Welcome to the second episode of “DISCORD”, a first-person critique talk-show where two architects with distinct takes on «how to do good Architecture» come together and criticise each others work in a constructive manner.
As you maybe heard in the first episode, I have a fundamental disagreement with what Filipe Magalhães postulates as good architecture but I have great respect for him as person. The show came to be as I wanted to engage in a discussion format with Filipe that would guarantee we would be focusing on the question we constantly pose ourselves “What can good architecture be?” and assure that any criticism would always be regarding projects and not personalities.
The «Epistemic Socio-cognitive Conflict Theory» allows for exactly that. It postulates that when a cognitive disagreement, or conflict, is solved by focusing on a common question and on elements produced in order to address that question, there is an improvement of one’s knowledge of both the topic of the question and of the format of the discussion.
In other words, openly and frankly discussing each others work leads to better projects and to a healthier architectural culture.
The format seems full of potential so I decided to keep it going. Both Filipe and I invited one office to go on with the discussion: Filipe invited Lanza, from Mexico City, and I invited Parabase, from Basel, Switzerland.
The two basic rules for the discussion remain the same:
- Both participants should focus on the overall question of “what could good Architecture be?”
- Each participant has to send the other 3 elements prior to the discussion: (1) a built project, and (2) unbuilt project (both in photos, images, drawings, and text), and (3) a text of their own authorship.
