By Jeremy Till
Publisher: The MIT Press
Number Of Pages: 232
Publication Date: 2009-03-31
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0262012537
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780262012539
BookDescription:
"Less is more."
—Mies van de Rohe
"Less is a bore."
—Robert Venturi
"Mess is the law."
—Jeremy Till
Architecture depends—on what? On people, time, politics, ethics,
mess: the real world. Architecture, Jeremy Till argues with
conviction in this engaging, sometimes pugnacious book, cannot
help itself; it is dependent for its very existence on things
outside itself. Despite the claims of autonomy, purity, and
control that architects like to make about their practice,
architecture is buffeted by uncertainty and contingency.
Circumstances invariably intervene to upset the architect's
best-laid plans—at every stage in the process, from design
through construction to occupancy. Architects, however, tend to
deny this, fearing contingency and preferring to pursue perfection.
With Architecture Depends, architect and critic Jeremy Till offers
a proposal for rescuing architects from themselves: a way to bridge
the gap between what architecture actually is and what architects
want it to be. Mixing anecdote, design, social theory, and personal
experience, Till's writing is always accessible, moving freely
between high and low registers, much like his suggestions for
architecture itself.
The everyday world is a disordered mess, from which architecture has
retreated—and this retreat, says Till, is deluded. Architecture must
engage with the inescapable reality of the world; in that engagement
is the potential for a reformulation of architectural practice.
Contingency should be understood as an opportunity rather than a
threat. Elvis Costello said that his songs have to work when played
through the cheapest transistor radio; for Till, architecture has to
work (socially, spatially) by coping with the flux and vagaries of
everyday life. Architecture, he proposes, must move from a reliance
on the impulsive imagination of the lone genius to a confidence in
the collaborative ethical imagination, from clinging to notions of
total control to an intentional acceptance of letting go.
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