What Kinds of Copies?
- Publisher:
- Anyone Corporation
- Publication Type:
- Journal Article
- Citation:
- Log, 2014, 31, Spring/Summer 2014, 31 pp. 139 - 142
- Issue Date:
- 2014
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As with any other creative discipline, architecture submits to a regime of originality. Operations having in common the recourse to already produced forms, such as appropriation, détournement, objet-trouvé, mash-up, parafiction--well-known critical tools in a wide range of artistic production--still remain unabsorbed and even taboo. While imitation and reproduction are the obvious roots of the last 20, if not the last 600, years of excess architectural shapes, the field of architecture has resisted openly embracing copies, and in so doing has hindered its own potential. It is important to clarify that the intentional copies we are referring to are not references; they should not be confused with quotations or precedents. They do not establish any link to the lost virtue of ancient civilizations and they do not testify to any particular erudition or affiliate copiers with the great masters of the past. These copies are humbler and less re?ned than direct citations; they simply reemploy knowledge that is already available and public. In this context, to intentionally copy entails a radical reformulation of architectural imagination: it allows for the renunciation of form making--since form is defined a priori--to focus on available architectural knowledge yet to be discovered.
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