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Posted on: May 16, 2017 ! 3 Like 37 3 64

BEYOND BUILDINGS

Neo-Morphism and Woke Architecture

How architecture can be the change weve been waiting for.

By AARON BETSKY

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Courtesy Nelson Schlei

Student work from the School of Architecture at Taliesin

Last week, I wrote about the surreal turn in architecture, which I noticed at final reviews at the California
College of the Arts (CCA). There, San Franciscos Painted Ladies Victorian houses were turned into Shady
Ladies that disturbed as much as they delighted. One student even designed suburban homes with
construction faults that he planned with precision. Another budding designer proposed cladding apartments
in tiles you would normally find on the local subway.

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Courtesy Taylor Metcalf Courtesy Taylor Metcalf

From Taylor Metcalf's "Out of Tolerance" thesis project for CCA From Taylor Metcalf's "Out of Tolerance" thesis project for CCA Plain House

Truth be told, this tendency towards design weirdness is all over the place, and not just in trend-conscious
California, or even exclusive to the United States. If there is one dichotomy that should be evident across the
world of architecture today, it is the push and pull between those who are pursuing social agendas with little As It Was Meant
interest in form or image and those who are delighting in their ability to invent shapes and colors that shock Be: The Restora
of...
and amuse. This tension is renewing the old fight between those who think of architecture as a social and
engineering project and those who think of it as an aesthetic one.
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In realityor, maybe, in surrealitythese position have become conflated in the work of the most interesting
designers today. This is, I believe, because social relations and, therefore, power relations are operating The World's First Smart
through images that surround us nonstop and which are completely malleable. Words are losing their power Street >
or at least their conviction, logic, and singular meaning. Images and forms, however, can evoke or mollify; they
can terrorize or comfort. So you want to be an architect who is both socially engaged and part of the culture in
which we all live, you have to operate by means of such images.
Courtesy Rajah Bose

Rajah Bose's project for "Odd Facades," which was the jury prize
runner up

The projects produced by the students at CCAas well as by our own students at the School of Architecture at
Taliesinare part of a world of Instagram, Photoshop, and Snapchat. Their projects reflect that pop-up, slide-
together, morph-into-each-other, appear-disappear reality more than they do an architectural school of
thought that mandates a particular style or way of working.
Courtesy Lorraine Etchell

Student work from the School of Architecture at Taliesin

Students and young architects work in a surreal way because that is the style of our time. It is a style that
ranges from the fluid blobs of parametricism to the self-conscious raiding of 1980s imagery. With roots in
utopian imageryespecially strange concoctions like El Lissitzkys Cloud Prop, the work of Jean-Jacques
Lequeu, or the more recent images of Aldo Rossi or Lebbeus Woodsthis Neo-Morphism proposes another
world, but one made up of the bits and pieces of our consumer culture and populated by people that the
architects have clipped from popular movies or paintings. David Hockney and Frida Kahlos characters wander
through fragments of grids into which bits of color and consumer goods that would have done James
Rosenquist or Roy Lichtenstein proud appear out of the gray, while humor derived from South Park and Trailer
Park Boys permeates throughout. I think it is telling that my students had movies like Ice Age and Shrek
running on repeat while they were on charrette this spring. This is cartoonitecture, and I do not mean that as a
slam. It is an architecture for those who grew up, and some of whom are still growing up, on shows like South
Park and who take it seriously enough to want to be not just Frank Gehry, FAIA (who appeared in a 2005
episode of The Simpsons) but a Bart Simpson version of him.

In other words, it is one thing to be woke and another to figure out how to make your consciousness come alive
in architecture. And it is art, from the most popular to the most refined, that is the well from which you can draw
ready-made samples of your woke state.
Courtesy Maya Annotti

Maya Annotti's project for "Odd Facades"

To look at this work as critics, or merely as elders, we have to adjust our standards. That is not to say that there
is no discipline to what these kids are doing. Neo-Morphism has all the advantages of Postmodernism in its
fascination with and use of history, but does so without that movements drive toward the making of fake
monuments and insider jokes. Like Postmodernism, Neo-Morphism embraces popular culture, but it does so
with the genuine love of those who do not see the acceptance of their world as an acquired skill. Instead, it is
the students speaking in their vernacular. Taking their work seriously does mean that you have to accept that
these are not necessarily proposals for real buildings. For instance, despite some of the students own
seriousness, there is a large chance that floor plans, sections, models, and images will not add up to a
coherent proposal for a piece of inhabitable constructionbecause they were never meant to. You have to
accept all of these bits and pieces as versions of dierent possible realities, perhaps as dierent versions of the
apps that beg to be updated every time you turn on your phone.
Courtesy Nelson Schlei

Student work from the School of Architecture at Taliesin

All of this brings up the question of what it will mean when these future architects and designers try to become
part of the profession. Will they grow up, calm down, and do the right thing? Or will they keep morphing, both
in their personal life and in their designs? I, for one, am hoping for the latter, and if that means they wind up
renovating existing structures and reimagining them for temporary uses, as is more and more common, and
decorating them inside and out, or just making movies and collages, then all the more power to them. Old
monuments and buildings can be dead and wasteful. Let them be morphed into something that is part of our
continually changing, socially connected world. Neo-Morphism can help us be the change.

Aaron Betsky is a regularly featured columnist whose stories appear on this website each week. His views and
conclusions are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine nor of the American Institute of Architects.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aaron Betsky
Aaron Betsky is a critic and author of more than a dozen books on art, architecture, and design. Trained at Yale, Betsky

has worked as a designer for Frank O. Gehry & Associates and Hodgetts + Fung, taught at SCI-Arc, and served as the

director of the 11th Venice International Architecture Biennale. He is currently the dean at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at

Taliesin and Taliesin West.

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Mark Lymer 48 days ago

NOT ARCHITECTURE, NOT ART, MAY AS WELL CALL IT 'NEO....SOMETHING'

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Cheikh Sylla 55 days ago

I am a practicing architect who started his career as a surrealist artist painter before going back to school
to study architecture. I enjoyed Aaron's piece, but my take is that Neo-Morphism evokes somewhat the
dream-like imageries that have become a rich legacy of Surrealism and the Dada Movement of the early
20th Century. It is gratifying to see architecture students taking a little bit of "risk" to pursue these creative
lines of design inquiry that challenge the dogmatic norms we have come to expect from mainstream
architecture school. While these unbridled design projects may never be built--because perhaps they are
not buildable and not so intended--they have real artistic value as an counterpoint to what we see from
architecture schools and the profession as a whole. So to those students, keep on dreaming, and to Aaron,
keep them coming even if from the wild side.

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Michael Ryan 55 days ago

Thank you for another take on this work. The projects remind me of the "Forever Now" essay that
accompanied the MOMO show of the same name two years ago. I think there is a correlation between this
work and the diversity represented by the 17 artists. There is now reason why this work would be limited to
the ideas realm. Minimalist modernism has permeated the private realm to the degree that homes that
sport this are now used in advertising for wealth management firms as if the dream is to disappear not
unlike and perhaps along with the detailing. It's just not fun(ny) anymore. This work is luscious. Let's build
it.

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