ALTERNATIVE ARCHITECTURAL PRAXIS

Alternative Architecture Praxis is a research project funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. The aim of the project is to look backwards and then forwards at ways in which people have conducted architectural praxis beyond the normative. The researchers are Professor Jeremy Till and Dr Tatjana Schneider, from the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, UK.

The following text, taken from our grant application, sets out the background to the project:

Background
Recent research has identified a pressing need for the development of alternative forms of architectural praxis. A joint report by CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) and the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) points to the potential marginalisation of architectural practice if normative tenets and working methods are clung to. A further report by the Royal Institute of British Architects from 2005 calls for the urgent requirement to “address outdated professional norms and behaviour” and to acknowledge “the diversity of the architectural market”.

However, neither report, nor others like them, propose how such an alternative model of architectural practice may be structured. What, indeed, is this ‘other’ model of architecture that might address this gap and how might alternative architectural praxis contribute to the development of contemporary and future architectural practice?

These questions are formulated in response to a defined need to develop new models of architectural praxis in order to address the changing social, economic and environmental contexts that face contemporary architectural practice. This research project aims to address these issues through both a historiographical survey of alternative praxis and an evaluation of contemporary examples.

Definition

Initially, alternative architectural praxis (AAP) is defined through a set of overlapping concepts.
· AAP is a praxis that demands an engagement with the conditions of its production in a critical way.
· It is a praxis that reflects on its organisational principles.
· Alternative architectural praxis a praxis that acknowledges that architectural practice has to deal with architecture’s economic, political and social significance.
· Finally, it is a praxis in which values the processes as much as the product.

Despite the need for new models of architectural practice, there is little sustained research in the field and so the term as such remains undertheorised and ambiguous. Alternative practices have of course developed in the past and continue to evolve; the aim of this research is to collect these various histories and contemporary examples together, so that the whole builds to more than the sum of its parts.

In the historical context, there are a number of histories of the architectural profession. However, in all of these the concentration is on the mainstream development of the profession, with the consequent glorification of the individual genius architect. Alternative architectural praxis stands outside the tradition which celebrates the great ‘master architect’, where the reputation of a ‘name’ alone seems to be the guarantor of the cultural and social value of a building. It is rare to find research that addresses the history of alternative praxis per se; this is generally limited to specific examples. Perhaps more relevant is the literature on the sociology of the architectural profession and the story of practice. Gutman, for example, outlines the changing context for architectural practice, and Dana Cuff argues that a practice’s characteristics neatly correspond to dominant cultural constructs. However, neither investigation develops a case for an alternative praxis but instead dwells on the re-organisation of the already existing forms. They unravel the social foundations of practice and thus point to, but do not propose, alternatives. Larson identifies the way that mainstream architectural practice perpetuates a perceived need to continually establish a figure based on notions of genius. Both she and Cuff show how the normative model becomes one of aspiration in both education and practice, and thus to a large extent controls architectural production.

It is therefore necessary to look elsewhere to find the history of alternative architectural praxis, how it has evolved and the various motivations for it. Generally AAP is motivated by a desire to re-think the processes of architectural production rather than their explicit interest in the architectural product per se. In this it differs from approaches that concentrate on alternative or ‘radical’ form. In contrast, AAP is often initiated through a reconsideration of organisational principles (i.e. collaboration of architects and artists, co-operatives, relationship to user/client) and/or an explicitly stated ideological or political point of view (i.e. Marxist, feminist, etc).

Our research will also draw on and develop theories of alternative practice. On the one hand there is a move to look critically at architecture as a discipline, on the other there is a move to see how other critical discourses may influence the architectural realm. The former is exemplified in the approach taken by the Critical Architecture conference (University College London 2004, published in Journal of Architecture 3 2005), which explored architectural criticism as a form of practice and considered the different modes of critical practice (buildings, drawings and texts) in architectural design. Our proposed project moves outwards from this to see how such theories of criticality may be applied to contemporary architectural production. Our central concern is not on the theories of criticality per se, but in the way they might be informed to practice, hence our use of the word ‘praxis’.

In terms of other discourses and their relationship to architecture, recent research has concentrated on aspects of gender, race and class. Thus key feminist research has begun to propose new forms of organisation for practice , has taken feminist theory as a means of unsettling the normative male values of the profession, or examined contemporary female and feminist practices . Certain texts begin to develop the history of female and feminist praxis others that of race . These and others are important in informing approaches to AAP, but our intent is to place them into a wider and more comparative structure, drawing on the organisational and ideological aspects of the praxis, rather than concentrating on the historiographical elements.

As important are the analyses that form a political critique of the profession, notably Tafuri’s Marxist analysis in ‘Architecture and Utopia: design and capitalist development’ which whilst essential in understanding the straightjacket that capitalism imposes on architecture, is famously scathing about the chances for reformulation. What Tafuri and others point to is that AAP can be informed by a critique of the demands of a capitalist production of the built environment, noting that capitalist society has frequently procured buildings and urban regeneration projects that are at odds with the social, and psychological needs of users, and thus restrictive of their freedom. It is our hypothesis that AAP often addresses this context of social empowerment, sometimes through an explicit political stance and sometimes through the organisational principles of their working practices. We will also draw on research into alternative processes in architectural practice such as participation or collaboration.

We are suggesting that alternative architectural praxis in the future can be developed from a comparative understanding of all these discourses, not necessarily by taking on board their critical, political or ideological stances, but by learning from the organisational principles, architectural processes and engagement with others that have arisen out of these stances.