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Far
from Equilibrium: Essays on Technology and Design Culture
by Sanford Kwinter, edited by Cynthia Davidson
Actar, 2008
The presence of Cynthia Davidson in this collection of
writings by theorist Sanford
Kwinter (Associate Professor of Architecture at Rice
University) may seem a bit strange at first (why not an
Actar editor?), but when one realizes that the bulk of the
collection is culled from ANY
Magazine, which ran alongside conferences and publications
between 1991 and 2001, her presence seems appropriate. Davidson
-- editor of Log,
ANY's successor -- is one of the strongest pieces holding
together the close-knit group of architects and theorists
dealing with contemporary architectural theory -- that sometimes
enlightening, sometimes frustrating, always dense material
that influences academia much more than the profession.
Kwinter is an important member of that unofficial group,
somebody trained outside of architecture (comparative literature)
but somehow pulled into its thralls, perhaps by Davidson's
husband,
Peter Eisenman, the poster-architect for theorizing. Whatever
the reasons, Kwinter's contributions to the field of architecture
theory continue with some fresh material in these pages.
Granted that architectural theory, as they say, ain't what
it used to be, this isn't the place to go into the rise
and fall of the written word and its relationship to architecture.
But with technology, specifically the computer and the internet,
creating a new format of expression (the blog) for anyone
with a phone line and keyboard to, in effect, theorize on
the subject, the cries of the death of theory are far from
true. Rather, like anything, theory is something ever-changing,
not content to sit still and let shelter mags grab all the
attention, even if they get all the sales. For example Lebbeus
Woods is receiving a good deal of kudos for his
foray into the blog-o-sphere, and rightly so, as he
keeps aim on the tough issues, like slums and ethics. But
blogs are not a substitute for books (in my naive opinion),
so the publication of this book of theory is important as
much for its timing as for its content; if anything what's
most striking is the relationship of the two.
Kwinter calls these essays "on technology and design
culture." Given that most of them were written in the
1990's, one would think that technology's hurried pace would
invalidate many of the ideas occurring throughout. Instead
we discover not only the prescience of some of his theorizing
but their roots, reaching back to McLuhan, Foucault, and
Mumford, as if ideas have a timeless existence, and they
find their validity by being proffered in a particular context.
This might be hard to swallow for someone like Kwinter,
who locates his writings in the fast-paced change of technology
and its interdependent influence on design, but it nevertheless
hints at a possibility when the writer embraces rather than
dismisses R. Buckminster Fuller, for example.
Kwinter's "fresh" contributions to this collection
are a series of fold-outs with a few paragraphs of text
responding to a recent building or designer. Many of the
usual ANY suspects are there (Zaha Hadid, Bernard Tschumi,
Elizabeth Diller, Rem Koolhaas) but so are a few surprises
(Cecil Balmond, Abalos & Herreros). These passages are
a welcome respite from the dense theory they are stuffed
between, perhaps aided by the focus on a single building
or architect rather than the abstract realm of ideas or
the world of technology. They also help clarify Kwinter's
position(s), which might otherwise be difficult to discern
amongst the (did I use this term already?) dense writing
he feels is necessary to use.
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