Co-Adaptation 15

The third hurdle is the architecture contractual apparatus itself. The architectural contract, perhaps ultimately derived from Alberti’s notions on the division between thought and action, can only deliver a static object. A fi nite set of documents in fi nite delivery time, garnering a singular decisive act.

To be able to truly author processes, the contract must be drawn out to allow for future infl uence, operation, or even revision. This entails an increased intimacy between client and architect. It means a higher level of trust, and a prolonged relationship, the ideas of which most on both sides would probably blanch at. However, clients would benefi t from increased attention and higher quality of service, and architect’s would not mind the more stable work. Of course, this entails that the architect is capable of making and admitting mistakes, which can be precarious in the current model. However, altering the contract means that both the client and architect know more about the other’s intents and are therefore on the same page and ultimately the same team. A symbiosis rather than a partnership based on necessity.

Conventional professional relationships and traditional ideology have left us with a spatial construct many have dubbed ‘suburbia.’ It has become fashionable, or even traditional, to deride suburban sprawl as inherently evil, but there is a darth of constructive thought and intelligent action aiming to ‘fi x’ it. We all know what the problems are, but few have posited viable solutions. Could it be that this is a problem that architecture, urban planning, and landscape design are too small to address? If ‘suburbia’ is outside the jurisdiction of those most suited to ‘fi xing’ it, then who is responsible?

Rather than utopian pipe dreams, or yet more negative cynical ‘junk-theory’, a series of intelligent, non-biased, design-as-research based projections could fi ll a void and fuel architectural thought for the next fi fty years.