Intellectual [dis]Honesty in Architecture

by Kenneth G. Masden II and Nikos A. Salingaros (September 2013)

So unusual are the aberrations of fashionable architecture that many are fooled into believing that what they are seeing is a genuine advancement in architectural thinking. Unnatural in appearance as they may be, images of such fashionable architecture circulate the globe, establishing, legitimizing, and forging a cryptic language of design. As a result, the obscure ideas that accompany these forms have been institutionalized in the modern education of an architect without question. To support what can only be described as an aesthetic ideology, the modern institution of architectural education has spent the past several decades insulating itself by way of its own internalized valuing system. This intellectual isolation has bred an exclusive community of like-minded designers who would rather pursue a purely aesthetic expression of the built world than ever consider any practical measure or intelligent construct that the natural universe might hold.

By removing genuine architectural knowledge from the architecture curriculum, academics are better able to propagate their baseless theories, indoctrinating defenseless students into their own peculiar ideologies. To affect this shift in thinking, architecture schools that were originally a part of the College of Engineering began to distance themselves from the measures of applied science and the scrutiny of more practically-minded people. They therefore either joined the College of Art, or became administratively independent altogether. Since their course structure was no longer that of schools teaching applied science, it became very easy to debase the intellectual level and course content.

A larger entity to which people owe true loyalty is always defined by some solidly-established historical ideals. In the cases where those ideals have evolved from the ground up, the situation is humanly healthy. Those foundations lend systemic stability, which in turn permits disagreements, innovation, and debate while preserving the sanctity of the discipline itself. Any loyalty to an elite, self-assumed valuing system, however, is misfounded and delusional.

Collective research into the dimensions of human perception has recently derived the most immediate measures of architecture and design, as these relate to the human experience. When considering what it is to be human, and what it is to operate in the physical world that surrounds us, science now evidences the precursory role that the human mind plays in perceptual (i.e. neuro-physiological) engagement with the built environment. From research in neuroscience, Evidence-Based Design, and Biophilia, etc., we have been able to clearly establish intelligence-based criteria for architecture, which reveal the ineffective dimensions of modernist design. To our dismay, but not to our surprise, we are now witnessing what appear to be the dubious efforts of architects to co-opt our own research and work, and that of our colleagues and friends.

As we structure a new model for the future, it is important that we set forth on the work-to-be-done with a newfound (or rediscovered) paradigm. This paradigm reveals a greater concern for the workings of the human mind than in the formal ordering systems the twentieth century allowed. Beyond the party line of the tabula rasa, this new approach seeks to leave in place those elements and structures that imbue the built environment with a morphology that respects both time and space, both history and phenomenology. If indeed the profession develops into a new type of practice, it will sponsor forms of design that spring from existing conditions and traditions to render ever-greater expressions in the work of multi-cultural world architects and urbanists.

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