Design Manifesto #2

I want to open this piece with a forward, mainly because I don't want people to think I’m a wanker, but also because this may or may not be an enjoyable read depending on the type of person you are. I wrote this for a class on architectural theory, something that I didn’t think I would ever be innately interested in, until the New School tells you you have to take at least 1 lecture class every semester and “aesthetics” sounds a little mind-numbing. I took a history of architecture lecture 2 semesters ago, and it was amazing! Loved the teacher, loved the course content, and was relevant to my interior design degree. Architectural theory is a very broad theory, if it is really one single theory at all, and it basically is just a discussion about what makes a design a design, and what makes design human. That’s my take from it anyway, 3 months after taking the class. (I don’t remember much of it at all.) I like to write manifestos for my papers because I find it the most easy to write. That may be down to the fact that it’s one of the easiest academic forms to be funny in, but I think it’s also because I get to inhabit a character for a little while, and explain every corner of that character’s thinking. So when reading this piece, bear in mind that I summed all the little pieces of him from hours of architectural theory lectures where maybe some of the people in the class don’t realise how hilariously into it they are. And I don’t mean to make fun of them! I am also hilariously into incredibly niche academic genres of thinking and study. And any of my closest friends will tell you that no matter the context, “hilarious” is a huge compliment.

The architecture of humanity is benevolent and therefore rational and thus our goal is predetermined by the fact of its rationality. Individuality is an open constraint causing discourse and discord, restricting our ability to reach the goal of creation, a one-ness with the universe. Design etiolation completes a directive cycle that then sheds us of the constraint of humanity/individuality, and thus brings us and the natural world back together into a unity that will reach the sublime; or Bataille’s concept of a universal coitus in the Solar Anus (Batailles), thus achieving our purpose on Earth.

Ants learned about efficiency a long time ago. Probably not from a guidebook, or majoring in architectural efficiency, they just did. Human’s copied this, and invented slavery. The divorce it seems, has some unfortunate ramifications.

There is an old architect aging away in a dying practice back in Cincinnati, revered like those glorious old buildings, he is placed between the lawyer and the judge. Suit and tie, black ballroom wedding dance, lobster bisque and cape cod holidays. He sees tiers, hierarchy. His kind invented it, the original categorizers. Restoring ‘right’ in the natural world; by tearing down forests and rebuilding square ones.

The people see great uniqueness in him, individuality. The firm across the street repurposes his buildings and paints them white, placing corian countertops in between a Samsung fridge and Amazon door knob. This firm is rich. Etiolation is the process of all design getting whiter, and more plain and simple over time. Call it a modern look. Etiolation is often spoken in sour tongue, with the rigour and hatred that comes from people who spend their time in it. A movement that is hated, and very successful.

Individuality is humanity, it is what made us recreate the roof, and engineer the pantheon. It is what separates us from nature. Etiolation then, is a loss of individuality, a death of humanity in the realm of design. What makes the act of drawing an AutoCAD file for a renovated brooklyn loft apartment different from the ant in search of a leaf? Etiolation then, is bringing humanity towards a one-ness again. And this is apparent, the pages of streeteasy are flooded with the same eggshell pearl-white corian countertop copy and paste. Do the swallows hear us returning? Or do they see a white millennial architect walking out of a cave holding a Voss water bottle and plans for Brooklyn lofts? Could this be the repair of a long standing divorce? Humans once again rejoining the one-ness? What if all we see in the perceivable light spectrum is a boiled down, boring version of some greater previous super-spectrum? One that was even more glorious and even more beautiful, famed and worshiped in its time? Nature is the natural etiolation of a previous super-nature. The big bang, the creation of the universe, what we know as reality, is the Brooklyn loft apartment of a greater city, superseding our entire perception of what 4 walls really are. Before colour, there were super-colour flowers made with more petals than anyone could calculate. That is the concept of the cycle. A closed rational equation. To crave is to exist with the knowledge of non-existence (individuality), and to hunger is to worship the fact of our existence. We must hunger.

