A. Architecture is autonomous.
1. It is sovereign over technical aspects of both science and art. Engineering and materials, visual culture and sociology are just a few examples of the broad field of architectural practices that used to be subdued to an ideological approach that saw architects as masters of a humanised world.
Ontologically seen as a set of tools of, and for, numerous manifestations of power, both the discipline and its representatives, advocated for the proper maintenance of a prevailing order: architects are meant to plan and design the built environment. Epistemologically proven as an extension of political power is now one of the main, if not the most relevant, figurative representation of capitalism in all its horrifying forms.
2. The project of architecture is independent from the architecture of the project.
In simple terms this means that within itself, architecture as a (disciplinary) project has sufficient quorum to act independently of time and space. It can be completely abstract, theoretical and therefore, unpractical. It also means that if it is not carried over methodologically into a professional context it becomes hermetically closed to all sorts of operative mediums. Additionally, the architecture of the project is also seen, wrongly, as the only visible part of the discipline. Especially now, in a time of immaterial and immature spaces, this is serious and mischievous. It has a grave tonne, hued by irresponsible professionals and voracious cultural consumption of values and principles in the form of entertainment.
3. Architecture is an old field of practices. As such, it can be seen as either classical or dogmatic, but in each dramatic revisit it cannot lose the opportunity to be an open and inclusive system of construction of our built habitat.
Freedom is having the inherited responsibility of our actions. Not by looking back and solving the problems of a walled path but by practicing in real time an ethical ego, by connecting multimodal approaches, intersections and disciplines. Those who do it, persist in a time built from the spaces they artfully designed to be far larger than their reduced ideal. Nevertheless this concept is translated to the modern world as a false assumption: everybody can do everything, everywhere. I blame architecture on this and also architects for the irresponsible way they dreamt and got inebriated on their disciplinary, personal and exclusive fantasies.
4. In any way promoting an elite, I think that I know why I am attracted to the field and practice of architecture. It has to do with my vocation to give to others the possibility to build an abstract expression of their desires. In doing so I also interfere with the construction of the world and thrive in the influence I can propose as a balance between reason and passion, science and art, emotions and experiences, life and endurance, presence and the inexcapable absence.
5. Architecture is a system, a design system. It is built on a global system, interconnected and dependent on all disciplines of science and humanities. It settles bridges between science and art, material and immaterial realities by residing in tangible and also intangible mediums of perception. Most importantly Architecture is not a tool. It deals with states of time and conditions of space by creating spectrums in which society can represent and perdure in itself. Always as something new. Even when new is not always architecture.
Incessant and critical, scalable and proportional, the role of architecture is both quantum and cosmological, in a way searching how to always stay old and new again.
B. Architecture is autonomy.