Orthodoxy and orthopraxy

Orthodoxy and orthopraxy

Design methods are split into two categories: proscriptive ones that tell you what is acceptable and prescriptive ones that tell you how to do it. This distinction between orthodoxy and orthopraxy is quite fundamental. One can fine it everywhere, including in religion: the ancient Greeks and Romans were arguably more into orthopraxy (making offers and following rituals) than orthodoxy (developing a dogma).

In archtiecture, proscriptive methods tell you that a classical or modernist building is what you should make. That's what matters and in order to do it, your building should include elements from the corresponding canon. It's not possible to make a classical building without elements from the classical orders.

Prescriptive methods can be seen as a reaction to proscriptive ones: it's not enough to know the final state of a design, we need to know the way to reach it. So, prescriptive methods love algorithms and sequences of well-defined steps. They tell you to do first this, then that and so on. If you're lucky, they also tell you when to stop.

One might be tempted to see proscriptive and prescriptive methods as complementary: by putting the two together, one would have a complete, strong method. However, I fear that any union would bring out the weaknesses of both. Proscriptive methods restrict designing to arbitrary systems and conventions leading to stagnation and frustration. From an intellectual viewpoint, it's interesting how they operate by excluding all other options but adopting them can be quite claustrophobic. Prescriptive methods, on the other hand, tell you too little to feel confident. They often amount to hill climbing: taking small steps towards some local optimum that may not be the best option or even good enough - but then you cannot know that as you move blindly around.

Shifts

Shifts

I just found an old note from a book I'd read in the 1980s (Niels Lund Prak, 1968. The languages of architecture. Mouton, The Hague): architecture symbolises ideal worlds, what people should aspire to culturally as well as materially. Both Classicism and Modernism represent a harmonious system that may contrast with the real world. It is no accident that both stress 'pure' and simple forms from which the rest evolves.

How different the world seems now! Firstly, the dipoles: it used to be Classicism versus Modernism, capitalism versus socialism - always two opposites fighting for a clear prize. Nowadays it's more about pluralism, about all kinds of variations that can coexist (although the latest populist tendencies may put an end to that).

Secondly, the cultural aspirations: architecture has always been about aspiration but for a long time now it has been mostly about the material side. Associations with ideologies, including aesthetic ones, have been weakening rapidly, with lifestyle taking their place, not as a means to improvement (social and cultural) but as a goal by itself. More recently, cultural issues have been promising a comeback, as one can see in the environmental awareness of young people. I wonder how this will turn out.

Thirdly, the 'pure' and simple forms: these no longer constitute the basis of architectural composition and morphology, as one can see in digital architecture. Instead, we are more into complexity, both in form and in the processes that produce form.

Taking all three together, I can't say if the world has improved; it has certainly become less predictable.