Man is old; Nature: the trees, the bushels, the birds, bees mountains and twigs, are older. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, and we humans take that as a directive. We have doors because owls have nooks in trees, roofs because of the trees, and stairs because of the mountains. The concept of architecture was not invented by an evolved ape, but by nature. Our bricks are bird nests in the organic cities of forests. Imitation is flattery, but nature does not copy itself. It is its own entity; we do not see hills as puny fakes of mountains, but the younger less audacious brother of a dynastic family. And so what makes us copiers? We imitate because we are not. To categorise is to kill, to recognise the fourth wall and space between Mr. Rogers and Ms. Smith watching from Cincinnati. That wall was abolished in the same swoop that divorced us from the coverage of trees, in the pursuit of something “better”. To create rather than worship. We built roofs because we thought of ourselves as better. Due to some random genetic mutations and a lot of seemingly random evolution, our brains forced us to look outside of the cave, and to look at the mouth of the cave itself. With enough time, those cave-deserters started creating their own caves, made of wood and bone and stick and stone. “Shame on you! Apes of the past and your snivelling ways, we homo-erectus choose to imitate you, in a less permanent and more damaging fashion!” Said the proto-architect. We divorced nature out of invented pompousness. Children believe in Santa Claus, they believe in the tooth-fairy, they believe that what is good is right and what is bad is wrong, and that there are magic beings in the forest that take nuts and trade you spells, spells that tell secrets.

The swallow is born, cracking itself out of the allegorical cave and sees itself surrounded by 4 walls of twigs. It jumps off, maybe in a novel attempt at suicide, or maybe because it too can see the magic beings in the forest. That belief in turn, allows the swallow to fly.

Georges Bataille describes the earth and human existence in a way that I will use to build my concept of cycles. Replication is reciprocal, and therefore necessary. If we imitate the earth, the earth needs our imitation. Once this cycle is done, it creates a new cycle, inside the previous one, and that then spawns a new individuality that then is reciprotated by its opposite, allowing for another cycle to be created. Etiolation is the opposite of individuality, and that is why it exists. This cycle must be completed as well to achieve perfection, or the sublime, or the singularity, which using my argument made out of Plato’s rationality of the earth, I will argue is the sole reason for existence in the universe. An incomplete cycle creates discord, and that discord drives us away from unity. Perceived beauty is only balanced by its opposite, perceived ugliness. And this cycle is necessary for the plant, its death starts a new cycle, one that may grow a plant more perfect in the pursuit of the cycle, one that is closer to perfect harmony, without the constraints of implored biology and limitations caused by factors in previously unfinished or seemingly unrelated discourses. Once that plant has reached its peak efficiency, the sublime in the universe will be achieved and Bataille’s universal couitus will mark the accomplishment of creation, and thus its end. “Plants rise in the direction of the sun and then collapse in the direction of the ground” (Batailles) Thus a new cycle will be created. We are born to die, but humanity got in the way, and now etiolation must resolve this discord.

Hyper-individuality, as seen on tiktok, is slowly becoming the top half of an exponential graph. Trends are becoming faster and faster, and the thirst to be ‘your own’ is stronger than ever. The internet has entered the real world, and it has tipped humanity over the edge. The snake is eating its own tail, and will die. The snake must eat, and it has raised itself so far above its surroundings it can no longer even feel the soil. Only itself, and the craving for caviar. Today, the snake does not eat caviar, but its own ass. The need and desire and greed for more means that the snake will soon die. We must eat our own tail to survive. When such a thing should happen though, will the big bang happen once more? Will our etiolation result in a new sub-nature? Of microbial architects working in the internet, designing glorious forest-cities, full of brick-nests? What does death mean, when it is birth anew? Design must eat itself to create, sprawling at first and praised for its apparent glory, only until some over-individuality causes it to turn a corner and find food in the form of its own ass. What is the directive then? To wait to eat ourselves?

Plato writes about the creation of the universe and for the rationality of the universe, it being a product of beneficient energy, and how that therefore implies a directive to the universe, which I will suggest is a closing of a cycle. In Timaeus, Plato writes of the concept of a demiurge, or a divine artisan who creates the universe. This artisan is wholeheartedly good, and benevolent, and means only well in the creation of the universe. The universe must be good, and mathematically efficient (Plato). For one to be true, the other must be too. Goodness then, can be seen as truth, and truth as goodness. And if we are to take anything as true, we must see mathematics as true. And what is more rational than mathematics? We can then see our universe platonically as an equation, put out in truth, and benevolence, for the sole goal of good and benevolence. Benevolence being then; rationality. The universe was created in pure rationality, and thus must only move in the direction of rationality.

in order to complete Bataille’s coitus, I.E. reach (unity/sublimity/perfection/singularity), I.E. solve the question of our existence in a very direct and rational equation we can examine:

Open cycle = discord,

discord = inefficiency.

closed cycle = efficiency,

efficiency = completion.

