statement of desire/intent/calling

Architecture is about people, and it is about space, and it is about how space is used. Architecture is UX, not UI, it is the tiredness in your legs at an authoritarian border crossing, architecture is a building that you feel at home in, architecture is a space that makes people meet. Architecture is the sidewalk cigarette break, the ice-drafty gap between the mullion and brick that makes you shiver at night under the covers. Architecture is the feeling of dread in your stomach as the ambulance pulls up to an ominous hospital; architecture is the wind in your hair as the ferry pulls away from the harbor docks; architecture is the sun casting dark orange shadows on a weekend. Architecture is the couch that provides an excuse for you to makeout with a new partner; architecture is the dim light of a bar in which you lean in to hear their words; architecture is the slippery-slick terrain of ice that makes you gingerly slide across a surface, the gestures of your body having been completely transformed into those of another being's.

Architecture is about people, damnit, and it is about taking the subway for an hour and a half to go to a great dim sum place, and it is about the distance between people on the street, about the utopic egalitarian quality of the subway car, and all of these things.

I would call these things 'space', or 'spatial practice', but would like to have Architecture appropriate these things more and not void itself by pursuing some mode of practice that is overly aestheticized and ascetic in its monastic pursuit, withdrawal from the world in the name of autonomy, discipline. Architecture is in danger of becoming art, which is an exclusion-function in the way that Foucault's author-function is about a specific entity defined within discourse; art is a practice that says "that is not art", but business or anthropology are not practices that say "that is not business", "that is not anthropology".

In other words, architecture needs to become a holistic practice, not to be confused with the job title of "architect", in the way that, after a car accident, one's healing may involve the job titles of an EMT, an ER doctor, a orthopedic surgeon, a physical therapist, a psychiatrist, and a therapist. The practice and effect of "becoming well" to be found amidst all of these entities, as well as beyond.

If I dare to use the word "we", then I'd say - we are in the process of healing, of having effect, of changing the world, using architecture, as architects, not about performing architectural services within the scope of one's contract, for fuck's sake!

So this statement of desire is that - I choose not to 'provide architectural services', but to pursue the practice of space, of architecture of people, by whatever means necessary. (Of course! Of course! Does this even have to be said? Is this not self-evident, obvious, by everyone else living in the world who has ever lived in a building?)

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Exasperation + clarity + deliberate movement + desire = exuberance.