ANARCHI-TECTURE

Ok, so I’ve been receiving a number of emails about the definition of ANarchitecture and ANARCHItecture. Well I’ll start by giving a bit of an oxymoron in saying what ANarchitecture is NOT. It is not a political pseudonym but perhaps a counter cultural approach to the practice of architecture. The aim is to rework current architectural suppositions to help establish new strategies in design. Much in the way that Gordon Matta-Clark and Laurie Anderson did in the early 1970s. ANARCHItecture (which is the focus of my work) on the other hand strives to combine the principles of anarchy (understood here to mean a form of human interrelationship based upon voluntary cooperation without coercion or control) and the practice of architecture as a cultural discipline. Anarchy and Architecture is more concerned with aggregated behaviors in society and their ability to yield collective results. Many such examples exist. The example which I am currently most interested in is the transmission, spread and global effects of AIDS. These types of behaviors are akin to those found in field of complexity theory, self organization and emergence, to name a few. Anarchy in this case is made to be analogous to the apparent randomness with which things occur at the local level to spurn an organized and cohesive system. More to come, I promise.