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建筑过于跨学科？为什么建筑师需要谈论建筑？
Is Architecture Too Interdisciplinary? Or, Why Architects Need to Start Talking About Architecture

由专筑网李韧，王帅编译

本文最初发表于Common Edge，标题为“当人们不再谈论建筑时，那应该谈论些什么？”

在芝加哥文化中心，我参与了一个名为“制造/创作/教育争议性历史文化（Making/Writing/Teaching Contested Histories）”的论坛，这也是芝加哥建筑双年展的一个项目，该项目由女性艺术与建筑联盟（Feminist Art and Architecture Collaborative——FAAC）组织，目的是探讨“阶级、种族、性别等问题，并且讨论这些问题对环境建设会造成怎样的影响”。

小组成员由建筑环境相关学者组成，他们的建筑实践以及教育方法中都带有特定的中心思想。展出的作品有画作、码头、收容所，亦或是起居室。

在几年前，这样的项目模式也许会引起建筑学者的诧异，因为在那时，一个小小的帕提农神庙的照片或画像、或一砖一木的使用，甚至是家具的挑选都会让建筑师产生不解的情绪。

但现在已经是2018年，建筑的发展已经超出了原有的范畴。FAAC小组曾经对以下问题进行过探讨，该项目的每个不同主题是否开启了这样的可能性，即建筑实践或建筑教育能否不再依赖于传统的经典作品，当前的建筑经典指的是20世纪之前欧洲的宗教或市民建筑，因为如果这些作品晚几年诞生，那么书写历史课本的那些建筑师也许会成为它们的设计者。

建筑必须摆脱传统的影子，这种说法其实是有根据的。建筑学子、建筑师，亦或是这一行业的任何相关人士，只要好好地参考Paul Rudolph或Lina Bo Bardi的作品，都能有所收获。

但是FAAC小组成员所呈现的非经典项目并不仅仅在于建筑经典之外，而是包含了整个建筑学科，这又是由什么因素造成的？

小组的评论对于过分依赖经典传统的作品和教育方式有一定的见解，正如我们所了解的那样，这也许会造成我们当前社会结构的一些负面影响，例如个人主义、自我剥削、过度竞争、性别歧视、种族歧视等等。但是，小组成员也针对如何以建筑学科的方式改变现状提出了见解，其目的并不是扩大或改变建筑经典，也不是用其他新东西来完全摆脱甚至替代它们。

传统的建筑已经老生常谈了，我们可以把目光聚焦在其他的作品之中，让我们更多地了解其他著作。在文艺复兴早期，那时的建筑师是真正的建筑师，他们可以任意发挥想象，他们就是建筑的代名词。最近我听说过一件小事，一位年轻建筑师告诉他的潜在客户，那是一所人文艺术学院的老师，建筑师说他们应该开设一系列中心课程。我猜想这位建筑师也许阅读过此类的书籍或文章，也许他认为传统的教育过于无趣，甚至不屑于谈论范斯沃斯住宅。然而实际上，这正是FAAC小组成员所要表达的含义。

我有一个相反的观点。因为开创新道路具有一定的风险，因此我认为完全抛弃经典并不可能实现。我们需要做的只是一点点改变，我们仍然继续教学、分析案例，只是要摒除掉建筑学科特殊性的传统思维。

超越自身的学科理念，从而追求更广泛、更优秀、更真实的理论，这样才能够摆脱传统的束缚，建立全新的学术对话。当提及“城市”时，这已经超越了狭义的建筑内涵。某些诸如“世界上一半的人口居住在城市”、“到2030年，东京人口将超过3700万”等言论也将成为人们的谈资。

一些美国著名出版物的建筑评论者，例如洛杉矶时报的Christopher Hawthorne、芝加哥论坛报的Blair Kamin、纽约时报的Michael Kimmelman，他们认为许多偏见不止针对城市，也来源于建筑。Kimmelman的最新文章表示，当前许多设计作品主要针对器官、认知、身体残疾人士。同时这也是一个值得关注的话题，但是哪些建筑元素能够满足这些需求呢？建筑又能起到哪些作用？在无障碍方面，建筑师是否做得还不够？相关的文献是否有助于解决这些问题？

这只是个例。旧金山纪事报并没有特定的建筑评论员，但是有城市设计专家John King，这位专家对建筑规划等相关问题了如指掌。也许建筑就其自身来说并不值得谈论，即使距离旧金山不远的英国建筑公司仍然设计出了如同手机按钮般的建筑作品，亦或是城市的房地产危机正在逐步化解。也许，如果人们能够了解到施工和材料的造价和租金，旧金山的居民们也许会更加关心建筑的发展。

