On his blog, Rory Hyde interviews Geoff Manaugh and Liam Young at Thrilling Wonder Stories 2. I’m particularly taken by an idea the three converge on at the end:
GM: …I guess if you’re trying to do a kind of trigonometric extension of the canon into the future, and to imagine where might we be in fifteen years based on how the canon currently exists, then you’re going to produce a very referentially limited type of architecture…
RH: I guess just to wrap up with one final thought on this ‘expanded discipline’ or expanded range of sources for the discipline, is that what’s always surprised me working in practice is that clients don’t bring with them the baggage of architectural training or architectural history, so to work outside of that is nothing shocking to them, and actually to work inside of that canon, to bring that baggage of references—of the seemingly arcane history lectures that are fed to us at school—is unusual in the real world. So to me the agenda you are both promoting through events like Thrilling Wonder Stories feels both at once like a challenge to the architectural tradition, but more like a correction.
LY: Architects are amazing self-censors. We put the parameters around our profession much more than anybody else does. Part of my teaching practice, when I get students in their final year of study, is very often about unlearning all the things they expect from their architecture degree, and opening up the possibilities of what it could be. And that’s part of the game, to try and subvert the idea of what they think they’re supposed to be doing, which is a culturally constructed form of what the architect is, and actually thinking on a project by project basis or thinking completely within a set of interests that the student might have to determine where they want to take their practice as an outcome of their own world view.
This seems like a potentially very powerful realization — that the directions we impose upon our work, even in the often-valid attempt to respond to an intradisciplinary discourse, can end up limiting the potential agency of our work in ways that might seem very strange to an outside observer or client, who is not burdened by the same disciplinary baggage.
