it is great to see Brazilian bio-agricultural governmental agency Embrapa making headlines in the New York Times due to their research on tropical crops and the savana (cerrado) soils.
but wouldn't it be great to have the same succesful combination of research, profits and the common good in the built environment also?
i am absolutely convinced that we have the expertise and the demand, but somehow our research efforts all end up collecting dust on shelves and drawers.
how could we change that?
About Me
- Fernando Luiz Lara
- architect, assistant professor at the university of Texas at Austin, strugling to keep an architectural practice in Brazil, interested in many things from housing and modern architecture to soccer and single malt
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1 comments:
I think there is a movement within many professional domains towards recognition of the value and importance of applied and original design research. This is tied to the expanding importance of 'design thinking' in just about every major knowledge-based field.
Unfortunately, traditional designers of the built environment, professional or academic, are no longer at the forefront of this fast expanding movement. And that is a FACT that should worry EVERY educator and employer within our discipline.
The trend towards professional isolationism, which almost seems a genetic predisposition, and is evidenced in the profession's ongoing inability (or refusal) to bind researchers and "designers" together (at gunpoint if necessary) at the academy is a root cause of the decline in influence and relevance of the profession of architecture.
In essence, we are becoming less of a profession in the 21st Century sense of the word and instead are clinging to an ancient, tired, and ultimately self-defeating identity.
How can we change this? We can start by refusing to allow, from this point forward, any suggestion that 'design' is limited to formal expression and must be couched in much broader terms. We can start by burying the ancient dogma that separates telos and techne and replace it with an holistic and integrated view of design, designers, and designing.
We need to reach outward...not inward.
Just a thought....
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