THEORY

'text as hairspray

is presented, here, in the form of "FAQ's", or "Frequently Asked Questions".

Not only have I discovered that most of my literary friends dislike computers, but they dislike the Internet even more. This is especially typical of those amongst them who are interested in 'the past' or History as it used to be called. Perhaps this is peculiar to Britain, where anythng new is regarded with disfavour as almost certainly leading to the still further decline of Britain from 'Her Greatness'. As to knowing what an "FAQ" might be, one might as well be sidling up to them with a dirty postcard. Indeed more than one of them dismiss the WWW as a province devoted exclusively to pornography.

This is, as anyone who uses the Web, e-mail and so on, all nonsense. Anyone who knows its history will know of its origin in the intellectual community. Writing too originated in obscure circumstances. The fact that most writing is banal, or that it can be used to encourage crime and tell lies, does not lead to its abandonment by Philosophy!

My own attitude to the Internet, and the electronic text is an almost unalloyed delight. The best thing that ever happened to English was it became the global language. The reason for this is not that I am happy that my own language is 'top dog'. It is rather that being an Architect, I am well aware that English culture is deficient in this department. When compared with Egypt, Greece, Rome, Italy, France, China and even the Ancient Maya, English is deficient in sophisticated Architectural terminology. Therefore the fact that 'Internet English' is fundamentally American in its provenance may be seen as a total disaster by some people, but for Architecture, and Architectural Theory, I see it as entirely benign. American English is English that is spoken by a culture that is not English, or English only in the attitudes bequeathed to the USA by History - the language itself, the legal system, aspects of Protestant Christianity and so on - all qualities receding, in their 'Natively English' form, into History itself. While I have no enthusiasm, at all, in seeing these aspects decline in their importance to America, I myself, focus on the ideas that can be 'brought into' the intellectual culture of this new 'globalised language' from sources foreign to 'Native English'.

The USA, because of its cultural mix, is on the way to becoming the main locus of this 'globalised culture'. But it begins from quite radically opposite origins in an ideology of escape, isolation and radical parochialism. Could anything be more ironic than a World Empire thrust upon a nation founded on a desire to escape from Imperial authority? So, meanwhile, the old Imperial centres displaced by the USA, like Britain, (and especially so because of 'English') have a mediating function that is clearly, for the English, as for everyone else, as peculiar as it is ambiguous and confusing all round. But the fact is that Britain, and especially London, because of the effects of centuries of globalised trade and the radically efficient gathering of utilitarian information that Capitalism requires, is now an extraordinary information resource. The mediation of this diverse and encyclopaedic knowledge, and of the ideas that breed from it, is clearly an important economic resource.

Exploiting it, however, requires that the 'Native English' bestride the problem of supporting their 'Nativeness' while rising to the occasion of 'their' language having 'gone global' not as some merely coded means of communicating 'English Attitudes' (as it was during the 'Empire') but as the vehicle of a global culture that will now receive the ideas of all of the other cultures of the World. English will now be 'imprinted' with a 'strange' (to the English, at least) diversity of ideas. We must strive to ensure that it comes to embody the most excellent of them, and not be at all concerned from whence the ideas 'enter'. The only passport to global English intellectual culture should be the 'technical' efficiency of the idea itself.

For Architectural Theory, at least for theory written in English, the field so extremely open as to be virtually a trackless desert.

After entering the field of ideas explored in these FAQ's the reader may like to rummage in "Innovations: the JOA Toolbox" - which contains Design Strategies and Iconographies.

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FAQ No.1: Critics have called you Post-Modern. Then they all go on to say that you are not Post-Modern. What is your style. Has any Critic ever 'named' your Style?

 

 

FAQ No. 2: Your buildings look complicated and difficult to build. Are they?

 


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FAQ No. 3: Why does almost nobody use coloured concrete except JOA? Is there something wrong with it. Will it last?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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FAQ No. 4: Why are your buildings so colourful and so highly decorated?

 

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FAQ No. 5: Your buildings look very expensive. Can ordinary people afford them??

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FAQ No. 6: Your buildings look very hand-made. Is it not better to use pre-fabrication and factory production?

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FAQ No. 7: What is your general attitude to houses and to housing. How will people house themselves in the future?

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FAQ No. 8: Why do you always make your buildings of brick. Is this not very old-fashioned and out of date?

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FAQ No. 9: You always seem to build the same building. Why is that? Did you have a different style when you were younger, and do you think that you will change ?

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FAQ No. 10: What is your attitude to the Green Movement and to Sustainability ?

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FAQ No. 11: Why do you publish so much on the Web?

 

 

* JOA can be reached by E-Mail at anthony@johnoutram.com , by telephone on +44 (0)207 262 4862 or by fax on +44 (0)207 706 3804. We also have an ISDN number : +44 (0)207 262 6294.