FREDERICK DESIGN STUDIO
MATTHEW FREDERICK, REGISTERED ARCHITECT
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Copernicus Goes to Suburbia Space, Sprawl, Society, and the Limits of Modern Thought |
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| "Architecture
is the thoughtful
making of space,"
the noted architect Louis Kahn once said. Indeed, the
quality of our experiences
in the built environment are
determined by the characteristics of space at least as much as the
characteristics of
objects; after all, it is the spaces of
our buildings,
towns, and cities that we inhabit and not the solid columns, walls, and
roofs
that shape them. But if the importance of spatial awareness is evident to the experienced architect, it runs counter to how citizens of the modern Western world are inclined to think. Since the advent of modern thought five centuries ago, the preferred mode of perception and consciousness in the West has been object directed. Space, to the Western eye and mind, is largely a non-entity; it is the objects of reality – its atoms, molecules, organisms, minerals, camshafts, bricks, planets, and so on – that are held to embody its true essence and meaning. It is precisely because of such imbedded notions that extensive formal training in space perception and awareness are prescribed to the architecture student: He has been tacitly trained by his culture to be object aware and space ignorant. Why is our culture object biased? What does it mean to "see space?" How would our lives be different if we -- as individuals and a society -- were spatially literate? How would our government, our economic systems, our notions of work and play, our science and religion, our daily experiences in the grocery aisle be different from what has become familiar to us? In this groundbreaking presentation, architect Matthew Frederick argues that object-based patterns of thought in the West lie at the root of the myriad dysfunctions of our culture – suburban sprawl, urban blight, bloated government, social alienation, growing diagnoses of Attention Deficit Disorder, depression, and other psychological anomalies, the rise of corporatism and waning of a Mom and Pop-based economy, and many others. If you are looking for new ways to understand the many perplexing problems of American life today, you will not want to miss this presentation. Previous venues include the Boston Society of Architects Lecture Series, the Congress for New Urbanism, and the University of Massachusetts Regional Planning Program. Future presentations are currently being scheduled. |