Originally / August 11, 2022 by Johnson Favaro

Originally, artists and architects esteemed imitation. Historians know this from a variety of Greek and Roman sources such as, for example, the writings of the Roman educator Quintilian (b. AD 35) who in his Institutio Oratoria (Education of an Orator) states: “there can be no doubt that in art, no small portion of our task lies in imitation, since, although invention came first and is all-important, it is expedient to imitate whatever has been invented with success, and it is a universal rule of life that we should wish to copy what we approve in others.”

Innovation Envy / July 7, 2022 by Johnson Favaro

In our time innovation talk seeps into every corner of our world from popular culture to education, elementary through university. We celebrate the innovators--the Apples and Teslas. Innovate or die is our mantra. But what is innovation, when, and how does it take place and toward what end? How might we receive and apprehend the value of innovation in technology, engineering, or science differently than we do in art? And where in the practice of architecture (engineering and art) are we in most need of innovation?

Room for More and Never Enough / June 21, 2022 by Johnson Favaro

The nursery school model of the workplace that the guys at Google introduced to the world a quarter century ago may finally have exhausted its novelty. It was supposed to usher in a new era in how we think about work and the workday, collaboration, innovation, and creativity. It spawned the term “creative office space.” It was according to Google’s straight-out-of-college founders modeled not so much on the nursery school play yard as it was the college dorm (obviously) although like a play yard there are few rooms to speak of and instead mainly areas for computer stations, snacks, and playing around.

Petrified / May 13, 2022 by Johnson Favaro

We employ preservation tactics to preserve personal memories and soothe nerves. We want to petrify our environments because we are petrified.

Minimalism, More or Less / December 17, 2021 by Johnson Favaro

Mathematicians and scientists search for theories and equations in which physical properties and their relationships are explained with the fewest words and symbols. Pythagoras neatly formulated how to calculate the length of a triangle’s hypotonus as the square root of the sum of the squares of its two sides. Copernicus offered a path to our understanding of the seemingly confounding movement of planets in the night sky with the simple assertion that the earth rotates on an axis and it and the other planets rotate around the sun, facilitating Kepler’s subsequent succinct explanations of planetary motion.

Maximalism, A Maxim / November 15, 2021 by Johnson Favaro

Most of us intuit that it is within the brain that all our thinking takes place, where our minds, the feeling of a self, the experience of our own existence resides (“I Think Therefore I Am” as Rene Descartes put it). But we now know that our brain and our mind are not the same even though we, the descendants of the Age of Enlightenment, tend to conflate them.

In 1998 the scientist/philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers published a short paper in which they introduced the concept of “The Extended Mind” by which they meant that the generator and receiver of thoughts and feelings that we call the mind locates not within our brains, but within our environments. Our minds in their words are “embodied, embedded, and situated” meaning residing within and throughout our bodies, our relationships (with other people) and our physical settings.

Traditionalism and the Poverty of Our Thinking in the Theory and Practice of Architecture and Urban Design / October 22, 2021 by Johnson Favaro

That we need to better care for our environment seems self-evident, but environmentalists are not my favorite people. That anyone faced with an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy should discern for themselves how best to handle their situation with respect for the lives of everyone involved seems right, but pro-life and pro-choice activists are annoying, as are gun rights and social justice activists. While certainly at the right time and in the right place, activism can be occasionally effective (1960s civil rights) - it has never been our thing, ideology even less. We’re more into ideas and action-- theory and practice.

Nihilism and the Poverty of Our Thinking in the Theory and Practice of Architecture and Urban Design / September 24, 2021 by Johnson Favaro

Toward the end of an interview with a kid recently, we asked, “who are some of your favorite architects, dead or alive?” with the caveat that there was no right answer. We wanted an understanding or feeling for his point of view, what he valued in his education and work. His response was “hmmm, no one’s ever asked me that question” and he could not answer it. Steve and I thought and did not say: “Really? There is no one you can think of (and really no one has ever asked you)?” His answer would have been, it appeared, a resigned “no.” No need to ask or answer, the sense of defeat was palpable.

A 19th-century German philosopher first named such a state of mind, one in which there is nothing of value or to value, nothing to live for, just sustained apathy. He called it “Nihilism” and he was Friedrich Nietzsche. The idea was, like German romanticism, melodramatic, but to not miss his point he was talking not about an individual’s state of mind, but rather a collective state of mind, meaning not individual but shared values. It was possible, he thought, that a group of people (a state or nation) could be made up of individuals with individual values and live in a state of nihilism--no shared values, little to nothing in common to live for, no sustained vitality as a society.