notes about:

1›Authorship and architecture

Authorship, in all fields, is the act of assuming a degree of responsibility over a given entity while claiming the source of its originality¹. This is a rather limiting definition for a matter subjected to variableness, throughout the history, due to contextualization, jurisprudence and ethics. In architecture, this discourse over authorship has numerously challenged the core legitimacy and purposefulness of the profession. By modernity the degree of architect's expressiveness and level of involvement were questioned by unsettling disputations over professional intent and style. This uncertainty has been consistently exacerbated by the accompanying advancements in both building and generative technologies which further shift the paradigm confining architectural responsibility.

1.1›Morphology and history of the authorship paradigm

The subject of authorship is most central to the architectural discipline as it alludes to a semantic crossover between the built as identified and the architect as it's identifier. One is often "...prompted by the widespread habit of referring to buildings in the possessive [voice] - 'Alberti's Tempio Malatestiano', 'Le Corbusier's Chapel at Ronchamp'..."². Such semantic structure traces back to the Renaissance or even the antiquity according to the editors of Architecture and Authorship. It is ambiguous whether it is the critics or the architects themselves that make the habit of ascribing individuals' names to buildings; as well as, in case architects are authors, “exactly what are they authoring?”³.

From the fifteenth century Architects began identifying themselves using argumentation centred around the issue of authorship and intentions behind their work as if to market an architectural brand. For instance, in 1570 Andrea Palladio published the I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura(The Four Books of Architecture), which thoroughly described his attitude towards architecture and architectural style using illustrations (Illustration 1) and prose that heavily drew from the work of Vitruvius.⁴ Later, Vincenzo Scamozzi printed a six books treatise titled L'idea della architettura universale(the groundrules of art of building) in 1615 – which became widely popular for its classification of column orders. From there on, many others followed in this pursuit to propagate their visions of the architectural proper.⁵ In fact Architectural theory⁶ mentions a count of 117 of such treaties, written as of today. It is as though each of these architects has made an attempt to author a style or an ideology – often delivered in a competitive fashion.

Illustration 1: Palladio, Andrea,Erik Forssman. I quattro libri dell'architettura (Georg Olms Verlag, 1979), 1.

Working primarily with texts both Roland Barthes in “The Death of the Author”, 1967, and Michael Foucault in “What is an Author?”, 1969, explored the stipulation between authors and their work. As a result, both concluded that authorship is a social construct.

For his argumentation Barthes used Balzac's novel “Sarrasine”, in which he vividly portrayed the emotions of a castrate disguised as a woman. This example demonstrated that an writer possess none or a only a limited insight into the subject matters that they address. To Barthes this observation rendered the act of writing as a creation of an empty semantic “tissue of quotations“ that merely borrows from other texts and creative mediums.⁷ He described the idea of an author as a modern construct that banks on the “prestige of the individual”⁸ – which denotes the recognition of a person with their own thoughts and opinions. For Barthes, it is due to a “capitalist ideology”⁹ that one claims their work as original in order to be an author, and thus must deny their relying on any “point of origin”¹⁰. It is, however, an impossibility as those points ultimately comprise the “centers of culture”¹¹. Moreover, Barthes notes that “the writer can bring to light only signs without signifieds”¹², where as the reader is the one for whom the writing is aggregated and who embodies and interprets it while giving it meaning. As a result, to Barthes the writer is pragmatic while the reader acts as the true author. In translation to architectural terms this may imply that the critics as well as the inhibitors through their dialogue and interaction with architecture inadvertently take part in its authoring.

Foucault acknowledged Bathes' notion that that the author is dead, but was more interested in the meaning of such postulation. He noted that scrutinizing the semantic link between the author and text would reveal plenty about the legitimizing structures behind every discipline.¹³ His interpretation of an author was similar to what is know in the film studies as the auteur theory. It was coined earlier by Andrew Sarris¹⁴ in 1962 and was heavily advocated even earlier by the film critic François Truffaut in the 1950s.¹⁵ According to this theory an author is one that leaves a distinctive personal touch in every creative output that they become associated with. In film an example of author is Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, or Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton. While, the films which the directed, produced or stared in are were carried out by a large crew of people, their auteur presence becomes most prominent. As a result, a Hitchcockian film wouldn't necessarily be directed by Hitchcock but would clearly exhibit his emblematic themes and styles.¹⁶ In architecture such auteur quality can be attributed to Carlo Scarpa, Louis Isadore Kahn, or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose idealogical and stylistic features are often reproduced.

Foucault speaks of the author as an “author-function”¹⁷ rather then a title. It is a gauge of quality against which other works may be contrasted. An author can be a historical persona – tokened as a reference. Such is the God of Hermes Trismegistus for instance, which is generalized today as a literary fabrication of cultural significance and a mark in history.¹⁸ Finally Foucault believed that “the function of an author is to characterize the existence, circulation and operation of certain discourses within societies.”¹⁹ This observation is especially distinctive in the architectural theory, where every discourse is accompanied by names of individuals that stand behind vital concepts and ideologies.

∞

Definitions of authorship are diverse. In history, they have fluctuated throughout the cultural, dialectical, personal and jurisprudential realms. However, contemporary theorist Seán Bruke points out that these definitions may be easier to grasp if categorized as either imitative or inspirational. Examples of such classifications are evident across a number of disciplines. The only exception to the rule is in the literary studies where, an acclaimed author may be likened to either a prophet(imitative) or a visionary(inspirational), depending on the degree to which one shapes the content they deliver.

In Classical philosophy the discourse over authorship is generally summarized as the concept of memesis – or literally the act of mimicry and imitation. For instance, in Platonism every creation is assumed to be a copy of a divine prototype. In Aristotelianism the maker is one that merely purifies an entity from a raw material.

In the medieval period the concept of authorship was significantly different from its modern counterpart. Although, A. J. Minnis in ”Medieval Theory of Authorship”²⁰ identifies the medieval term auctor as being most closely related to the present notion of authorship. He explains that “auctor was conceived as a writer and an authority, who ultimately takes his authority from God”²¹. Hence, the auctor had unquestionable credibility and was to be respected and trusted. However, their job was far from inventive, as they were to “…establish the founding rules and principles…”²² by interpreting old scripts. Moreover, in contrast to the romantic and modern understandings of the author as an individual with subjective and unique intentions, the identity of the medieval auctor was of a modest importance and in practice often remained anonymous outside of their communities²³. Consequently, in western culture until the eighteenth century, an author lacked the ability to create out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo²⁴) and instead simply acted as a conduit of divine designs to the audience²⁵.

Historically, a progression is evident, which starts from the imitative stage in antiquity, to inspirational throughout the Middle Ages, and eventually leading into what may be described as the generative phase today. In the latter the source of creativity becomes implicit to the author, and the ownership over work is implied. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the author figure had progressively liberated from being defined by the church and state, and became a commodity of a free trade²⁶. With this token, authorship became an intellectual property, branded by the authors personality, defended by the law, and bound with the paradigm of originality. Now human fathers work, not God.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that the concept of an author as an absolute generator of original work surfaced only in the modern period. Essayist Dr. Robert Meagher, in his publication Technê, explains the word Architect from the etymological point of view in order to reveal its age and immediate accountability for shaping of the modern authorship paradigm.

The term architect is ancient Greek in origin and is comprised of two roots, where technê stands for “making” or “creating”, and archai translates as origin or foundational principles - ”prima elementa”. Accordingly, architecton or architect literally entails a "master-producer".²⁷ However, Meagher draws an important distinction between the two concepts – making and creating, as they describe differently the meaning of technê. The former meaning is characteristic of the pre-modern period, and is synonymous with the act of producing, or distilling a familiar entity. The latter term is synonymous with magic or birthing of a novelty. Like Aristotle, Meagher believes that when humans gaze at a tree they are merely inspired to associate it with shelter, fuel, food, and tools.²⁸ He states that in practise, until modernity, only God was attributed with the ability to create out of void. However, Greek mythology addresses this subject otherwise.

Titan Prometheus was a rebel son of Lapetus of the Oceanids. According to the myth, Prometheus commiserated with people because he considered the world they lived in to be crude and unsuitable. He thieved fire from Zeus and passed it to humans – gifting them with the principles of technê: faculties of conceiving and creating from nothing.²⁹ At this point humans became capable of shaping the surroundings for their personal comfort. Shortly, Zeus ordered a punishment for these actions – humans were deprived of fire and given mortality, while Prometheus was incarcerated for the period of three million years. This story, despite being a piece of fictional poetry, documents that the topic of originality and authorship was already present in the ancient theoretical discourse. Inevitably the term architecture has always incorporated these conflicting yet fundamental concepts in its etymological roots.

1.2›Shaping forces in the evolution of architectural authorship

According to Architecture and Authorship there are four general areas of critical treatment that consistently reshape the contemporary model of architectural authorship: (a) the role of the architect, (b) who is to act on that role? (c) accommodation of technology and generative techniques, (d) the issues of professional survivalism.

1.2.a›Role of the author

Modern discussion over the nature of architectural actions dates back to a time in the end of World War II when the housing crisis in the, then, demolished Europe planted the notion of viewing architecture as a service rather than an act of expression, intention, or style. By diverting the critical attention away from the physical form a search began for a set of criteria that would help resolve a more pragmatic problem of housing shortages.

At first, a number of quick fix solutions emerged, amongst which were the British New Towns – designed in hopes to give life to a “New Britain”.³⁰ These were industrial satellite towns intended primarily to accommodate the working class. Inspired by the amalgamation of the “... intellectual imperatives of Fabianism and the fading dreams of the Garden City movement”³¹ they promised a more gradual approach to urbanization, in contrast to the forced mode akin of the earlier Garden Cities. However, despite the optimism of the reviving modernism, the new constructs were largely uninspiring. Not only, were they constructed using the least of means³², but were also criticized for merely casting in concrete the “...diagrammatic versions of pre-war urban visions...”³³. They still ignored the nuances of the physical surroundings and local traditions in Europe while attempting a calculated remedy against the effects of WWII.

Nevertheless, by the early 1950s, the haste of reconstruction finally met critical response, and the discourse began to move away from, what Paul Verilio called strategic “grand narratives”³⁴ of urbanism towards more tactical and per-case tailored solutions. As a result, new practises sprouted that focused primarily on context, amongst which were Cedric Price, Richard Rogers', Norma Foster's, and SHoP.

This migration of architectural actions was congruent with both: the aftermath of industrialization in Europe, which altered and introduced new professions; as well as a shift in the paradigm of architectural authorship – away from being viewed as an artistic endeavour. In order to understand how architecture earned this bohemian quality, and why it had to be reevaluated, Tim Anstey in Architecture and Rhetoric calls to look at the ostensibly empirical link between buildings and architects as it was depicted by Leon Battista Alberti.

Alberti, in De re aedificatoria(On the art of building) explains buildings through their phenomenological ability to affect an audience by exhibiting a “divine sense of beauty”³⁵. Such effect is the result of proper compositional proportions, as Astey argues, and thus it is largely the responsibility of an architect. However, the association between the built and the architect is indirect. What architect conveys through graphic representation later undergoes a process of interpretation by commissioners and various third party trades. Such interpretations are prone to diversion from the inexplicable intent of the architect. For that reason, Alberti introduced the notion of assessing architecture through the architects' rhetoric in addition to reviewing the design realization. With this token Alberti placed the emphasis on the ideological intent, and appointed the architect as its author. Consequently, only by 1950s has this formula evolved to recognize that the architectural action is greatly dependant on context.

As mentioned above, Cedric Price played an important role in this evolution. His work challenged the significance of traditional architectural drawing as the primary means of representation and the status of visual imagery at large as a defining component for a project. Price often preferred diagrammatic representation over orthographic projections, because it allowed to incorporate areas that were neglected in the traditional drawings. Building's functions, circulation and other dynamic aspects of the its daily performance could now be represented and thus accounted for in the design. As a result, Price shifted the architectural field of action to include the building's behaviour and away from dealing with elements that are subjected to builders interpretation. For instance, Price's Network Analysis drawing maps a”...web of statutory and contractual forces that condition the decision making process necessary before the construction...” ³⁶(Illustration 1).

Illustration 2: Anstey, Tim. 'Architecture and Rhetoric: Persuasion, Context, Action' in Architecture and Authorship ed. by Anstey, Tim, Grillner, Katja, and Rolf Hughes (London: Black Dog Publishing Limited and the authors, 2007), 22.

As opposed to Price, who questioned the reach of architects' authority, New York based firm SHoP Architects is set to regain absolute authority over the architectural production and thus eliminate the gap between intention and realization. Their approach is twofold: at the “level of the project”, and “level of building”. The former relies on advanced technologically aided visualization techniques in order to explicate a clear architectural intent, and thus get close to eliminating interpretation of the design by other trades. At building's level, SHoP attempts at “closing off the rhetorical dimension of architectural drawing”³⁷ in order to completely avoid interpretation. They employ computer generated full scale templates in their building production, which allow the architect to directly control a machine that would produce precise parts. These may be assembled only in one way to construct a building, as it was done in such projects as the Dunescape for the PS1 museum,the Camera Obscura for Mitchell Park, and the 290 Mulberry Street project in Manhattan (Illustration 3). However, despite the authoritarian approach to architectural production, SHoP Architects still acknowledge the significance multifaceted aspects of the context.

Illustration 3: Fano, David. 'SHoP Architects 290 Mulberry Project', in Design Reform (May 24^th, 2008), http://designreform.net/2008/05/24/shop-architects-290-mulberry-project/ (accessed March 25th, 2009)

1.2.b›Who is the author?

The emphasis on context had also triggered a vast discourse over the possibility of a new architecture that would respond dynamically to the inhabitant's needs. Since architecture was to be environmentally specific and architects were no longer its branding artists, why couldn't the environment, with the help of a professional of course, produce its own architecture, should a demand arise. At the time such conception was explored by the architects Cedric Price, and Archigram, and later has grown to influence the work of such as Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, Buckminster Fuller, Rem Koolhaas, and others. At its core, it was an ideology that marked the beginning of a perpetual discourse over whom should the architectural authoring belong to.

Price's Fun Palace, of 1961, was a result of a collaboration with a theatrical director Joan Littlewood.³⁸ It boasted an open program ”...comprised of various moveable entertainment facilities...”³⁹, and revolved around the idea that a proper combination of technology and planning could give the inhabitant an unprecedented control over their environment. The Fun Palace was not to be a sentimental monument, but a kit of parts intended for serving people⁴⁰. This approach questioned the role of the architect as a designer of spaces – since these were up to the dwellers' interpretation at the Fun Palace – and in return allocated the authoring of infrastructure⁴¹ as a new field of action. Moreover, Price fully rejected the concept of an architect as an authoring figure and, at the time, dismissed his role as an architect altogether preferring the title of 'anti-architect'.⁴²⁴³ This disassociation from the profession not only allowed for a greater freedom to choose between architectural responsibilities and accommodated the desire to seek new ways of intervention into the built environment, but also allowed for attribution of other trades involved(builders, draftsmen, craftsmen, engineers, etc.) – also labelling them as fundamental authors in the making of architecture.

The deliberate diffusion of the traditional author figure and a desire to embrace creative pluralism had also become the founding principles behind the Archigram group in the 1960s. Their popular, anti-monumental, and anti-heroic approach to architecture, fascination with infrastructure, and rejection of many ideological underpinnings of the era of the grands constructeurs⁴⁴, closely resembled the stance of Cedric Price. However, in contrast to Price's theory it was not the context that provided the primary guidelines for a building project, to Archigram, but a synthesis achieved through a dialogue between architecture, technology and inhabitants. They believed in the potential of a building to become an interactive part of infrastructure that would mold and accommodate all the hedonistic possibilities of the modern consumerism⁴⁵. This is the avenue that later gained great attention, with the coming of the Internet age, from such theoreticians as Lebbeus Woods in the Berlin Free-Zone⁴⁶ project, and Hakim Bey in his Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ)⁴⁷.

Unfortunately, Archigram's avant-garde designs were subjected to the bias of the group's visual objectification of technology, and a brief affiliation with the Futurist movement, which was noted in the Archigram no.1.⁴⁸ Archigram, and later Superstudio and Archizoom, printed glossy pamphlets of Pop imagery that employed every technique of the corporate advertisement in order to communicate their rather surreal beliefs. This was different in Price's stance as he would even “...refuse to release any pictures of what the FP[Fun Palace] will actually look like...”⁴⁹. His passion was not superficial but ideological in nature. However, visual seduction does not necessarily render Archigram's designs completely superfluous. What was a visual fetish at the time – today, may have matured into a level that is to some degree technologically plausible and most importantly desirable. Their visuals may be interpreted as diagrammatic representations of the complex social and economic structures that began forming since the beginning of the Internet age.

It is also important to note that the rejection of a grand narrative in architecture by the infrastructuralists Price and Archigram coincided with the postmodernist rejection of the one-size-fits-all application of philosophy. However, not everyone followed this trend at the time. In comparison, Team X placed the emphasis on author's identity and also proposed a definitive vision of architecture in an attempt to, once again, dialectically legitimize it. Team X offered a strategic and result oriented approach, while Price and Archigram sought to provide tools and tactics for the conceiving of design. While both Price and Archigram wanted to utilize, adopt and play with technology, Team X attempted to tame and “humanize” it⁵⁰. They did not want it to have a heavy formal impact on architecture and inhabitants' lives. Conversely, to Archigram the purpose of technology was both to serve people and to become a plaything that was allowed to evolve and synthesize with its environment. Appearance of technology was in fact desirable.

This discern with the agents that shape architecture was the bases for the anti-heroic architecture. It was not heroic in the sense that it was not revolutionary, but in the sense that the author behind the ongoing evolution was finally unimportant. In support of this theory, Catherine Ingraham, in her Architecture, Animal, Human, adds that a “Change, in biology, is never heroic (a point of arrival) or even anti-heroic (a shared, interstitial, boundary line)”⁵¹, as neither any change in nature; it simply occurs.

Finally, There is an obvious similitude between the anti-heroism of the 1960s and the the modus operandi of the earlier mentioned open source movement.

1.2.c›Technology and Generative techniques

While talking about the evolution of architectural actions one can not avoid the topic of technology. It has always been a challenging factor that evolved because of-, in accord with-, and in precedence to the changes in architectural methods and theory. However, this symbiosis has only gained its full momentum in the beginning of the 1960s when technology reached a grater degree of automation, which in turn provided the way for the concept of self-organizing systems to surface. This advancement, challenged the authorship paradigm once again, and expanded the architectural discourse to include the notion of generative design. It became both a blow to traditional notions in architecture and a stepping stone for new practises to come.

Emerging practises employed generative design techniques and often utilized cutting edge technologies in order to gather, aggregate, and analyze architectural data. These methods were fundamentally different from the traditional – authoritarian design routines of architecture. They outsourced the creative processes away from the architect and into: either the hands of rule based systems and the probabilities associated with them; or the algorithmically perfect machine processing. As a result, both the centrality of architectural intentions, and the definition of poetics came under question, once again.

A research paper presented at the 2004 Futureground conference held at Monash University of Melbourne explicates well the meaning behind the generative design:

“Generative systems offer a methodology and philosophy that view the world in terms of dynamic processes and their outcomes. In the terminology of Thomas Kuhn (Kuhn 1996), it offers a paradigm shift for the process of design and the expression of that process. For designers, it involves a reconsideration of the static artefact and the actions that manipulate it. Conceptualisation shifts from the primacy of objects to envisaging interacting components, systems and processes, which in turn generate new artefacts, with special properties...”⁵²

Amongst the practises involved in the generative field were those that looked at the generative approach as a way to instrumentalize the design process. Christopher Alexander, for instance, was an architectural theoretician and practitioner, as well as ,a significant contributor to the field of artificial intelligence of computer sciences. In his book The Timeless Way of Building, of 1979, he offered a systematic and efficient strategy for conceiving architecture. His criteria were gathered around identifying and analyzing prominent patterns found in traditional building construction. He believed “...that successful architecture is essentially the application of design patterns that have been around for thousands of years, albeit not recorded”⁵³. He said:

“There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.”⁵⁴

Alexander's approach was somewhat similar to the work of Aldo Rossi, in the way that it looked to establish typographical data based on repeating patterns found in historical buildings. Rossi, believed that he could take advantage of this information in his designs, because he speculated that traditional architecture had established an architectural language that is culturally interpreted and embedded in the collective memory of a city.⁵⁵

Likewise, Alexander was analyzing the European medieval cities in order to find the unwritten local features and patterns which made those visually engaging and harmonious. Throughout this process he stumbled upon the concept of generative grammar. It was originally introduced in the 1950s by a theoretician and a linguist Noam Chomsky in the transformational grammar theory. It attempted to explain the relationship between human mind and the syntax of natural languages. The assumption was that mind is a language independent rule system that holds “'...very complex sets of interacting rules [which]...are actually there, in peoples” heads and are responsible for the way the environment get its structure'”⁵⁶. Alexander translated this theory into architecture – declaring that environmental design is also a construct in which analysis of syntactic elements could be used to predict, or generate a greater more complex system. He was famous for his speculation that in architecture:

“Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.”⁵⁷

Architecture was now a scalable construct – a fractal – a language composed of a limited amount of patterns and rules, with the understanding of which any architecture could be generated.

This was a dangerous speculation; one that could undermine the architectural profession as a whole. If, Alexander's observations were true, and a sound architecture could be generated upon a given set of criteria, any empowered individual could take on the task of building, and thusly rendering the need for a professional obsolete. However, together with Sarah Ishikawa and Murray Silverstain, Alexander was comfortable with the idea of empowering any person, because they belied that only the dwellers themselves knew enough about what dwellings they requited.⁵⁸

∞

In addition to Alexander Architecture and Authorship mentions Ernst Neufert, Peter Eisenman, and Lionel March as people that approached the concept of self-organizing systems in form of instrumental theories. Lionel March introduced the The System Aesthetics methodology, in which an underlying structure of any design could be found. With this token he expected to deal away with that human aspect of the architectural profession; such things as: “intuitive skill”, “confusion”, “sophistical sciences”, “individual hunches”, “court jesters and acrobats”, “private pranks”, “pricey prima-donnas”, “hallucinations”, “extravagant and empty images”, “individual expression”, and “personal prejudice”.⁵⁹ He thought the artistic intuition to be unaccountable for its actions and not on par with the rhythms in which society developed in the time of post-war reconstruction.

Alexander, Lionel and other “instrumentalists” had attempted to modify the process of architectural design by introducing scientific and mathematical methods. Ironically these attempts were frighteningly reminiscent of the Modernist ideology of social engineering, which only half a century ago was heavily criticized for its totalitarian and uninspiring nature.

It should also be pointed out that not all generative practises employed various technologies or were instrumental. Peter Eisenman, in fact was so opposed to the use of technology and especially its instrumental approach that decided to write a professorial thesis that would refute Alexander's fascination with computers systems. Eisenman's approach was more of formal in nature. He developed a system of rules that would help an architect to deform originally perfect cubic solids into forms that would respond to the conditions of their environment and the inhibitor's needs. This way the architect still renamed in charge of the grater project, but had more systematic methodology and modern tools at their disposal.

Cedric Price, as mentioned above, explored a different avenue of the self-organizing system. The generative agents of his buildings were the inhibitors themselves. His Fun Palace was a freely interpretable construct – both physically and conceptually. While things could be added or subtract from the whole, the navigation through Fun Palace was not orchestrated either, and the building offered a great number of entering points and circulation sequences.

More recently, technology have been used as an allegorical tool rather than a means of direct influence on the project, explains Penelope Haralambidou, in The Allegorical Project. She mentions such practises as MVRDV, UN Studio, Ben Nicholson, Office of Metropolitan Architecture, and Michael Webb, who chose to distance themselves from the discourse over the immediate medium of a building or its construction site, to focus on rather the intermediate mediums, which are more familiar tools to use for an architects, such as drawings, texts, photography, paintings, models .etc.⁶⁰ These practises use the generative methods (technological or not) as inspirations or more direct agents in their design process which most cases remains within the scope of architects final decision. The generative medium in these cases acts as a binding agent between the theory and intent of the architect and the design process (often because of the immediacy and quickness which computer technologies offer).

For instance in his early work, between 1972 and 1977, Rem Koolhaas developed a set of architectural solution for New York. He rigorously produced a series of paintings that portrayed his historical analysis of the city in a narrative form.⁶¹ In Temple Island project, Michal Webb's generative medium was his “fleeting childhood recollection” that informed a set of extremely poetic drawings.⁶² Ben Nicholson in 1990 used a collage build of Sears and Sweets Catalogues as his architectural drawings. Finally, even computer generated form may be used as an allegory if it is used as a fruitful layer in a design process. For instance, Peter Testa and Devyn Weiser, of the Emergent Design Group at MIT, have developed an set of open source software Agency GP, Genr8, and Weaver.⁶³ These use the computational capabilities of a computer cluster to assimilate “...natural growth systems [in which]...a surface modelling program that involves artificial intelligence and complex feedback loops”⁶⁴ generates an architectural form.

∞

The authors of Futureground paper list a break down of possible subcategories of generative design which include “...self-organization, swarmsystems and ant colonies, evolution, and generative grammars”⁶⁵. If so, we can attribute most of these to the examples shown above: Prices work as a swarmsystem in which inhabitants are the formative agents; Alexander's and Rossi's architecture as a result of generative grammar; and the methods of Testa and Weiser who the subjects of controlled evolution within a cybernetic environment.

As we have already learned in architecture the authorship paradigm has fluctuated greatly in order to accommodate the many engaged agents, such as the different trades, shared ideologies, interconnected ideas, context, and even the needs and actions of the inhabitants. What is bluntly important about the phenomenon of self-organization, as we learn in this section, is the fact that it encourages shared authorships between the director(an architect in our case) and the respective design processes (including the agents involved in them).

1.2.d›Professional survivalism

Professional Survivalism/legitimacy - Only proprieterity keeps architecture in business.

the possibility of the whole discourse existing simply in order to sustain the architecture as a profession - as it has long seized to exist

1.3›Craftsmanship

At present, the word Craftsmanship is rarely of use and has little to signify in the daily lexicon. While, dictionaries generally use themes of handiwork, exceptional manual dexterity, and traditional family trades in an attempt to simulate a definition⁶⁶⁶⁷, in the western world none of those references have been applicable since the industrial revolution. Indeed, it may seem that the concept of craftsmanship is simply obsolete today.

However, concerned with the human values in the context of today's economy, New York University and London School of Economics sociology professor Richard Sennett, in his book The Craftsman, makes an in-depth historical enquiry regarding the meaning of the word craftsmanship. By finding some of its lost connotations he unveils how their progressive dissolution explains the ethical and socioeconomic changes that took place in th western world from antiquity until today. These are closely related to the dynamics in the authorship paradigm.

To begin, Sennett directs the reader to the Homeric Hymn about the god Hephaestus, who similarly to the aforementioned Prometheus taught humans the art of many crafts:

“...men who before used to dwell caves in the mountains like wild beasts. But now that they have learned crafts through Hephaistos the famed worker, easily they live a peaceful life in their own houses the whole year round”⁶⁸.

This reference is important in the way that it celebrates craftsmanship for being directly responsible for peoples comfort and happiness within a community. It is no wonder then, that craftsmanship translates from Greek as demioergos – a compound word that links both the public(demios) and production(ergon) as interdependent entities⁶⁹. In addition, Sennett notes that different trades throughout antiquity were honoured equally because it was believed that their symbiosis, rather than a hierarchy, made a community possible. The passing of knowledge and skills through the generations was a sustainable way to maintain a diverse skill pool. It was a duty greater in importance than the intrafamilial relations. In such a scenario, according to Sennett, the “...personal 'genius' – had little meaning in the context”⁷⁰.

However, starting with the classical era an hierarchical system began taking dominant form in which only the uppermost and most vital trades retained honour, while others were demoted as generic services. For instance, because pottery satisfied an elementary need it was assumed “stupid”⁷¹ rather than essential, and thus, by association, such process of making was not viewed as art any longer, but rather an undisclosed chore. In sight of that tendency, Aristotle, introduced the word cheirotechnon(hand worker) instead of the old demioergos to make a clear separation between the craftsman and the “architect”, where the former is a miscellaneous labourer, and the later is one that ”...possess[es] the theory and know[s] the causes”⁷².[2]

Today, the meaning behind cheirotechnon is still sound. It captures many aspect of the western society, where one's subordinacy is simply unavoidable within the complexity of modern life. In the corporate world very few who could claim to be an all-in-one architect, designer, and producer, while staying competitive. As a result, issues of shared authorship, personal satisfaction and professional honour are often severely overlooked.

In response, Sennett makes a bold speculation that the above mentioned open source model of work management is one that most successfully captures the ancient principles of craftsmanship. In it each individual skill is appreciated and viewed as a building block of society.

1.4›Open source and craftsmanship

In order to understand the benefits of the open source approach, we shall evaluate it through a comparison with the current state of authorship construct and its criticisms, some of which were presented in the preceding sections.

To begin with, we saw that existence of a community is important to the crafts, but even more so craftsmanship is dependant on the community. The discourse within it, criticism, and adaptation to challenges are what keeps tools and methods evolving. Sennett, confirms this fact using the historical evolution of pottery making.⁷³

Unfortunately, in a proprietor prevalent society a craftsman community is established through a professional association, which also happens to legitimize and govern its patrons. In this format the lines are blurred between the concepts of authorship and ownership. As a result, not only, extracurricular influences are highly improbable, because personal interest and activism are of no value in such status bound community; but also incubation of ideas, collaboration, and general evolution of a profession is not very straight forward. It is rather ironic for one institution to both copyright intellectual properties and accommodate their sharing and concoction, especially since copyright law is a one-size-fits-all approach, while modes of collaboration tend to vary per case.

On the other hand, communication is the vehicle of the open source community. One's status is an obsolete notion here, which can only be distantly likened to honour (as it was discussed with regards to ancient craftsmanship) or the volume of ones contributions. Thusly, professional communication in the open source communities is a thriving melting pot in which “...the process of skill evolution is speeded up; change occurs daily.”⁷⁴. In the case of the Linux operating system software, evolution can be noticed on daily basis though constantly emerging updates. The reason is that, although the developing community is large, there are only a few quality assessing instances through which a code must pass before being released. This may increase the risk of the developers missing a bug, but in return a much greater responsiveness to such mishaps is possible. In addition, the rapid evolution excites and engages the community because each member in it feels the immediacy of the power to influence the source.

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Another important issue in authorship is the quality of products and processes, as rarely, one wants to be credited for a failure.

Craftsmanship, as it is described by Sennett, was inherently of an impersonal character.⁷⁵ As skills were passed through generations there was little for one to claim as authored. Here, honour realized what later reincarnated as the 'pleasure of authoring'. The quality of one's products was the ultimate means of promotion, and vice versa, one's success was a gauge of quality. Sennett elaborates even further:

“All craftsmanship is quality-driven work; Plato formulated this aim as the arete, the standard of excellence, implicit in any act: The aspiration for quality will drive a craftsman to improve,to get better rather than get by.”⁷⁶

In contrast, the modern author is often confronted with the dilemma of choosing between either surrendering their rights and intellectual property in exchange for the benefits of being associated with a prominent brand; or authoring their own work (while validity of such action can not be taken for granted) and accepting the burden of self promotion, necessary for economic feasibility. As a result, although, success is still often assumed to be the gauge of quality, the incentive behind ones work could be threefold – either success, or quality, or a concoction of both.

