draft manifesto - main theme and subtheme

Architectural concept : The experience of ideas

I feel that Architecture has lost an important role in culture - its meaning - or rather its power to embody meaning. Throughout the History of Architecture, Architecture has been used for more than providing the space for particular program, or as an ornamental piece within the city. Architecture, in particular sacred architecture, has been the vehicle though which meaning was expressed to a culture. It has manifested, through its space, the experience of an idea of the way in which mankind see itself in relation the world they perceived around them.  A "world" that could be experienced with the body, with the eyes and with the mind. By "world" i do not mean the earth, but the larger "other" against which mankind defines itself - be it god, or nature, or the universe or even time.  I think that architecture has ceased to create the experience of an idea, not an architectural idea, about space or structure or program, but the metaphysical idea which defines how we see the world.  Take the Pantheon in Rome,  'with its curved floor like the earth, upon which man walks under the sun, with the mighty cosmos surrounding - the realm of the gods', creates not a representation of the idea of the roman view of the world - but the experience of it felt by the viewer who, he himself, completes the design.  What greater role could architecture engage than this, to be the built fabric of a culture's mental or spiritual existence?

Architectural Sub-theme: Time and the choreography of architecture.

All buildings engage with time, though almost none do so deliberately. 

Understanding the forces of change, an architecture can begin to be designed as dynamic, having multiple existences, using the forces to animate itself poetically beautifully, and deliberately.

The world is changing, and it is doing so at increasing speed. The moment a building is built it engages with both its landscape but also its period of existence within time its timescape. Both of these can change the way a building can respond to its context, though only the former is considered in design. The increased speed of change is allowing us to see the world as a dynamic flow of forces, forces which act upon the city, upon the building. It is no longer a static world, we cannot rely on static skills, static cities, or static ideas,  yet design is still conceived as a static object, like the church or the castle - built in a context that was stable and to which it would always relate. Contemporary architecture considers only the site of the present, and merely degrades from there.  This is as poor a designing a building as if it were in a uniform landscape, when the site is not. Timescapes are also not always even things. As such, our architecture is poorly resolved with its timescape.  Like people - buildings have a life - and it must understand that it affects and is affected by the forces which flow through the city and it is our job to choreograph the way in which architecture dances with the forces of change.