Does architectural thinking exist?

What do architects and fungus have in common?

You're worth less than you think 1.0

Sophie and her mother are sitting on tall bar stools, watching attentively over a dotted sea
of folding plastic tables, covered with 20 years’ worth of domestic hoarding.
To their right, a gravel path to the street; all morning it has been leading the crowd into the back
yard, like cattle into a corral.
This garage sale will surely be the death blow for the struggling grass.
It doesn’t matter. They have already sold the house.
“Excuse me”, says a man wearing a paisley shirt, with the enthusiasm of a gold panner.
“Over here!” he waves at the lackluster owners, balancing a box on his gut.
“I’d like to know the price of this globe?”.
He points at the dusty deflated ball, who’s forced to retain its raisin-like form by pins on both ends of
the rotation axis.
This globe?
Sophie takes a second peek at the box;
That’s when the nostalgia kicks in:
Her entire childhood unfolds Infront of her eyes, one snapshot at a time, like on an old slide
projector.
This globe is priceless;
As in, it’s worth at least 15 bucks.
“how much would you pay?”, she says smirking.
“let’s see...”, the man pauses to stroke his moustache, meanwhile resting the other hand between his
breast buttons, like a bursting Napoleon.
“I want both of us to feel happy today.
I know you and your mom are going away.
...I’ll give you a full dollar for it”.

We tend to estimate the things we own for more than their market worth. That’s hardly
surprising, for we associate ourselves with the objects we hold; and we carefully nurture our sense of
self-worth.

What about things that we never did own?

 You're worth less than you think 2.0

“ 54 other people looking right now, according to our travel scientists”.

For the same dates as me?
How is that even possible?
You hate this website; but,
you’re planning a long-awaited weekend getaway, and you need a place to stay in Rome.
Here’s an offer you could afford:
Doesn’t look like much… but It’s in the Trastevere neighborhood, that’s supposed to be hip,
according to what you read.
Maybe you could get a drink just under the flat; blend in with the locals… Show off the broken Italian
you picked up from watching La Dolce Vita too many times.
The balcony is fairly small… but just large enough to hold you and him, with a smoke and glass of
wine.
And the kitchen … who needs one! you’ll have the world’s best pizzeria two cannoli’s away.
As you start drifting away into an Italian daydream, a menacing message pops-up:
“5 other people are also watching this reservation – right now!”
What should you do?!
On the one hand, it’s not your perfect choice.
One the other hand, you can’t have anyone else sit at your bar, have your pizza and drink with HIM!
You take the room.

Bottom line is:

we fall in love with what we have or might have, and often lose track of its actual worth.
And after almost five years of ongoing formal studies, that is a very scary realization.

A trip to pigeon Island

A few years ago, I spent an afternoon with friends on the beach.

The sun was soon starting to set and the sea was slick as glass.
About 400 meters away into sea, were a chain of small islands.
On the spur of the moment, a friend and I decided to swim to the one just parallel to us, a stupid call
for land animal like me.
During the first 2/3 of the way the horizon was only getting farther.
It was like being on The Truman’s Show, but they finally installed an infinite pool.
And Then, when you finally feel like the island is at hand, the currents try to pull you away from your
course and into the sea.
It was exhausting.
I swallowed so much seawater I’d probably halted global warming signs for a year.
After what felt like a lifetime, we finally made land.
To the cheers of our friend from far, we climbed on the porous rock, stood tall and waved back.
We looked very cool on the island.
But now what?
We looked around us, in despair.
On the island was nothing but pointy stones and pigeon poop.

With only one year left in architecture school, I have a feeling I’m about to reach that island again.

Toothpicks for real-estate developers

The current state of the architecture profession is like that of a senile person, who
successfully puts up a front when in public, but in his own home, acts entirely delusional.
Architects have no life besides their work;
For which they are badly recompensated.
They practice artistic freedoms within very narrow boundaries;
Because they are seldom picked for their design skills.
Worst yet, they are increasingly treated as toothpicks for real estate developers.
In face of all that, instead of trying to counter the profession’s steady decline, architects choose to
focus on collecting more pieces for their all-black wardrobe.

