It is time that Architecture realizes its position.(1) The want of space. The need/lust for expansion is not, holistically, the venue of architecture. 'Space' is an inherent psychological state (desires, creative expressions, ego, ideology, etc.) of human nature. Space in its practical form is engineered by the virtues and vices of territorrialization: politics, economics, consumerism, commercialization, militarism, etc,.
(2) Architecture is a small but necessary part of human culture and how said culture acquires its "physicality"---Cities---which goes through a constant state of culmination, expansion and regression through the function, malfunction and mutation of human use. Cities don't function because of logic, planning and design, at least not solely on those terms, but by the imagination and circumvention of the various systems perpetrated by its pedestrians due to complexities of inclusion and exclusion and secrets; opportunities exterior to the planning process.
(3) Buildings, as a physical entity of architecture, can't solve those conditions of the 'Human State' in and of itself (I personally consider this a grave educational flaw in the study of architecture). A collaboration between the disciplines and social consensus must be met beforehand. In other words, human culture must be ready for the next step to its environmental shifts...(4) Housing has yet to resolve homelessness.. Communities has yet to surpass Class. Urban planning has yet to resolve the conflict between ethics and politics/ economics and the human will. World views are Utopian views. Architectural design, no matter how abstract, practical or ideological. is predicated on a world view and can never account for the unpredictability of human nature. Purposes lose their meaning as different states of of culture evolves and shifts through various consequences of growth; places become abandoned or disappear from urban memory or mutates into a different function.
When confronted with a changing and challenging human world, architects need to have a grasp of multidisciplinary activities, though this position doesn't default to a plausible "End" but an understanding of the various ways humans make use of places and space.
To me, the idea of 'Public Space' does not exist in physical terms (program-form) but as an "experience". Most of what we consider public space is in reality "transitory Space" which allows for "cells" to gather, mobilize and dissipate. Corners become way-stations as well as opportunities beyond its geometries. Does the above image represent 'public space'?
As I move through the City I always ask myself: "What criteria can architecture offer towards the argument of the human condition? What are its strengths and how can we address its weaknesses? Is functionality and determinism an ethic of design or a state of enforcement?
