The ensuing sagacious discourse was compiled from fragments of e-mail correspondence between two architecture students during academic year 1997-1998.

T.P.: dude, how's that thesis coming along-make sure your columns have the right amount of "anthsis" or whatever you call it. make sure the flowery scrolls of the capital are symmetrical. make sure your cornice have enough dentals on them. make sure your pediment have the right slopes. make sure you befriend future elitists who live on Long Island so some day you can detail their classical bathroom tile pattern. Make sure you tell Leon that Prince Charles says hello.

GSD offer me a teaching position in Fashion Theories

i got you a job as model maker Ethan Allen Furniture Design Dept.- how's $20,000 a year sound. you better take it now, or some other classiest will snatch it right up.

M.D.: isn't ironic that modernism was initially conceived as anti-elitist, even Marxist, and now its' proponents are in fact a tight group of cultural elitists who disdain the architectural tastes of the common lot, which, wouldn't you know, are much in favor of traditional building forms? If urban design juries were democratic, open processes, rather than closed elitist indulgences, Thomas Mayne would never win a major competition. face it pen. you can't seriously argue that avante-guardism is not now elitist. average joe (for whom you seem to express sympathies, at least superficially) wants traditional, recognizable, legible architecture. and though you profess to believe that this architecture is more costly, and therefore more elitist - I challenge you to prove it. when you factor in the long term costs of servicing a building without load-bearing walls - whose HVAC costs are necessarily astronomical, and whose endurance (roof, envelope, detailing) has proved laughable (compare service cost of buildings built since 1950 vs. buildings built since 1850) the discussion is moot. and to fixate on semantics (capitals, ENTASIS, is to hide from the real issues behind a smoke screen of FASHION.) Give me any vernacular/traditional architecture, western, eastern, south American or African over your eisenman/mayne/corner monstrosities. In short, WE are the revolutionaries and YOU are the ESTABLISHMENT. And TIME, HISTORY, ECOLOGY and MORALITY are all on our side. Better practice up on your ionic compositional rules,' cause by the time you get out of the GSD the revolution will have been won.

T.P.: You can forget wasting your time fucking around with Albany, and work on some real commissions! Tell your thesis advisor to fuck off- tell him that you don't need his stupid crap. STOP manually inking shit that no one, not even yourself, in a year will give a fuck about. Submit your third-rate Australian Competition scheme, and call it the day.

from the sagacious one.

M.D.: A man who is fashion-fixated is perplexed by the man of principle. a myopic interpretation of events is the only view accorded to such an individual. Indeed, my excursus albanius may be shelved by fashionable minds, even before the ink is dry on the mylar. However, when the current shoals of stylistic nihilism, to which you subscribe so sagaciously, no longer grip the fickle imagination of the 'avante guarde', who, must we now admit, is nothing but little bourgeois minds decked out in alternative drag, and parading about as if they really felt all that nausea and despair? Get with the game, Pen. History is not kind to perpetrators of mere fashion. Architecture without principle is not Architecture. It is some large scale derivative of abstract-expressionist sculpture, with which the rest of us have to live. Your dead-tech-nihilism-tshumi- cum-derrida-cum-deconstructed Neitzche (poorly deconstructed, I might add) is already done, washed up. we now wait breathlessly for the next great high-tech fashion to sweep the periodicals, etc, etc. oh yeah - that third rate Australia scheme? we can only ponder what would have transpired if the powers that be were not themselves closet fashionistas clothed in the garb of the ancient regime, shamelessly masquerading the forms of the gods for the banal tastes of a vulgar and fast-food culture.(and I use the term culture' with excessive licensee)

the truly sagacious one.

T.P.: dear truly sagacious one, Fashion may carry some unwarranted connotations, but a true sagacious mind must understand humannature, and the cycles of events and desires we have repeated throughout the history of mankind. What is it to deny such fundamental principles-that man's political and economical environment change, man's technology change, therefore man's taste will vary apropos to the given environs. A truly sagacious one should know that an Architect's role is not one of "god like" supremacist attitude, but rather a server or a teacher of mankind. Architects and all other artists alike, whether consciously or sub- consciously create art and architecture directly reflect the state of their time and conditions. And this is why we study the History of art/architecture, there is something fundamentally so right about this concept. In fact, your unfounded ideals indeed also reflect the present state, you are a part of a movement headed by Prince Charles, who is neither an architect nor a member of the democratic society.

dear the truly sagacious one, you are no longer, your most blurred and myopic visions crumble like the Parthenon, we preserve what we can, but when their time is up, we must start anew.

the truly sagacious one

M.D.: whats this? signs of life..? did it really take 2 weeks to craft this enthusiastic if mis-guided response? either way, a delight to be engaged thus! NO 1. fashion is of course related to an intrinsic human desire to be relevant, of the moment, part of a significant new phenomena, with this I have no quarrel. However - I would counter that more significant than that which is transitory, fleeting and ephemeral to the human animal is that which is none of these - that which is permanent, unalterable and fixed - that against which one may reference one's own position in the cosmos (the objective of culture - a map of symbolic codes which locate a people within the perpetual flux of space and time)

ARGOT the environment which the human animal constructs must allow him to dwell within it - that is, understand it as permanent, fixed, and unalterable, relative to the normative condition of transition into which he is born. He may fashion the surfaces of his dwelling with latest articles of controversy or delight, but in order to satisfy his profound necessity for dwelling and spiritual/cultural 'home' he must maintain the structural (spatial/conceptual/scalar/tectonic) integrity of the dwelling place a true servant of mankind would recognize this as the role of the architect/city-builder. One who pursues fashion serves only himself.

NO2. why we study history. your logic is flawed. your fist statements argue for the moral imperative of fashion and the virtues of the zeitgeist as a source of form. these statements are born of historicism, the conviction that there is no correlation between historical epochs vis-a-vis that which matters most to the human animal. in other words, technology, politics and circumstance have so changed human nature that our capacity to understand past or distant cultures is impaired to the point of illegibility. Translation, as a conceptual or compositional strategy is an impossibility. By this logic, the study of history is a complete waste of your valuable time. Instead you should be studying the marketplace or popular culture, to determine where the next relevant impulse might arise, representing the spirit of the Age.

NO.3 Your statement chastising the 'godlike' effrontery of architects is dinengenuous. this is revealed by your later statement which shows contempt for the Prince, who, god forbid, is not an "architect". Take a candid look around you. look with human eyes at the world that"architects" have created. We are a profession in denial. Until we can admit the complete and resolute failure of Modern Architecture and Planning our profession will continue to be marginalized. Thank goodness the Prince is not an architect. Otherwise his vision might be clouded by the high-tech fashion impulse that has blinded the rest of us to what is truly important. And finally - when democracy and the marketplace perpetuate cultural, ecological and political suicide are they still virtues/ideals worthy of our reverence?

Sagacious III.

P.S.

Thomas Mayne from morphosis was here last week......to the general discomfort of all involved, I asked him about the alleged anthropomorphic sources of his work.....a brilliant discussion ensued....the demise of western civilization....industrial gothic.....piercing, tattoos and pulp fiction....all that nihilistic shit you claim is nothing more than 'diversity' - face it pen! its a celebration of death itself. human futility, chaos, fracturing, death. admit it! LA is a nest of evil and death!....you think I'm kidding... .