AND WHAT OF PRAXIS?

PAIMIO LIGHT - ALVAR AALTO - AUTHOR'S IMAGE

In this context I use the word ‘Praxis’ to mean, thoughtful, intelligent Practice.  If a Client demands we design a bridge and we react accordingly by designing a bridge that for me is Practice: simply responding to circumstances as presented. However, were we to respond to such a demand through a more expansive frame of thought, we might ask:

Do we need to cross the river?
If we do: where?
If here: how?

Of course the solution might in the end of this process be a bridge, but using the frame of Praxis, we have explored the a-priori potentials of the original challenge.

 

‘When you are up to your arse in alligators, it is hard to remember that you are here to drain the swamp.’

(Anon)

All too often (judging by much of the ‘Architecture’ that surrounds us), the everyday demands of contemporary architectural Practice are overwhelming. Given the exponential growth in the speed of communication that characterises our epoch, these demands will only be amplified over time. Such circumstances afford little opportunity for Praxis to emerge. However, I would contend there is potential for Praxis to emerge from Practice: others have done it!

Some readers will be aware that I have just completed a book: Aalto-Utzon-Fehn: Three Paradigms of Phenomenological Architecture.’ I would contend that each of these three protagonists inhabited the realm of Praxis.

For Aalto it was through his attitude of serious playfulness that freed him to imagine the not-as-yet imagined: encouraged experimentation and the adoption of risk.

Utzon was the Theori: he traveled like the ambassadors of Ancient Greek City-States, and observed and speculated upon that which was revealed to him. Upon reflection, he returned home to reinterpret what we might term primal archetypal conditions in contexts that were distinctly different from that of the origin.

Fehn was the storyteller. In all that he did the narrative of place sat centrally. Informed by the existential and extraordinary myths of his Nordic world, Fehn revealed to us ‘the thingness of the things themselves’.

So each of our three protagonists asked those a-priori questions that informed the development of architecture that in subtly differing ways and means revealed the poetic potential of architecture through Praxis rather than Practice.

At this juncture we might rediscover Plato’s concept of CHORA: a receptacle of becoming: a place in which the as yet unimagined is revealed.  For Fehn the territory upon which Villa Busk now sits represents one manifestation of CHORA. Through the vehicle of Praxis, Fehn allow place to reveal itself to him and through his knowing interventions in-turn revealed the essence of that place to us.

This of course begs the question: How might we move from Practice to Praxis?

In my humble opinion I suggest we might step back and ask ourselves some fundamental a-priori questions such as?

What are we doing?
How do we do it?
Why do we do it?
What are we striving to achieve?

These of course are BIG questions and yet, if we are courageous enough to carry them into CHORA, at least the encouragement towards revelation is present. CHORA provides an empathetic and supportive atmosphere that through processes of structured conversation, allows the answers to those questions to emerge.

CHORA provides a moment of reflection, openness and honesty that inevitably leads onto further conversations that speculate upon future activity that inevitably shifts the Practice of Architecture towards the Praxis of Architecture in a manner that Aalto, Utzon and Fehn would recognise.

I leave you with the words of a client of CHORA:

‘CHORA is like a big intellectual hug.’

Thank you Sam.