That Integral theory has hardly impacted architecture to date is damning testimony to the damage wrought by the distractions of theory courses and academic publications still recycling the same irrelevant philosophical and literary theories.
"Modernity simply exploits and seeks
power over nature rather than seeking any symbiosis with it, or ‘transcending
and including’ it as part of an Integral culture that recognises it evolved,
rather than is separate, from nature − and thrives and is healthy only to the
degree nature does too.
Much postmodern architecture has
strong parallels with Conceptual Art, once you have got the idea there is
nothing more to engage you.
Much very good architecture is being
produced in the pursuit of the green agenda. But the common flaw in this work
is that it focuses on objective issues such as ecology and technology; it does
not yet give due emphasis to the subjective dimensions of psychology and
culture. The conceptual thinking still conforms to the paradigm of modernity.
But as Einstein pointed out, a problem cannot be solved with the same level of
thinking as created it
Now, instead of subduing it we must
seek to live in symbiosis with nature, not least by applying the ecological
understandings bequeathed by modernity.
The fundamental purposes of modern
architecture are thus limited to such right quadrant concerns as shelter,
security, function and so on − all of them important, but not enough for a
truly sustainable architecture because they ignore what sustains us
psychologically and culturally.
This is an area where modernity
conspicuously failed. It promised freedom for self-realisation unconstrained by
culture, community, place and history. Yet without these we are not at home in
the world, hence the pervasive alienation, and the atomisation of communities
into lonely individuals, characteristic of modernity. We now understand that
self-realisation needs the support of and sense of belonging to this larger
context.
Besides transcending self-expression,
creativity then escapes the current frivolous obsessions with form and theory −
a symptom of how lost we are and lacking in vision as to the purposes of
architecture − to be about expanding the world of human possibility so that we
can become more of who we aspire to be in our emerging view of what it is to be
fully human."
- Peter Bunchanan
as iam not as swift or strategic with the words i choose to say and write, i wish that when i read literature and completely agree with the author's notion - i could just reproduce it. as i believe they have already written it more accurately then i could ever establish.
