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BUILDING UPON LOVE IN AN AGE OF INNOVATION

Peter Olshavsky

With recent efforts to recuperate modernity, innovation has been thrust into the foreground. While this effort might hold value for society, it can become pathological when innovation is mistaken as an end in itself. Evgeny Morozov has leveled insightful criticism against Silicon Valley’s obsession with this thinking.² Yet, within architecture the recent shift towards post-critical practices has opened its own version of this pathology. This dilemma has consequences for designers that need to be discussed from a position other than complicit approval. My position is that we can’t simply accept reductive forms of practice that blindly promote innovation. Using the work of Alberto Pérez-Gómez, I will argue for a richer approach. This will shift focus from foreground intelligence to a hermeneutic position that draws on a less articulate background to innovate appropriately.

Disciplinary shift

The dominant architectural conversation has shifted away from what Anthony Vidler describes as an “Age of Discourse.” Architecture in “the knowledge society,” Michael Speaks argues, is no longer propelled by “grand ideas or theories realized in visionary form.”³ As an early critic of Euro-American discourse, he and others point to the troubles of the critical project, which derives from the work of Manfredo Tafuri, Jacques Derrida, Theodor Adorno and various others. Specifically, he criticizes ineffectual concepts that sought “resistance” and “negation” of consumer society and metaphysical or political hegemony. “There is in the deepest motivations of architecture,” Rem Koolhaas similarly observed, “something that cannot be critical.”4 However, Speaks quickly moves past K. Michael Hays’ notion of “criticality,” to question theory as a whole.⁵ “Theory was interesting,” he says, “but now we have work.”⁶

Looking at academically inclined practices of the past forty years like Peter Eisenman and Diller+Scofidio, Speaks believes too much was being said and too little being done. The orientation of theory is supplanted by the demand that architecture “just works!” if I can misappropriate a quote by Steve Jobs, the patron saint of innovation. This is supported by the claim that “use-value,” as Speaks notes, is more important than “truth content.”⁷ Setting aside the fact that Speaks’ new found pragmatism reeks of rupture talk, it suggests that one must consciously build upon the teachings of our age. Architects should reshape their practices to innovate because global society demands nothing less. Speaks’ view indeed might help some academics and practitioners frame their practices outside of “criticality.” What has gone unmentioned is how he devotes himself to an end that is only a means, which neglects the background for the sake of the foreground, as he frames practices that are “after theory.”

Design intelligence

Design intelligence was coined by Speaks to characterize a diverse group of practices from Asymptote to George Yu and Neil Denari. It appeared, he says, in the 1990s but was “inaugurated” by the events of September 11, 2001. He contends that the multitude of knowledge generated during the design process is valuable to the business of architecture. But this knowledge is frequently overlooked in favor of the design. Contrasted with the earlier vanguard, he promotes a less object-focused practice.⁸ The “dislocative” possibilities of formal novelty, central to the earlier vanguard, are framed as a retreat from relevance. Instead design intelligence, he advocates, offers an important area for design research without rejecting the reality of current technologies and economy.

Design intelligence, he explains, is manifest through versioning or scenario planning that creates a set of “possible solutions.”⁹ These options are sought primarily through “prototyping.” Architects work rapidly with prototypes to physically test design solutions. This discourages practices that first critically assess an existing situation and act secondly. Instead action and thinking purportedly happen in unison. Speaks describes this as “­thinking-as-doing.” This should not be confused with “making” in the sense of Giambattista Vico. Human truth, for the latter, is more knowable because it is made. Making, Vico suggests, was anti-Cartesian, not simply technical and pointed to the need to understand the historical background from which practices arise. Speaks’ “thinking-as-doing” codifies studio-based production and brands its feedback and output as intelligence. Promoting instrumental production, Speaks has little concern for an individual craftsman, as his focus is the market viability of this knowledge. But Vico is after a reflective model for an individual’s self-understanding because it provides a “practical wisdom” so a maker is able to act prudently.10

Speaks has little concern for prudence. Design intelligence, Speaks argues, is limited only by technical exigencies. Practitioners in this vein hold “no philosophic or professional truth, making use of no specialized theory, these practices are open to the influences of ‘chatter’ and are by disposition willing to learn.”¹¹ The pursuit, control, and application of intelligence are what matters. The architect sacrifices adherences for the sake of realpolitik and solution-focused instrumentality. Adhering to philosophical values can create situations where one might have to compromise their stance for the sake of action. In place of a stance that might (and often does) create conflicting situations, openness and acceptance to information are foregrounded to face rapidly changing “real world” circumstances.

By claiming a monopoly on the “real,” Speaks is able to frame practice as chiefly neutral. The ostensible monopoly and the attending neutrality soften, if not hide, the ideological nature of the architect’s efforts. But to meet requirements, articulate needs or market demands, I argue, one has to recognize the complexity of the present situation, what came before, and how to act or “project” by employing design intelligence. But these actions suggest a point of view and a range of complex ideologically motivated evaluations. Even the basic belief that architects’ intelligence is valuable and can contribute to society stems from a brand of ideology. Ideology, as I use it, is what constitutes one’s intentions and actions even in the most normative sense. This constitution allows the architect to make sense of their practices and act. If we fail to recognize this ideology, can we be so sure we are not excluding outlying or exceptional intelligence?

Chatter and information

Even practices open to what Speaks calls “chatter” run the risk of excluding information. The term chatter describes contemporary reality as it is intertwined with digital information. Chatter might be “published on the web, found in popular culture, gleaned from other professions and design disciplines.”12 The term, according to Speaks, tries to account for the ability to process massive collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes-surprising outcomes from such information. This diverse information and views opened by increasing access to chatter potentially escalates contact with alternatives. Information, as Cass Sunstein observes, might open a person to “a range of chance encounters, involving shared experiences with diverse others, and also exposure to materials and topics that they did not seek out in advance.”¹³ But exposure is countered by the capacity to filter information based on one’s tacit background, preferences as well as control methods in a pre-determined or unknowing way. I might be able to diagram the demographics and spatial conditions of an under-privileged neighborhood but tell you nothing about the people, architecture and their stories. In other words, I might be cherry-picking information that appears in the foreground of chatter while overlooking harder to see values that constitute the background. In short, chatter can offer surprises but it can equally exclude, obscure or reinforce what one already knows.

From Speaks’ various writings one can surmise that information dredged up out of the chatter can inform the boundaries of inventory, analysis, who participates, types of practices, ideas, visualizations, feedback loops, and the shaping of design innovation to name a few instances. But these are not simply neutral actions. Even simple information extracted from chatter is beholden to a specific orientation. The fact is that no matter how consciously reflective, one’s ideological position manifests how apophenia in any of the above settings is structured. One’s present position includes a range of issues, including our sediment past, future expectation, and the fact that we “are” our bodies.¹⁴ Ideological biases are part of being human. They inevitably shape the patterns we discover. This is not always an a priori problem. In fact, phenomenology teaches that consciousness is itself intentional. Any practice, even if entirely open-ended or scientifically inclined, Hans-Georg Gadamer explains, is beset by prejudices.¹⁵ These are not necessarily the heinous sort, but the tacit judgments cast pre-reflectively that open us to experiences. Even a seemingly banal act like collecting information assumes there is something to be found and perhaps taken away. Indeed these pre-judgments help make sense of one’s design practice, but they also shape its orientation.