THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CRITICAL PROJECT,APRIL 25, 2005

"On defining “Architecture”, a connotation of spatial organization always emerges

The concept of “space” originally meant “an infinite extension where body-objects float” and, although it later became more complex, more often than not it was only shy and circumstantially broaden the understanding of Architecture to that of an idea of a lived space, that is to constituted by a fourth dimension (time) apprehended through the subjective body.

We can also attest that the current discourse of Architecture remains intrinsically closed to the physicality of space and its phenomenological appropriation. For the rest, if we look up the term “Architecture” in a dictionary, we immediately come upon the reductive idea of “art of building”, and furthermore, the specialized critic stipulates validity mainly on the logics of “actual” construction.
The Architect is then seen as he who conceives the organization and supports the constructions of such spaces for life, provided with individual creativity, when not presuming a disciplinary authority conferred by tradition.

Nevertheless, from our point of view, the architect’s “autonomous-criticism”, that is, the possibility of him and of Architecture “speaking” is very residual.
Both definitions and aspects referred to Architecture, very often present themselves as obvious, but rarely do we ask ourselves if the obviousness implies a conceptual atrophy.
Actually, this implies a certain hierarchy between construction, project and theory that might have been working as motor on the instrumentalisation of the discipline.
In front of this eventuality, it is suggested that the discipline should develop also (among others), a kind of “Critical Project”, destined to continue the never-ending debate on its social role, before a simulacrum of the discipline takes place. Maybe we are already living it, a simulacrum in which theory and project are instrumentialised to serve the world of construction “tout court” (and the spectacular objectives of control, mercantile speculation, etc, which it have sadly assumed) and where any social interventionism fades away in its own institutional ritualisation". (Gonçalo Furtado, THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CRITICAL PROJECT, 2003)