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From: Stephen Lauf
To: design-l@lists.psu.edu
Subject: Re: Unintended Consequences
Date: 2004.05.08 11:02
John, if what you describe are "unintended consequences," then what are (or were) the intended consequences?
For example, does being "cowardly in testing new means and methods of design and construction" really signify an intention rather than an unintention?
Similarly, does the notion that "building is no longer where architecture occurs, but instead takes place in the realm of ideas and imagination, with the physical manifestation in photographs, models, renderings, publications, TV, talk, performance, museums, as a variety of mediated media" really signify that the intention here is to generate as much publicity as possible?
When you look at the history of any architect-designed building over the span of its 'lifetime', most of that history is a series of manifestations that, for the most part, were never intended by the architect. If this is indeed true, then I'd say that most of 'architecture' is (and always has been) a manifestation of unintended consequences. Moreover, what is deemed unintended is also mostly seen as some sort of aberration, something that "really should be fixed because that wasn't the intention."
What I find almost comical is that intentions, either good or bad, are far from resolute. Intentions change all the time.
On 6 April 2000, I ended a post (here at design-l (ironically!) entitled "ironically, I never mentioned skin") with the question: "So what then is architecture? Is it a hard, 'simple', 'natural' protective shell that engenders the continuation of life? Or is it a soft formlessness forever (re-)designing an applied shell it doesn't naturally have?"
[For a few years now, my intention has been to be virtually famous because that's intentionally all I'll ever be.
Otto is extremely happy with how the papers to be delivered at the Horace Trumbauer Architecture Fan Club Convention are coming together--an impressive roster indeed. The three latest additions are:
"The Marriage of Twisted and Columns" co-authored by Eutropia and Peter Paul Rubens.
"The Architecture of Constantine the Great" co-authored by Helena, Eutropia, Eusebius, and Ambrose.
"Here a Versailles, There a Versailles, Everywhere a Versailles" co-authored by Marie Antoinette, Ludwig II, and Lucretia "Eva" Bishop Roberts Cromwell Stotesbury Dougherty.]
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