Dear David,
In reply to your query about whether architecture is in a state
of "fragmentation" and whether planning has been a "failure", these being
claims I make in my call for papers for Design Philosophy Papers on the
theme of "Building Dwelling Futures".
As part of a call-for-papers, the claims are deliberately provocative, and
I would be delighted for people to propose papers that took issue with
them, as well as ones that seek to elaborate them. But the claims are not
capricious.
Re planning - there is a long tradition of the critique of planning - cf
the work of Manuel Castells over the last 30 years; or for a historical
survey, Peter Hall 'Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban
Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century' (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
The body of work I'm fleetingly referring to here is not an instrumental or
internal critique, but a questioning of the very bases of the profession.
Re architecture (again, very short-hand): for some time now, architects
have been losing ground as the division of labour of architectural practice
has ceded activity to engineers (of many kinds), project managers, etc;
this is now compounding with the rise of software-driven design. Another
example is that only a minute proportion of housing (even in the developed
world) is now designed by architects. These are issues regularly discussed
by the architectural profession (with numerous discusion lists).
The point then, is to bring these various crises together - those of the
professions and of the looming global challenges. A basic question
is, 'what kind of prefigurative practices do we need that would be adequate
to what humanity faces?'
I need a good range of papers to be submitted. So, let's hope your query
prompts some!
regards,
Anne-Marie Willis
Editor, Design Philosophy Papers - www.desphilosophy.com
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