Etiolation = efficiency.

Individuality = inefficiency

‘Life is good! Life is happy now!’ You might respond. ‘Why change even in the face of uncertainty when cities are still mostly beautiful! Enjoy the time we have! We can work to make design last in its beauty and work towards a sustainable future!’ Frichot warns of the use of words like “green” and “sustainable” in architecture and design because it gives a false sense of hope. There is no real hope for design in the form it is now. Design in its current form is individuality, and etiolation is a movement away from that, giving some sort of answer to Frichot’s warnings. Frichot also warns us of our embeddedness with our ‘environment-worlds’ and how far we can “depend on them” (Frichot). Humanity’s dependance on the natural world is one-sided, and we give nothing back. Therefore that creates an open cycle, that prevents us from the ideal. If we pose a sustainable world with net zero emissions and amazing agriculture and no environmental collapse, that is an ideal. That is a perfect future, however perfection requirably means a closed cycle, and individuality is an open cycle, meaning that that version of future is impossible, at least it is with the continuation of this point; keeping buildings ‘beautiful’ and cities ‘architectural’. Perfection, or the sublime, or the singularity, can only be achieved through a loss of constraints and the closing of all open circles. Meaning that humanity returns in some way to what we were before we became human, or what design was before we gave a name to it. To reach that, we must homogenize. Etiolation: The great homogenization.

In Towards a Posthuman Practice for Architecture and Urbanism? Mathew Dalziel also writes about the plight of the word sustainability, and how with its invention we go further from the earth. An environmental period implies the existence of a non-environmental period, therefore marking the possibility of further separation from nature. To categorize is to kill, and to kill is different than to die. Naming the future sustainable, inherently pulls it from the very goal of sustainability. True sustainability is a plant dying to create a new plant. All things die, but killing is an inefficiency, it is wasted life and therefore individual; to die is to be united. Etiolation is not killing individuality, it is the natural opposite and therefore the necessary ending of a full life. It is the plant falling to the ground. Dalziel also introduces the concept of decoupling, a term not dissimilar to an open cycle:

“When environmental ‘externalities’ began to act back upon us, economists developed the concept of decoupling. The theory of decoupling imagines that it is possible to detach behaviour from consequence, or culture from environment. To resolve the unintended consequences of economic growth, decoupling should, for example, allow us to decrease material consumption and waste while continuing to increase economic growth. While there was an initial enthusiasm for economic decoupling, recent studies have shown that countries that identified as decoupled have in fact been outsourcing problems to other countries” (Frichot).

The obvious downfall of economic decoupling is that if every country does it, it results in total collapse. The same will be true for an open cycle, should there be any left open, humanity will either collapse or be on the road to collapse until it is closed. Rationality must lead on the road to rationality, not hopeless abandon, or decoupling, or individuality.

Design etiolation is the natural and reciprocal movement in opposition to humanity in design. If humanity exists, design exists, and thus etiolation exists. This loss of design, as it is colloquially known, may be the end of design, or it may be the birth of a new cycle. The plant is standing tall, flowers being pollinated by the wildlife, but we are at a tipping point. Will we keep striving for more sunlight, killing the plants around us and uprooting the soil, eventually killing us, or will we fall in the direction of the ground, thus sustaining life around us and completing our goal as a species? What does death mean, when it is birth anew?

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Bibliography

Dalziel, Matthew. Towards a Posthuman Practice for Architecture and Urbanism? Nordic Journal of Urban Studies 2, no. 1 (10 June 2022): 90–96.

Bataille, Georges. The Solar Anus. Éditions de la Galerie Simon, 1931

Frichot, H. Creative ecologies: theorizing the practice of architecture. New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018.

Plato. Timaeus. Newburyport, MA: Focus Pub./R. Pullins, 2001.