Assemble’s Folly for a Flyover (2011) © Lewis Jones
Architecture is the most contingent of the arts. A painter or a poet, a musician or a novelist can, with even the most meagre of means, begin to create. Buildings need clients and sites, they need planning permission and approval from neighbours, they need engineers and construction crews. And, most of all, they need money.
Architecture is consequently more intimately involved in the economic cycle than any of the other arts. But there is also a curious paradox. Much of the worst architecture emerges from a boom (think of Dubai) when there is too much work and not enough reflection...
The retreat from practice has traditionally fostered intellectual advance and new movements.But, in recent years, an intriguing trend has emerged: architects frustrated by a lack of opportunity to build who, rather than retreating into drawings or text, have formed multidisciplinary practices to build their designs themselves. READ MORE >>
via www.ft.com