在FAAC小组讨论的最后，有人问到我们是否要超越自我？我们是否不应该过分纠结建筑学自身？其中是否还有足够的经验供人们学习？小组成员回答说，他们想要通过引入其他学科与理念来开拓建筑科学。

这个回答其实表达了一种逃避的倾向，同时也表达了冲动的思维。有许多非传统建筑师和建筑作品值得深入研究。另外，也有很多非传统的方式来看待经典作品。如果我们通过材料的来源来思考拉•图雷特修道院又会是什么样的结果？如果我们多注重范斯沃斯住宅的细部设计是否能发现更多惊喜？这都只是假设，但是这会为我们拓宽思路，让我们从广义的角度与深度来思考问题，建筑学院需要了解应当如何编写课程，同时，也会让人们就诸如建筑立面材质等细部问题进行深究。

如果建筑界人士希望人们关注建筑领域，那么必须给予他们充分的理由，而不只是“建筑与你息息相关”这样的泛泛而谈。也许建筑已经失去了一些表面上的吸引力，成为新技术或城市的代名词，但是人们毕竟居住在城市的建筑之中，我们永远置身其中，也许建筑人士都渴望了解为什么越来越少的人们愿意谈论建筑，如果我们希望人们关注这个领域，首先要让人们能够接触到建筑，相比起将建筑学科与其他专业相结合的方式，让人们切身实际地感受到建筑也许更加有益。