With all fairness to my teachers, they had never tried to keep it from us.
On the contrary, they were always very sincere about the stress the practice imposes and some even
disclosed their insignificant salary. A few went as far as to advise against becoming an architect,
during an architecture class they were teaching. nevertheless, they were architects and for us they
radiated from importance.
As for the students, we had self-importance: we all landed somewhere on the spectrum between
Howard Roark and Gandhi, in our mind’s eye.
I guess There’s a naive appeal in becoming a tortured artist.
The problem is once you start getting paid for your work, the artist part goes out the window but the
tortured part sticks.

Is Architecture the new Law study?

Every year, architecture schools ship another batch of fresh grad student into the saturated
market.
Young architects are given two options: Either sell yourselves for cheap or stay on the shelf and rot.
Choose neither: you might forfeit it all and restart somewhere else from scratch.
It's not working!
As I see it, architecture is exhibiting the same symptoms that appeared earlier for the study of law.
Hence the probable diagnostic is:
A rapture between academia and the commercial world.
Education keep getting longer and even more strenuous; meanwhile, off the campus grounds,
professionals are taken for a commodity.
This is the recipe for a rebranding of a profession as a "skillset".
Think about all the people you know, who studied law, but never practiced.
They didn’t come to earn a profession; they came to learn how to think.
And that’s what modern architecture schools should deliver:
either change the product (which is hard and risky) or change the label.
We must disassociate architects from being uniquely confined to the work, in the classical sense, and
rebrand them as practising “architectural thinking”. In this way, the architecture community could
regain its lost reputation even if as occupation it is less in demand.
Many formally homogeneous sectors now seek an edge through diversity of employees. This might
put architects in an opportune position. Because, maybe there’s less work in architecture per se, but
there’s a whole world out there to explore.
But what do we actually have to offer?
Maybe we just over evaluate our worth.
Or put differently:

What architects do

My first-year studio teacher was a cliché of what you’d imagen a professor at an art
academy looks like: He mostly wore haute-couture jackets with unassuming snickers; sported a
rugged look, with a silver hair and blue piercing eyes to match.
He would boost his natural charisma by anecdotally revealing his fame as a known exhibition
designer, and quite possibly a cocaine addiction.
In our first class, we all sat down in a circle did some expectation management, unitarily.
Starting from the very basics:
We were all there in order to learn how to become architects, apparently; which was hardly a
revelation.
After having established that, he followed with another seemingly elementary question:
what do architects do?
Construct buildings? You’re in the wrong profession. You’ll learn more about that in the construction
site across the street.
Draw construction plans? Well, yes, an architect makes plans – and, yes, the client laughs…
But, above all, he said, architects make documents.
Thus, began a strange fixation with the term “architectural document”, which he saw as a work that
demonstrates deliberate choice of subject in an objective manner, leading to some new discovery.
Class projects were varied:
From displaying the view of a street, as solely what’s caught on security cameras;
To the alignment of worshipers to the gridded pattern on a mosque’s rug, during prayer time.
Basically, it was an exercise in cartography, à-la James Corner’s Agency of mapping.
It wasn’t fun, but far worst – it was misleading;
Since, architectural documentation of any kind, is only a by-product of the architectural process.
The work of an architect is actually done prior, when formulating the abstract.
It lays in literally concretizing immaterial concepts like society, technology and economy, into built
form.

Let’s consider the conception of even the most banal examples, say kitchens, the spirit they
capture and their social impact.
beginning with the revolutionary Frankfort kitchen, conceived at 1926 by Austrian, socialist, designer
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky: by mapping the movement of housewife’s while they work in the
kitchen, Schütte-Lihotzky realized how flawed the design of the current kitchen was. The problem
was the kitchen layout: the appliances were spread-out in such an insufficient way, that women had
to traverse multiple times in every sequence of actions. This led to the implementation of the so-
called “Work triangle”, which we now take for granted (coined by Christine Frederick in 1919).
However, was the layout the true acute problem that had to be solved?
 Haushalt und Wohnen im Wandel, (Ausstellungskatalog), Gießen 1992, S. 104.
On the left: a problem. On the right: the solution?

