Almost everything that can be said about architecture has been said. The topic of architectural experience and its meaning has been exhausted at least, if not its evolving material, assemblage, and professional practices. Evidence for this statement consists of the thousands of books and journals and films and lectures and critiques collected physically and digitally in libraries all over the world and representative of civilizations spanning the globe across two millennia and beyond.
Inert data rallied as evidence, however, are capable of supporting more than one thesis. The facts must be interrogated. Why, for example, have so many books and journals and films and lectures and critiques regarding architectural experience and meaning been produced? Why, if everything of consequence has been said, do people continue to say and write on these topics? Two answers appear reasonable: A) the truth has been published, and authors and filmmakers and teachers simply want to repackage old ideas in order to highlight what was correct in the morass of wrongheaded nonsense or to rebrand the content to make a bit of a name for themselves or both; or B) there is a suspicion that the roots of the power of place-based experience remain allusive, and intrepid authors and filmmakers and teachers are eager to plumb the depths of architecture and humanity to find the truth, or truths, of architectural meaning. Shorthands for these explanations are straightforward: A) all the substantive ideas have been recorded but can always be presented in better, or at least in more marketable, ways; and B) nothing definitive has been said and the search continues.
As summaries of motives, these two accounts accord with the internal beliefs of a vast majority of those speaking and writing and filming on architectural experience and meaning, past and present. There is a human urge to discover or clarify and claim. And the two statements are satisfying. They appear to cover the full range of logical possibilities: either the truth has been spoken or it hasn’t. If already spoken, it can be improved upon or it can’t.
There is, however, one other camp: those who have stopped talking about architectural experience and meaning altogether. Admittedly, it is possible to divide this camp into those who believe that everything of value has been said as well as it can be, and those who believe the search has failed and its continuation pointless. These writers and thinkers constitute one group insofar as they agree it is time to abandon these issues for more fertile ground, a ground they tend to seek in new materials and assembly methods or project delivery models or alternative forms of practice.
It appears there are four broad positions relative to architectural experience and meaning. Quickly rereading the few hundred words above, there are those who continue to write because the truth has been discovered but has not been stated well and those who continue to write because nothing of consequence has been said yet and those who have stopped writing because it has all been said sufficiently and those who have stopped because they deem the saying impossible. While these descriptions are breezy to the point of bordering on the superficial, it is easy to imagine the field is either exhausted or dispersed in these four positions. But these ideas and all the details and variants that could be elaborated are manifestations of one core belief: that there is a truth, an underlying psychological and sensory ground that either can or cannot be stated, that can or cannot be discovered by humans in our present state of development. This underlying belief is significant. Everything that has been said about architectural experience and meaning assumes this. And, as a result, everything that has been said is mistaken.
Architecture is Fiction 