Reflection on WK 1 Reading: Beyond Architecture by S.Sadler

This insightful reading describes the view of the Archigram group that existed during the 1960’s – 1970’s. This avant-garde group of Architect’s pushed the ideals of Architecture into a grey area that blurred the built-environment with futuristic technology, energy and indeterminacy.

This reading made me think out of the box and made me questions the limits of the environments we create. “What is a room?... The ‘container’ was a central defining device in the game of architecture.” Perhaps I have been looking at Architecture wrong? Instead of trying to define it as solid entity perhaps it is just a game of space function? Have we as Architects become too rigid in its application and too quick to control the imagined metaphysical into the applied reality?  As a group Archigram believed that architecture was only completed with, “the active involvement of the observer.” In retrospect, architecture would not exist without its users.  However, the revolutionary future view of Archigram also believed that, “in a fully functioning cybernetic environment, in fact, the architecture could become the observer of its human subject.”  This would have to be one of the most resonating Architectural quotes that I had come across to date.  Archigram cleverly personifies Architecture and gives it human characteristics. Could Architecture actually be seen as a person with needs and emotions?  I had never once thought that our surrounding Architecture could actively observe us and respond directly to our moods.  Could advancements in technology allow architecture to observe us and respond in real-time to our needs without wires or electricity? Could we become so in-tuned with our built environment that it knows what we are thinking without us saying or doing anything? It makes me realise that the ideas are endless but are unfortunately limited to the currently accepted technology.

Archigram also turned the ideals of the Architecture profession on its head by saying that, “Architecture is probably a hoax, a fantasy world brought about through a desire to locate, absorb and integrate into an overall obsession a self-interpretation of the everyday world around us.”(Sadler 2005). Have we just made something out of nothing? Has Architecture just become another thing we Humans are obsessed to control.  In a climate where reality renovation shows are popular and everyone thinks they are designers, have we completely lost the true essence of what Architecture really is?  I believe the industry needs to get back to basic and agree that an architect, ‘performs no specifically ‘artistic’ acts, since he is merely the medium through which the technique becomes substantiated.”

In essence,  Archigram designs centred around the human users, the playful re-composition of built-entities that were not locked in a finished state but were open to the inhibitor’s desire to continually change their surrounds. This flexibily represents to me the freedom that is missing in today’s architecture. Architecture must be able to change in order to stay ‘real.’ Therefore, perhaps the true question we as future Architects should be asking ourselves is, how can we create a liveable entity that is ‘alive’ and adaptable not for just for now or tomorrow but is still modern in 20 years?