"What are we falling into?"
An illustration to my husband's science-fiction novel (sci-fi short story) about future of architecture,
published in Summer 2013 by German Magazine:
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar's, "Journal for Architectural Discourse - Horizonte #7"
/ ink and metallic jell pens on tan paper /
Collaboration work with Crisobal Gonzalez.
(A)reformat the profession: 'Architecture'
by: Cristobal Gonzalez
The year is 2050 and all the premonitions about the future conceived by renowned architects that somehow flirted with radical ideas have become true ¹. The profession itself is about to extinct from the face of the earth, and who gives a damn anyway? By this time only three professions really exist, according to human needs and functions: Doctors (Scientists), Professors (Babysitters) and Chefs (Farmers). The difference about architecture with other useless professions and dead disciplines is that Architects were almost wiped out because they have become some kind of an underground sport, where the main goal is to hunt them and open their heads and expose the brains out (‘yes’ zombiland in downtown Tectonic City). You may also say that it’s starting to look like the 12-th century when the inquisitors persecuted the magicians, witches and the heretics. Everybody is into sports now (this is of course the only religion besides pornography which others considered a sport as well).
There are only few Architects left. They are mostly from the last generations of graduated students from schools and ateliers in Germany and Netherlands. They have moved out from Western Europe and refuge in Siberia (since half of America has vanish and the remaining land has progress and transform into a higher nested society). Scholars explain that Architects started to be hunted by their own pieces of work since early on in our times, for example modernism and the international style fail enormously and prove to be wrong followed by another mistake called postmodernism and all of its ‘isms’ branches like the deconstructivism, blobs, parametricism, etc. That is why nowadays they are track down by real moving bodies not white elephants that contaminate the environment, which brings me to another subject in this matter: the ecologist supported by corrupted² politicians (all) needed somebody to blame for trading and supporting 'globalization' and all of the mess this brought, and the Starchitect³ were ideal for this job. They helped out to diminish the entire profession right before the global economic collapse.
Tracing down facts, it really started when Architects became obsolete in the late ‘90s when the internet era really took over and exploded anywhere and everywhere. All knowledge, methods and images were digitalized and accessible to everybody. I still ask myself to these days: who really needed Architects in those times? They had no true knowledge of anything. They were technologically out of shape. They couldn't control their designs anymore and lost the battle against other more specialized professions. All they could do is wonder and predict atmospheres! But anyone does that at one point or another in their lives, but not all can perform a surgery (for example); or not everybody wants to take care of kids that aren’t their own everyday for a living and teach them profane knowledge (we all have learn from experience that knowledge and history are vague); and last but not least not everybody posses the artistic gift of cooking and delight millions of people with their exquisite prepared plates (because in today's world cooking is the only 'art' that matters). Architects became a “trigger”, a blaming body, a Guinea-pig of politicians, mafias and big corporations desperate for getting richer slaving weak-minds. Architects were statistically tested to suffer from weakness because their high levels of stress and bi-polar sense, not knowing if they are architects or builders, designers or engineers, businessman or artists, etc.
Why Architects never learned to emulate software developers, programmers and the computer industry that master themselves from their own mistakes and every product was better than the previous one. -Maybe the problem is here, in my last sentence! The thing is that Architects rarely saw their work as a product, they even denied this posture. But regardless of these symptoms, exist a small elite of distinguished ex-Architects that have managed to keep the profession alive at least in the sense of: ‘first design - then build’ the (no)space, without theories nor conceptual ideas. Not only have they changed the modus operandi but the name as well. They have been baptized with the name of 'Areformators', where the (a) stands not for architecture but for ambient (meaning: space, location, surroundings, place and background), and reformator4 refers to the action of needing to format anew or again, generally erasing a previous format (which in this case is again: the space, location, surroundings, place, background or building).
Since the client-relation is based in a realtime digitized machine code, there is nothing for Areformator to design other than creating new ways to communicate faster and more efficient in realtime mode, and since the main goal of their work is to maintain the relation by translating the code, breaking or decoding it into systematic parts, selling these at auctions to the higher bidder; or omit this last step and instead input back the fragments to the code in a series of solved clouds (higher mathematical equations) that will produce the habitable bodies where people can de-interact.
Not sure for how long this will continue to function this way since things are getting easier and easier this days only having four main languages (English, Spanish, Mandarin and the more used: programming language). We are living in a system with a single structure but with millions of branches that makes it easier to grasp-on because the variety and clarity of the whole mass of particles that conform the cloud.
Notes:
1.As an example refer to: Lebbeus Woods, Lower Manhattan, 1999; Archigram's 'AF'- Architecture Fictions projects.
2. Corruption is an old practice that has been erased for the good of human race.
3. Starchitect, describes architects whose celebrity and critical acclaim have transformed them into idols of the architecture world and may even have given them some degree of fame amongst the general public. Celebrity status is generally associated with them.
4.reformator, from the word: To reformat anew or again, generally erasing a previous format.
Link to the online publication:
