One concern is haunting the theoretical debate — architecture’s loss of its sense of reality. In other words, it would seem that architecture has by now lost its purpose, its meaning and its scope. First of all, there is a discussion on architecture’s role in a globalized market economy. This is a debate that concerns the reduction of architecture to a commodity, which would leave it emptied of its purpose.

 

It is a dispute about the places where architecture is built, about its dependence on the economic system, about the political role of the architect, and about the institutions that control the making of buildings. Second, there are those who speak of decadence, according to whom ar- chitecture has by now lost its meaning. This complaint can take many forms, but it is most typical of those who wish architects would remain faithful to supposedly immutable laws ( of taste, of beauty, of harmony). A different demand for a defined scope also emerges in the work of some of those who conceive architecture as the outcome of positivist processes. In this case, instead of representing a lost value, architects are sometimes urged to yield before an idolization of rationality. Architecture, in this case, seems to be reduced to little more than the mere satisfaction of functions, or the outcome of statistics.

 

Of course, these concerns are not equivalent to one another ( at the very least, they may have different ideological connotations). Nonetheless, they all seem to share a similar mandate: the will to bring architecture under the domain of predetermined methodologies, ideals, or heuristics. In their efforts to do so, however, they gloss over a fact of primary importance: the enduring tendency among architects, both now and in the past, to reject established guidelines, refuting what is consensually accepted as right and proper in or- der to investigate unforeseen possibilities. Even among the ones who rely on traditional values, or positivistic methods ( input/ output), there will always be those who invent new variations, exploit loopholes in the rules, and de- velop alternative practices, forms and concepts – thus requiring a whole new discourse; a whole new sense of reality that will inevitably elude self- enclosed conceptual systems.

 

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