and articles regarding the virtues of the figure of the architect in completing building projects. His agency, quite purposefully, is quite amazingly overstated, when he in reality has no real political power, or wealth (aka.political power). Her is more of a Puppet, for urban regeneration, branding, credibility buying, etc. On this strongly cynical view, there are clients I am sure (I am sure too very few) who commission work to specific people for they have a close sensibility and hope to pursue the Art further (I apologise for writing this). He, the architect, can be political for having made an opinion for himself, for implementing that onto his everyday life and commenting and even shouting about it on the streets. He should not, in my view, speak for others, or assume an unauthorised collective view. The architect is then not responsible for social change, but for generating pointers to a new social landscape. He is a Doctor reconstructing or suturing the body to open up routes for and of the imaginary to suggest new horizons or opportunities to activate future agencies. If this requires punching a hole in the body, he might as well? This nevertheless to me accounts as creative expression, the individual as creator, and hence as artist. His practice under current legislatory practices, amounts to the targeting of structures of power, rather than individuals. If the architect wants to be political he must reengineering the world, his own world, and project it for the public imagination. They have the option to join, they might not want to. Feed-forcing any political project is totalitarianism, not visionary. Here is where I see myself thinking of Democracy as a form of continual struggle (Chantal Mouffe), where there is always an option.

A political practice of architecture is a practice that stems from one's own idea of the world, which might or might not coincide with our current world (2.2). Many would say this is untenable. I am sure it is.
My point here is to say that all this anxiety regarding the social should vanish, and a deconstruction reading of practice should be encouraged, only then we can bring our forms into our own judgement. Having a project can bring other people on board. And the only way to commit, is to have a horizon of hope, as the eyes of others align it might then, and only then, become a political reality.