Schütte-Lihotzky considers women cooking in the same way Frederick Winslow Taylor looked at men
shoveling coal. Both seek to make the task more efficient, maybe more bearable. No one asks
whether they should be doing it in the first place.
They take an extremely deterministic approach, like debating which is the best way to cook a Lobster.
The Frankfort kitchen (and the likes) help cement women’s role in the household until the 60’s, when
the walls of the kitchen started to tumble. They were shaken by the feminist movement and an
unlikely partner - the raise in consumerism. People wanted to show off their shiny expensive cooking
appliances, and for that you need a clear line of sight, from living room sofa to the backsplash tiles.
Hence, started the reign of the tedious “Open Concept Home”.
It too reflects society as much as it shapes it;
And whoever designs it, also dwells in this ambivalent notion.
Because, that’s what architects actually do:
Intermediate.
They have one leg in the concept world (gender roles, social status...), the other in the physical world
(kitchen size is restricted for one person only, expensive objects must be seen…); then, they try to
pass things from one side to the other without ending in a very awkward splits.

Think like fungus

What is the largest living creature in the world?

Is it an elephant?
Maybe a blue whale?
You better put your pith helmet down and have a sit, because you might not like the answer:
It’s a mushroom. Surprise!

Mycelium Rhizome, Richard Giblett, 2008. Graphite on paper, 120 x 240 cm. Inverted.

In 1998, a team of forest researchers was investigating a mass homicide in eastern Oregon.
Aerial photos revealed bands of dead and dying trees in a national forest under the dreadful name of
Malheur (French for “misfortune”). The prime suspect was of the Armillaria genus, which is known to
attack conifer trees. It’s a pathogenic fungus that weaves hyphae on to the roots and nurtures of
them.
In short, it drinks their milkshake like Daniel Plainview in “There will be blood”.
Forensics were in order: Polymerase Chain Reaction diagnostic - also used to establish parenthood in
humans - was run on root samples, which were collected from 112 victims. The researches arrived at
a conclusive result: All but four of the trees were infected with Armillaria ostoyae, AKA the honey
mushroom. Even more striking: the huge 16,100 hectares territory was divided between only 5
culprits (genets).

How did they know?

A. ostoyae abides the play-doh rules:
If you mix two identically colored doh’s you get a better, bigger chunk of doh. However, if you try to
mix two separate colors or more, you’ll most likely end up with an unusable brown mess.
The researchers grew fungi from the collected samples and checked for Nuclear Migration in Diploid-
Haploid Pairings. If the fungi had identical genetic substance, that originated from the same
organism, they merge to create a single larger fungus. however, if the mixing failed, that means
were’s talking about least two play-doh colors (separate fungi colonies).
Using this testing method, they could determine the extents of each of the 5 different fungi colonies.
They were all big, but one stood out.

To that day, no one had imagined an organism could arrive at such a size.
They had to give it a name, one that alludes to its colossal breadth and stands up to the Malheur
standard. So they called it: the “humongous fungus”.
How big is it?
With a staggering size of 9.65 km2, It’s more than three times the size of the nearby town “Prairie
City” (2.56 km2).
Moreover, considering the spread rate of A. ostoyae in conifer trees, it is probably also one of the
oldest living creatures on the planet, estimated to be between 1900 to 8650 years old.

What is it that allows the honey mushroom to thrive like that?

A mix of good genes, a comfortable habitat but primarily Rhizomatic growth.

A rhizome is not a term that’s unique to fungi.

By origin, it actually comes from the ancient Greek word for “the mass of roots of a tree”.
In botany, it refers to a plant stem that sends out roots, as opposed to a root that sends out stems
(notice I’m omitting many other plant groups to simplify).
It can develop in both directions - from the Root system to the Shoot system (containing stems), and
back - which makes it extremely resilient, virtually immortal.

The reason why a rose dies easier than a bamboo tree is not that it has a more delicate beauty. It’s
because, as a rhizome, the bamboo tree could sometimes mean the same as a bamboo forest. It’s an
entire system, made of dispersed connections, that keeps on spreading.
Nodes (here trees) in this system are both connected and independent. And so, parts of the bamboo
may age and die, while the rest of the organism (carrying a similar genetic value) flourishes.
Hence, in the biological context, rhizomes are virtually immortal.
Adapting some rhizome features into the way you think might not give you eternal life, but it will
make you a kick-ass thinker and problem solver.

