Ecocentric

Form and language in the ecological era

Abstract

PR: The practice you founded in 1968, SITE Environmental Design, was among the first to focus on environmental issues. Recently a new ecological insight overlapped to the computer revolution. Does this bring more meanings to your definition of architecture as environmental sponge?
JW:  During the late 1960s and early 70s, a large number of younger generation architects became interested in content drawn from outside of conventional formalist design – especially Modernist and Constructivist traditions. For example, Gianni Pettena and I were just discussing this issue with regard to the July conference in Florence. We agreed that during the ‘radical architecture’ era, we both felt strongly that buildings should have some kind of psychological and contextual message – in other words, a socially germane level of commentary. In this sense, we were both involved with architecture becoming art and art evolving into architecture. As a magnificent historical precedent for integrative thinking, it is obvious that all of Gothic and Renaissance Florence was a city of buildings dedicated to delivering civic and religious messages. Modernism started with similar intentions – in fact, its aesthetic, as well as functional, purpose was to reflect the social and political values of an emerging industrial era. But that was one hundred years ago. Now these same stylistic devices have become academic and irrelevant – especially in the current post-industrial age of information and ecology. In summary, the communicative content of such movements as Modernism and Constructivism have declined in value as an appropriate expression of the new millennium. I think, with the growth of ecological responsibility, we designers have a great opportunity for the development of new design content. Every major political and ecological concern of the Twenty-first Century is reinforcing this mission. You have a new sociology and geology, new ventures in environmental psychology, radically revised earth sciences, expansive adventures in astro-physics and, of course, there is the convulsively changing technology of the digital revolution. So, you have an incredibly rich potential for a new architectural language, just by opening up the building arts to new sources. I think the design professions should be asking a few fundamental questions about content. Most architects are still basically form makers and not dialecticians. For example, just look at contemporary design magazines; where 90% of the illustrated examples are vari- 156 ous manifestations of shape making for its own sake. Sadly, most of this work is computer-generated form based on the traditions of organic and constructivist sculpture created fifty years ago.