作者简介：

Marianela D'Aprile是芝加哥的一位建筑技术员、作家，以及教育家。她的建筑作品涉及政治，例如拉丁美洲、左翼运动、国家暴力，以及公共空间。

This article was originally published by Common Edge as "What We Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Buildings."
One of the last programs I attended as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial was a panel titled “Making/Writing/Teaching Contested Histories” at the Chicago Cultural Center. The panel, organized by the Feminist Art and Architecture Collaborative (FAAC), aimed to “foreground issues of class, race, and gender, interrogating how they partake in the production of the built environment.”
The panelists, all academics in fields related to the built environment, were asked to bring in an object central to their practice or their teaching method. The objects on display were a painting, a pier, a refugee camp, and a living room.
Three or four decades ago, this array would’ve scandalized an audience of architects and architectural scholars, who might’ve been expecting, I don’t know, a photo of the Pantheon, or a plan of it, or even a piece of wood or a brick. Maybe even the choice of a piece of furniture would’ve induced some surprised gasps or confused looks.
But it’s 2018 (or, it was 2017, when this panel took place) and architecture has exploded beyond its disciplinary boundaries, at least discursively. The conversation that ensued at the FAAC panel explored how each of these objects opens up the possibility to practice or teach in a way that doesn’t rely on the architectural canon. The canon—that annoying set of buildings picked out by a bunch of white/European men behind closed doors under the cover of night by the light of a candle—consists of a bunch of buildings mostly of religious or civic nature if they were built before the 20th century; if they were built after, their programs span a wider range but are still most likely built by the same kind of people who decided they belonged in the history books.
The desire to want to get rid of this dusty catalog of Buildings You Should Know Because Some Dead Guy Said So, is well-founded. Students, practitioners, really anyone who thinks about or engages with architecture, would be much better off if their references were less Paul Rudolph, more Lina Bo Bardi.
But what made each of the objects presented at the FAAC panel non-canonical was not their location outside of the architectural canon, but rather outside of the discipline of architecture altogether.
The panel’s remarks yielded some insights into the dangers of over-reliance on the canon to teach and practice architecture, which, as we know, can be an enterprise that redoubles many of the negative cultural symptoms of our capitalist societal structure (individualism, self-exploitation, competition; not to mention sexism, racism, ableism). But ultimately, the panelists’ intimations of how to change the state of affairs in the discipline of architecture aimed less at expanding or changing the canon and more at getting rid of it altogether in order to replace it with, well, something else, something new, something not architectural at all.
Architecture, it seems, buildings, are tired. Old, boring, not interesting, we’ve talked about them so much our eyes and ears are going to fall off, there’s nothing to see here anymore, let’s talk about a painting or a living room or philosophy or literally anything else. Let’s read Society of the Spectacle one more time. Architects are taught early on that they’re the great Renaissance Men (yes, men), that they can do anything, that their profession encompasses the world itself and that they should feel they are the masters of their domain and everyone else’s. I recently heard an anecdote about a young architect telling his potential clients—a liberal arts university—that they should hard-pivot to a STEM-focused curriculum. I’d venture a guess that this architect probably read an article about the growth of the STEM (or is it STEAM now?) disciplines in higher education and deemed himself an expert. Maybe he was bored with the canon as a student, yawned one too many times at plans of the Farnsworth House, and decided for himself to throw it out. Which, I think, is what the FAAC panelists were suggesting we do.
I have a counter-suggestion. At the risk of sounding terribly conservative, or unfashionable, or—god forbid!—old-fashioned, I think throwing out the canon is nearly impossible. What we need to do is change what’s in it. We’re always going to need to teach, always going to need case studies to pick apart, precedents to study, examples to analyze and pore over, and throwing out the idea of a set of objects with which to do this would rid architectural education of its disciplinary specificity.
The academy’s impulse to transcend the discipline, to find something larger, better, more true, beyond it, has made its way out of captive-audience, hermetic-academic conversations, and into popular publications. There, talking about “the city” or all things “urban,” has practically replaced any discussion of architecture, or, to be more specific, buildings. One-liners about capital-C Cities (“more than half of the world lives in cities,” “by 2030 37 million people will live in Tokyo”) are now fodder for small talk.
A gloss of the work of architecture critics at prominent American publications—Christopher Hawthorne at the Los Angeles Times, Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune, Michael Kimmelman at the New York Times—illustrates this growing bias not only toward the city, but away from architecture. Kimmelman’s latest piece is about objects designed to improve the lives of those with sensory, cognitive, and physical disabilities. It’s a topic deserving of attention, surely, but what about the ways in which building elements can fill this need? Is architecture impotent in this regard? Maybe architects aren’t doing enough to address the needs of visitors with disabilities, but wouldn’t a piece, in the paper of record, directly addressing that shed some light on the problem?
This is just one example. The San Francisco Chronicle doesn’t have a dedicated architecture critic, but rather an “urban design critic,” John King, who covers “architecture, planning and related issues.” Maybe architecture just isn’t worth talking about by itself anymore, even though just a few miles away from San Francisco a big British architecture firm is making a building that looks like an iPhone’s home button, even though the city’s rampant housing crisis is being addressed with buildings paneled in plastic and unlikely to stand for more than ten years. Maybe, if they could read about how cheap construction and materials yield lower costs per square foot for developers and therefore higher profits from rent, San Francisco residents—or residents of any city for that matter—would start caring about architecture.
At the end of the FAAC panel, someone asked whether we were getting ahead of ourselves, whether we shouldn’t linger a little longer on the architectural discipline itself, whether or not there’s not already enough material there to mine for lessons. The panelists answered, almost in unison, that they were trying to open up the discipline by introducing new material.
This answer reveals a tendency toward escapism, an impulse to just go around the problem instead of through it. There are plenty of non-canonical architects and buildings worth a deep-dive. And, there are plenty of non-canonical ways to look at canonical buildings. What if we considered La Tourette through the sourcing of its materials? What if we only looked at details (maybe of that infamous leaky roof) of the Farnsworth House? These are hypotheticals, but they get at the question of how to expand how we teach and think about architecture: through wider breadth? Or further depth? One gets us architects telling universities how to write curricula, and the other, well, it might get us one or two people showing up at a planning meeting, asking what material the facade of their building is going to be.
If we—and by we I mean those of us who write, think, talk, teach, and make architecture—want people to care about our field, we have to give them a reason to, a reason better than “architecture is related to this other thing you already care about.” It might be that architecture has lost some of its surface attraction, become overshadowed by new technologies or the sheer immensity of cities. But it’s through buildings that people inhabit cities. Our audiences are already there, in the middle of it, in their three-flat apartment or their mid-century office building or their California bungalow; maybe they’re wondering why no one is talking in detail about any of these things. If we want them to care about our field, let’s meet them where they are. It might be that the task of making architecture more accessible is not about opening it up to other disciplines, but rather to itself, and to those who inhabit it.

Marianela D'Aprile is an architectural worker, writer, and educator based in Chicago. Her work addresses the intersection of politics and architecture, with a focus on Latin America, Left movements, state violence, and public spaces.


出处：本文译自www.archdaily.com/，转载请注明出处。