Looking at the Rhizome as a philosophy was first introduced by Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari in their book A Thousand Plateaus (Minuit, 1980).
In the architectural world, Deleuze is most known for its influence on postmodern architecture,
giving a philosophical backbone to “Fold” style of the 80’s and early 90’s (Daniel Libeskind, Peter
Eisenman, Greg Lynn etc.). While not exactly a philosopher’s philosopher, his ideas, though largely
influenced by Leibniz, were innovative in the variety of domains in which he applied them. At the
time, it was uncommon for an academic philosopher to engage in subjects that were outside his
professional specialty. This, however, did not stop Deleuze from commenting on myriad of subjects
and even barrowing terms and concepts from one field to apply on another. Case in point: he uses a
Botanical definition – rhizome - and applies it to sociology and cognition. This damaged his
philosophical credibility yet laid the ground for the pop-philosophy we now know (Slavoj JiJak, Peter
Peterson etc.).
The rhizome analogy affirms that Deleuze both recognizes his exclusion from the philosophy club and
feeds it. It is a counter-reaction to the conventional organization of knowledge. Instead of an
"arborescent" structure, moving from a wide base into an ever-narrower definitive top, the rhizome
is always in intermezzo. Themes are heterogenic and interconnected so that they lose any meaning
once disassociated. Moreover, once cut, a branch of the rhizome will either reconnect or create a
brand-new line of thought.

These six points are, in my eyes, the essence of “Architectural Thinking”, if it exists.
But it’s definitely not limited to architecture.
By any stretch, professions nowadays are growing increasingly illusive to define.
The world is full with complexity and multiplicity, like a rhizome. So, give it a go!
Mix and match concepts and domains.
Be a jack of all trades,
master of some.
Think like fungus.

Architects were orchestra conductors, before this metaphor become unusable, after that scene in
the Steve Jobs film (the good one).

in a nutshell
Imagen there’s an unfortunate Gardner, who’s working for the queen of hearts.
He grew tired of painting all white roses red and decided to uproot them. All it takes is a good hit of a
shovel and It’s off with the roses – and possibly off with his head.
He’s life would've been longer if he had protested by trying to uproot a bamboo tree, Japanese
garden, instead.

However, in rhizomatic plants,

Rhizomatic, as opposed to Arborescent (tree-like) growth

If you ever planted a “rhitomazic” plant in your garden, say bamboo, there’s no turning back.

Philosophy used in architecture

Deleuze, G. et F. Guattari Mille plateaux, Paris, Minuit, 1980.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome_(philosophy)

The word “architect” comes from the Greek word “arkhitekton”, which is actually two:
“Arkhi” – meaning “chief” or “master” + “tekton” – meaning builder.
Hence, “Master Builder”:
The story of an underprivileged builder, that raised from the gutters by the sweat of his brow.
He’s the boss now; but, never forgot where he came from.
Very inspirational. Also, very false.
I’d
So, I have a different metaphor:
The difference between the two lays the type of “idea propagation”:
 Taylorism could be seen as the result “natural growth”, because it was developed in the
industrial context, as a part of Progressive Era, and there it flourished for a while.
 The Frankfort kitchen, on the other hand, is the result of idea “grafting” – coupling the roots
of Taylorism with a branch from a different tree - architecture.

Rhizome
But he was more than a building inspector:
he a project manager, requiring an understanding of finance, time and
he was also an engineer,

if there’s such a thing as “architectural thinking”, it means to think like fungus.

There’s to basic approaches or arborescent or rhizome.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsbdev3_033146.pdf

https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/10.1139/x03-065#.XU0uU3tS-To

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3760284?seq=1#page_scan_tab_content
s

This kind of a weekend gold rush has become a national sport at this point, as half the visitors are
dressed in fishing cloths and the other half carry sticks for Nordic walking.
I can already taste the air outside the faculty grounds; and it tastes like smoke.

Yet, the architect’s job and stature has fallen a long way since the glory days of Frank Lloyd Wright:
while all awhile we were suffering, trying to avoid the

along side Fordism Frank Bunker Gilbreth Sr.

The Frankfort kitchen was product of its age, the age of Taylorism
as Le Corbusier
1927 “towards an architecture”
“Une maison est une machine-à-habiter” (“A house is a machine for living in”).

It was a miserable time , the same way army service.