Next, the tale by OOIIO.-
In Architecture Land everything was happiness and harmony. Architectural movements through the centuries had built an ideal society, perfect, thanks to the wise use of the orders and the geometries by the architects, well ruled by the all-powerful Design Board.
In Architecture Land the society was organized in four different kind of individuals perfectly ordered and catalogued in work groups: Promoters, Labourers, Users and Architects.
The Promoters where ambitious people and, although they actually didn´t respect The Architecture, they were really important for the society, because to feed their ego was key to keep everything else working on.
The Labourers were the strongest and the most skilled people. They were not big fans of The Architecture, although they love the smell of fresh concrete and Steel when welding.
The Users where those who despite they ad-mire and praise The Architecture, they were unable to speak and communicate with her.
Finally The Architects were the higher class, the strongest social stratum because since the beginning they understood and connected very well with Holy Architecture. They were the only one able to speak with her. This social order was expertly managed by millenniums by the Design Board and its army of Architects. In Architecture Land they lived peacefully and well. There were thousands of construction sites on going honouring to Holly Architecture and her return with work and prosperity to everyone.
On a bad day at Architecture Land the sun never rose up. Nobody was expecting it, nobody knew why, but everything became dark. A ruthless and insatiable crisis showed up covering everything with no warning. Neither the Design Board nor its Architects army realized that the crisis was spying crouched since several months preparing its attack. It was there in front of them, hidden behind the tones of plans of the thousands of projects on going. It laid looking at them, studying them, until it performed its fatal and quick attack.
The news fell like frozen water over the lives of all the inhabitants. There came some crashing and breaking years. The economy went down. Thousands of constructions stopped suddenly, leaving architectonical skeletons everywhere. Huge land urbanized pieces that were waiting to be built were abandoned like a net of streets without city.
The Promoters, in other times loud-mouthed and insatiable felt inexplicably depressed and were walking all over the empty streets with a void look. They did not want projects anymore.
The Labourers who didn´t have anything to build, got weak and lost their vigour and strength. Lots of them died of starvation.
The Users organized themselves and started to fight again the Design Board, accusing them of being only worried in honouring to Holly Architecture, forgetting about the country defense.
The Architects, horrified, at the beginning were running all around without direction and later on started to abandon Architecture Land, falling on the nets of the pirates that were waiting for them on the other side of the border. Only a few of them stayed in the country, living poorly on the lonely urbanized streets, devastated without the noise of their construction sites.
Time passed by and Architecture Land got used to the decadency and the subjugation to the crisis. People survived as they could using imagination and guile. The Design Board was totally crestfallen and the Architects army defeated and divided into tens. No one was honouring Holy Architecture. Only few Architects, in hiding, loyal to their self-steam were doing it on the darkest and lonely corners.
It was actually there, in one of those clandestine sessions when the last Architects decided to get the courage enough to ask straight to Holy Architecture, “God, why have you forsaken us?”, Holy Architecture, with the calm that harmony and order always brings to everything, answered: “when you used to build you were not honouring me, you were honouring the market and the promoter’s ego. I am here to bring protection and refuge to the users, to organize and to cheer up society around the constructions”.
Far away from Architecture Land on those years there were terrible wars. In Architecture Land luckily they were not suffering them directly, but they used to hear news from them and overall about thousands of Refugees that were running away from the wars and looking forward to a country that would host them.
The Design Board decided to occupy the huge free urbanized spaces with those moving crowds: Architects and Refugees, and to fill them up with productivity. To get ready for their arrival, two ephemeral and strategic architectural devices were installed
On one side, a tent hiding behind a Greek temple where they promised work to the Architects and think tanks. This tent was designed to bring back the talent of all the Architects ready to leave Architecture Land. On the other side, a twisting queue was designed to control the strong Refugees who wished to be hosted: the waiting queue.
Architects began the construction of two very high towers and a big central square.
They located the towers on the corners of the vast urbanized empty territories as this was the location from where you could better dominate the place. Those towers were used by Architects for think from there, analyse and design the new constructions, the new buildings to welcome the Refugees and to create the beginning of a new architecture, which would again honour Holy Architecture.
The two towers were allocated separately in the opposite corners of the lands, so then they would be forced to communicate the decisions between both of them through big speakers to the other tower. Thanks to this communication system, the Refugees would be able to follow the decisions that the Architects had made while they were cultivating the lands. If they agreed with the Architects’ choices, the Refugees just carried on with their normal routine. If not, they would run immediately to the big central square to demonstrate. This was how the architectural design became participative.
