Notes on the Philosophy of SITE
James Wines
NOTES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF ‘SITE’
The basic purpose of De-architecture, in both its theoretical and built form, is to explore new possibilities for changing professional and popular response to the sociological, psychological, and aesthetic significance of architecture and public space. With these objectives in mind, the following statements are intended as a summary of SITE’s particular applications of the concept.
Rather than treat art as a decorative accessory to architecture, SITE’s work is a hybrid fusion of both disciplines, with the purpose of eliminating the conventional distinctions between art and architecture as separate entities.
For SITE, architecture is the subject matter or raw material of art, and not the objective of a design process. A building is usually treated as a given quantity, as a paradigm or typology, with all of its intrinsic sociological significance conditioned by habitual use and reflex identification. To completely re-create an architectural type — whether in the form of a house, civic center, or a market place — would, in SITE’s view, destroy its more important associative content. Therefore, rather than impose a totally new design, SITE endeavors to expand or invert the already inherent meaning of a building by changing the structure very little on a physical level, but a great deal on a psychological level.
SITE’s work rejects Modern design’s traditional preoccupation with architecture as form and space, in favor of architecture as information and thought; a shift in priority from physical to mental…
It is SITE’s opinion that architecture is the only intrinsic public art — all others, like painting, sculpture, and crafts, being only incidentally or by conscious choice a part of the public domain. Assuming that this public status implies communication to the largest number of people under the least exclusive circumstances, SITE has chosen to work primarily in the most populated and commonplace of urban/suburban situations.
Traditional architectural iconography has been based on specific symbols which, by continuous repetition, reinforce the institutions they signify. SITE’s imagery is a complete inversion of this legacy — reversing the appearance of institutional security and replacing it with a message of ambiguity and equivocation.
SITE’s work often uses such phenomenological concepts as indeterminacy, entropy, fragmentation, and disorder as sources for architectural imagery. These concerns parallel, from an aesthetic standpoint, the scientific principles, of relativity, dematerialization, and infinity. As an alternative to architecture’s familiar celebrations of rational order, certain of SITE’s structures suggest that a building is conclusive (and most intriguing) at that moment of its greatest indecision.
From all indications, a distrust of technological, economic, and political establishments appears to be one of the few consolidating forces uniting contemporary American society. A responsive architectural imagery, in SITE’s view, should be a reflection of this disenchantment and a critical monitor of these declining institutions.
The term ‘De-architecture’ has been criticized as sounding negative; however, in a world where contraction and short supply will define the industrialized civilizations’ options for the future, negation has become the philosophical equivalent of a new optimism.
In summary, SITE’s philosophy is based on a commitment to the sociological and psychological content of architecture. Without forfeiting the practical needs of shelter, it is the objective of SITE to increase the communicative level of buildings and public spaces by drawing upon sources outside of architecture’s formal, functional, and symbolic conventions.
In a world of disparity, indeterminacy, and change, it has become meaningless for architecture to persist as a celebration of inflexible services or extraneous institutions — and, even worse, as a celebration of itself. We presently lack the cultural estate and unifying ideals necessary to sustain those early 20th-century principles with any degree of urgency or confidence. As an alternative SITE proposes that, if architecture is to regain its status as a meaningful public art, it should be questioned in most of its prevailing definitions in order to become responsive to the diversity, complexity, and subconscious motivations of our pluralist society.