24 Aphorisms for the Occasional Student of a Consumerist Architecture . . . or the last waltz by the passengers of the Titanic
copyright 1996, Osvaldo Valdes; The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI Arc), 1998
Reprinted by permission of the author (2001).
1- Architecture originates with a disappointment in the provisional.
2- Small budgets modify ideological alignment.
3- In the province of inspiration, logic is peripheral.
4- Less is more cheap.
5- For financial achievement, artistic aptitude is superfluous.
6- If we cannot convince each other that architecture is spiritual, surely we can agree that it is valuable.
7- Contrary to appearance, some buildings are aesthetic statements.
8- An ever present danger: at any minute, the whole thing can turn into real state.
9- Certain factions endorse rhythmic repetition as an indispensable ingredient of architecture.
10- The conspicuousness of the picturesque is inversely proportional to its importance.
11- The monumental, if not obsolete, is expensive.
12- Expressive architecture is like... money in the bank.
13- There are those who maintain: "...deconstruction is not a style".
14- Contradictions in design, validate criticism.
15- Transgressions of taste are theoretical suicide.
16- In the realm of the personal there is no architecture, only taste.
17- Architectural research is an amusing little story.
18- Architecture, no matter how radically proposed, is always a socially sanctioned event.
19- In Architecture, rationalization is the price of aesthetics.
20- Political disposition is the root of all aesthetics.
21- Order is: easier to market than disorder.
22- It is questionable if mechanization has improved the look of architecture.
23- Architecture should only be proposed as a form of poetry. Caution; for this, you may need to be a poet.
24- To embody the highest expression of capitalism, architecture adapts.