The big central square was located just in the middle of the empty city. It was designed to represent the current power and over there never it would never be allowed to build a church, a council or a market, there will be only people, a big space for everyone and totally open. The square was hosting the people’s power.
Refugees got the right to cultivate the vast plots of countryside that were trapped by the net of useless infrastructures. After all, those were fertile fields in the past, why not to be so again?
The new society started to feel more optimistic and confident on the possibilities of the new order.
The Architects from their towers, were drawing the lines of what will be the Refugees’ camps. From their high views they could design and imagine how those fields would be filled with future buildings, thin-king of their shape and their shadows.
The Refugees got those vast camps to be productive again. The lonely vacant lots trapped by soulless nets of infrastructures became again the fertile plantations that once used to be.
The Refugees, when working the land, also started to get roots on those terrains, watered now with their own sweat. One day they met all together in it he central square and decided that they would not call again “home” to their devastated original countries and that from now onwards ,“home” would be that place where they could prosper and get a good future.
The Architects realized then about the strong power that Holy Architecture provided them when they were honouring her properly. If they were working for and with the users, if they play properly with the natural light, if they utilized the right amount of resources without wasting them, Architecture will reward them with a much more prosperous and stimulating, social environment, which at the same time made new projects to be needed and demanded every day.
The constructions designed by the Architects for the Refugees were in the beginning meant to satisfy the most basic needs of living and working. They were nothing but a roof under which to take shelter from weather and some buildings to preserve the harvested products and to protect the tilling tools.
As they did not want the architecture of the new and thriving society to be trivialized and a new crisis to devour the market in the future, they decided to protect themselves by monumentalizing the constructions built for the Refugees. All architectures emerged in this new foster city would be designed as monuments.
The Refugees, on their behalf, regarded at these monumentalised constructions with a certain contempt. They could not understand, but the monumentalisation made enormous sense to the Architects. A concealed plan was hidden behind each and every of their tents.
After defeating the obscure crisis, the ancient social groups in which the Architecture Land was organised were little by little recovering, although it would never be the way it used to. Promoters, Labourers, Users and Architects eventually returned to play their part, but the Design Board would no longer be the same.
The Users’ Revolution against the ruling power had made the ancient social order to collapse and to be questioned from top to bottom. People had the feeling that the old politics had failed them, they did not want to fall prey to a new crisis and embraced new leaders who appeared from everywhere promising to live again in a happy Arcadia, even though those promises were not but pretty words with no basis whatsoever, with dubious real application. People wanted change, at any price.
New urbanism based on architecture at the service of society was being so successful that it quickly started to bring great wealth and prosperity to Architecture Land.
Promoters, vanished during the crisis, slowly regained their ambition and enthusiasm, and as they realised the weakness of the ruling power and the social discontent post-crisis, they spotted the opportunity to deliver a coup d’état and take control of the Country.
Abusing the wealth and the new stability, the promoters achieved, without much opposition, to promote construction.
They started by building on the corner sites were the Architects had previously erected the two towers, keeping them from control. Once silenced the Architects, worship to Holly Architecture stopped and from then on constructions turned again tasteless and boring. They did not encourage the people’s social enthusiasm, yet they alienated and pigeonholed people to socioeconomic sectors predefined by Promoters to have control over the value of their own promotions.
The next step was to build on the main central square, once strong and welcoming. This became the end of participative design. Building on this central and emblematic space, Promoters’ message was clear: they now ruled over Architecture Land. A new order had been born.
Honouring Holy Architecture was banned and worship to Markets was enacted as the State religion. That meant the end of Urbanism promoting social cohesion or the environmental awareness. Now constructions emerged regardless of whether the materials were the most suitable or whether the new buildings respected their surroundings. They were built resorting to Excel charts, balancing data. The only interest was that the “product”, as Promoters referred to these new constructions, were sold quickly and profitably.
Labourers adapted easily to this new regime, after all they were not much interested either in adoration of Holly Architecture, but the smell of concrete and steel.
Users, although they enjoyed Architecture, remained unable to speak to her, so they were easily converted by Promoters to the worship of Markets and to anodyne and boring constructions.
Architects, devastated and excluded, could not but to admit their defeat and to adapt to this imposed New Regime. They did too now adore the god of Markets.
And this is how Architecture came to from Architecture Land. This is how cities turned boring and characterless, how social inequalities increased and how a few gathered all the wealth at the expense of everybody else’s work. The environment degraded, causing a major climate change of catastrophic consequences.
When Architecture dies, humanity lives worse.