Since, open source developers are generally enthusiasts the issue of career success to them stands secondary to quality. At the forefront are personal affection to the subject matter, dedication, and desire to improve it. As the sociologist C. Write Mills explains with regards to craftsmanship: “The laborer with a sense of craft becomes engaged in the work in and for itself: the satisfactions of working are their own reward ”⁷⁷. This observation translates well to describe the open source labourer. Their products remain constantly under development, where no deadlines or other bureaucratic criteria exist to implement any form of finalization. Demioergos and the open source activist both conduct change simply as it comes along. This often results in small and unequal increments that inform a rather gradual progression, which could be taken advantage of by other dependant trades. On the other hand, the cheirotechnon is reserved to publicize their alterations in large proportional releases – something that each time could be marketed as novelty that is superior to the former product. In this format, dependant trades are constantly conditioned into using outdated tools.

A proprietary product relies on keeping its methods patented and copyrighted to remain competitive. As long as it offers feature that otherwise are unattainable it can afford to exhaust the marketing potential of each product before offering an improvement. Here the quality is hardly the driving force. On the contrary, lack of it creates future demand.

On the other hand, the shear fact that the open source developers leave their processes exposed shows their interest in creative criticisms, and disinters in the game of authorship. Quality is their foremost goal. However, this does not yield open source uncompetitive, but rather undoes the secrecy behind the closed and competitive practises, which, in turn, agitates a grater competition for quality in the proprietary world. This could be the pattern to which Sennett refers when he says that “In the history of handcrafts, closed knowledge-systems have tended toward short lifespans”⁷⁸. In software development we saw many examples of this pattern. For instance, the Firefox Internet browser which from the technological point of view rendered the industry's giant Internet Explorer nearly obsolete, only to only trigger a plethora of improvement to come. “To say they[Firefox] have been well received is an understatement...”⁷⁹. After the introduction in the 2004, “...Firefox gained world wide market share at a rate of nearly 1% per month from November to April” and kept growing.

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Today, the field of action within many trades, and especially architecture, remains a hierarchical system. It begins with a stratified structure within the architectural firms and ends with a monstrous, yet again, pyramidal bureaucratic cluster of building quality councils. There is a problem with the hierarchy, however. By definition, it relies on the division of a single task into multiple micro-processes. The number of micro-processes grows in a logarithmic progression in relation to the growth of the main task, and thus results in a fast and progressive distancing of the worker from the decision making apparatus. In simple terms, a craftsman found at the bottom of such an hierarchy, while fully preoccupied, is expected to be only skilled enough to remain productive, while preforming a scope of work that is narrow enough to sustain them as a dispensable trade. At the workers' level this pattern discourages attempts of innovation and retards the evolution of a profession as a whole. The profession(or a practise at a lower level) risks to become a closed system – a mere function – an entity as static as all of its active parts.

In political science and economics this phenomenon is known as the principal-agent problem.⁸⁰ It also states that agents(workers) are discouraged from innovation, if they have no way of reaching the top executive level where they could influence the decision making. Conversely, the principals(directing a group of people) have a hard time monitoring the agents' actions, which impedes accountability and diminishes productivity. Additionally, the principals who are more competent (“...possess the theory and know the causes”⁸¹) do not have sufficient resources to initiate innovation in their own right. They are simply preoccupied with the organizational chores, and can only obtain a limited amount of feedback, as the communication is simplex – flows from top to bottom.

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In fact, Jürgen Bitzer and Philipp J. H. Schröder in the The Economics of Open Source Software Development describe five aspects of how the open-source development model may challenge current western microeconomic “conceptualization of the firm”⁸²:

“First, it employs hierarchical governance to co-ordinate continuous changes and modifications (rather than governing and controlling a stable flow of production). Task assignment is based on the capability and preference of the developer. Secondly, it challenges orthodox principal-agent notion of agency, i.e. of the efficient management of agents, by exploiting the inherently dispersed and decentralized capabilities of self-selected agents. Put another way, rather than putting a principal in charge, in order to ensure an efficient, albeit far from costless, discovery of useful knowledge, an F/OS-based design entails letting productive knowledge search for its own organization.”⁸³

1.5›Architecture, Authorship, Open Source