In Architecture Land everything was happiness and harmony. Architectural movements through the centuries had built an ideal society, perfect, thanks to the wise use of the orders and the geometries by the architects, well ruled by the all-powerful Design Board.
In Architecture Land the society was organized in four different kind of individuals perfectly ordered and catalogued in work groups: Promoters, Labourers, Users and Architects.
The Promoters where ambitious people and, although they actually didn´t respect The Architecture, they were really important for the society, because to feed their ego was key to keep everything else working on.
The Labourers were the strongest and the most skilled people. They were not big fans of The Architecture, although they love the smell of fresh concrete and Steel when welding.
The Users where those who despite they ad-mire and praise The Architecture, they were unable to speak and communicate with her.
Finally The Architects were the higher class, the strongest social stratum because since the beginning they understood and connected very well with Holy Architecture. They were the only one able to speak with her. This social order was expertly managed by millenniums by the Design Board and its army of Architects. In Architecture Land they lived peacefully and well. There were thousands of construction sites on going honouring to Holly Architecture and her return with work and prosperity to everyone.
On a bad day at Architecture Land the sun never rose up. Nobody was expecting it, nobody knew why, but everything became dark. A ruthless and insatiable crisis showed up covering everything with no warning. Neither the Design Board nor its Architects army realized that the crisis was spying crouched since several months preparing its attack. It was there in front of them, hidden behind the tones of plans of the thousands of projects on going. It laid looking at them, studying them, until it performed its fatal and quick attack.
The news fell like frozen water over the lives of all the inhabitants. There came some crashing and breaking years. The economy went down. Thousands of constructions stopped suddenly, leaving architectonical skeletons everywhere. Huge land urbanized pieces that were waiting to be built were abandoned like a net of streets without city.
The Promoters, in other times loud-mouthed and insatiable felt inexplicably depressed and were walking all over the empty streets with a void look. They did not want projects anymore.
The Labourers who didn´t have anything to build, got weak and lost their vigour and strength. Lots of them died of starvation.
The Users organized themselves and started to fight again the Design Board, accusing them of being only worried in honouring to Holly Architecture, forgetting about the country defense.
The Architects, horrified, at the beginning were running all around without direction and later on started to abandon Architecture Land, falling on the nets of the pirates that were waiting for them on the other side of the border. Only a few of them stayed in the country, living poorly on the lonely urbanized streets, devastated without the noise of their construction sites.
Time passed by and Architecture Land got used to the decadency and the subjugation to the crisis. People survived as they could using imagination and guile. The Design Board was totally crestfallen and the Architects army defeated and divided into tens. No one was honouring Holy Architecture. Only few Architects, in hiding, loyal to their self-steam were doing it on the darkest and lonely corners.
It was actually there, in one of those clandestine sessions when the last Architects decided to get the courage enough to ask straight to Holy Architecture, “God, why have you forsaken us?”, Holy Architecture, with the calm that harmony and order always brings to everything, answered: “when you used to build you were not honouring me, you were honouring the market and the promoter’s ego. I am here to bring protection and refuge to the users, to organize and to cheer up society around the constructions”.
Far away from Architecture Land on those years there were terrible wars. In Architecture Land luckily they were not suffering them directly, but they used to hear news from them and overall about thousands of Refugees that were running away from the wars and looking forward to a country that would host them.
The Design Board decided to occupy the huge free urbanized spaces with those moving crowds: Architects and Refugees, and to fill them up with productivity. To get ready for their arrival, two ephemeral and strategic architectural devices were installed
On one side, a tent hiding behind a Greek temple where they promised work to the Architects and think tanks. This tent was designed to bring back the talent of all the Architects ready to leave Architecture Land. On the other side, a twisting queue was designed to control the strong Refugees who wished to be hosted: the waiting queue.
Architects began the construction of two very high towers and a big central square.
They located the towers on the corners of the vast urbanized empty territories as this was the location from where you could better dominate the place. Those towers were used by Architects for think from there, analyse and design the new constructions, the new buildings to welcome the Refugees and to create the beginning of a new architecture, which would again honour Holy Architecture.
The two towers were allocated separately in the opposite corners of the lands, so then they would be forced to communicate the decisions between both of them through big speakers to the other tower. Thanks to this communication system, the Refugees would be able to follow the decisions that the Architects had made while they were cultivating the lands. If they agreed with the Architects’ choices, the Refugees just carried on with their normal routine. If not, they would run immediately to the big central square to demonstrate. This was how the architectural design became participative.
The big central square was located just in the middle of the empty city. It was designed to represent the current power and over there never it would never be allowed to build a church, a council or a market, there will be only people, a big space for everyone and totally open. The square was hosting the people’s power.
Refugees got the right to cultivate the vast plots of countryside that were trapped by the net of useless infrastructures. After all, those were fertile fields in the past, why not to be so again?
The new society started to feel more optimistic and confident on the possibilities of the new order.
The Architects from their towers, were drawing the lines of what will be the Refugees’ camps. From their high views they could design and imagine how those fields would be filled with future buildings, thin-king of their shape and their shadows.
The Refugees got those vast camps to be productive again. The lonely vacant lots trapped by soulless nets of infrastructures became again the fertile plantations that once used to be.
The Refugees, when working the land, also started to get roots on those terrains, watered now with their own sweat. One day they met all together in it he central square and decided that they would not call again “home” to their devastated original countries and that from now onwards ,“home” would be that place where they could prosper and get a good future.
The Architects realized then about the strong power that Holy Architecture provided them when they were honouring her properly. If they were working for and with the users, if they play properly with the natural light, if they utilized the right amount of resources without wasting them, Architecture will reward them with a much more prosperous and stimulating, social environment, which at the same time made new projects to be needed and demanded every day.
The constructions designed by the Architects for the Refugees were in the beginning meant to satisfy the most basic needs of living and working. They were nothing but a roof under which to take shelter from weather and some buildings to preserve the harvested products and to protect the tilling tools.
As they did not want the architecture of the new and thriving society to be trivialized and a new crisis to devour the market in the future, they decided to protect themselves by monumentalizing the constructions built for the Refugees. All architectures emerged in this new foster city would be designed as monuments.
The Refugees, on their behalf, regarded at these monumentalised constructions with a certain contempt. They could not understand, but the monumentalisation made enormous sense to the Architects. A concealed plan was hidden behind each and every of their tents.
After defeating the obscure crisis, the ancient social groups in which the Architecture Land was organised were little by little recovering, although it would never be the way it used to. Promoters, Labourers, Users and Architects eventually returned to play their part, but the Design Board would no longer be the same.
The Users’ Revolution against the ruling power had made the ancient social order to collapse and to be questioned from top to bottom. People had the feeling that the old politics had failed them, they did not want to fall prey to a new crisis and embraced new leaders who appeared from everywhere promising to live again in a happy Arcadia, even though those promises were not but pretty words with no basis whatsoever, with dubious real application. People wanted change, at any price.
New urbanism based on architecture at the service of society was being so successful that it quickly started to bring great wealth and prosperity to Architecture Land.
Promoters, vanished during the crisis, slowly regained their ambition and enthusiasm, and as they realised the weakness of the ruling power and the social discontent post-crisis, they spotted the opportunity to deliver a coup d’état and take control of the Country.
Abusing the wealth and the new stability, the promoters achieved, without much opposition, to promote construction.
They started by building on the corner sites were the Architects had previously erected the two towers, keeping them from control. Once silenced the Architects, worship to Holly Architecture stopped and from then on constructions turned again tasteless and boring. They did not encourage the people’s social enthusiasm, yet they alienated and pigeonholed people to socioeconomic sectors predefined by Promoters to have control over the value of their own promotions.
The next step was to build on the main central square, once strong and welcoming. This became the end of participative design. Building on this central and emblematic space, Promoters’ message was clear: they now ruled over Architecture Land. A new order had been born.
Honouring Holy Architecture was banned and worship to Markets was enacted as the State religion. That meant the end of Urbanism promoting social cohesion or the environmental awareness. Now constructions emerged regardless of whether the materials were the most suitable or whether the new buildings respected their surroundings. They were built resorting to Excel charts, balancing data. The only interest was that the “product”, as Promoters referred to these new constructions, were sold quickly and profitably.
Labourers adapted easily to this new regime, after all they were not much interested either in adoration of Holly Architecture, but the smell of concrete and steel.
Users, although they enjoyed Architecture, remained unable to speak to her, so they were easily converted by Promoters to the worship of Markets and to anodyne and boring constructions.
Architects, devastated and excluded, could not but to admit their defeat and to adapt to this imposed New Regime. They did too now adore the god of Markets.
And this is how Architecture came to from Architecture Land. This is how cities turned boring and characterless, how social inequalities increased and how a few gathered all the wealth at the expense of everybody else’s work. The environment degraded, causing a major climate change of catastrophic consequences.
When Architecture dies, humanity lives worse.
