Week 7 Reading - Practice VS Project (Introduction) – Stan Allen

Architecture is a discipline which involves work across a large range of constantly changing factors, from clients, to builders, to budgets. It works within an open environment where every job is different, needing the ability to quickly adapt and respond to many variables on and off the site.  The theory of Architecture has long stood to unite many things within a framework. It brings us to see how over time things change, like the approach taken in discursive practice and material practice. “Discursive practices look critically at what already exists, while material practices bring new things into being: ‘things in the making’”[1].  In today’s society the question is what architecture can do, rather than what it is or what it means[2]. Material practices tend to be ‘agile and responsive[3]’ and ‘tethered to a fast moving reality[4]’. The history of architecture and the many theories that are still relevant today stand as a starting point, however the immense amount of work undertaken ‘simply bypasses outmoded working strategies, leaving the discipline open to new techniques[5]’. Material practices evolve overtime still keeping in mind the traditional architectural strategy, however ‘under the pragmatics of material practice, the fixed structure of the discipline is neither rejected nor affirmed[6]’. These material practices can revolutionize the way architecture is viewed to the world. ‘A material practice is marked by the uncertainty of an ever-shifting reference in the world itself[7]’.

---

[1] Allen. Stan, ‘Introduction: Practice vs. Project’, in Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, (2009) Page 13.

[2] Allen. Stan, ‘Introduction: Practice vs. Project’, in Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, (2009) Page 14.

[3] Allen. Stan, ‘Introduction: Practice vs. Project’, in Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, (2009) Page 15.

[4] Allen. Stan, ‘Introduction: Practice vs. Project’, in Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, (2009) Page 15.

[5] Allen. Stan, ‘Introduction: Practice vs. Project’, in Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, (2009) Page 15.

[6] Allen. Stan, ‘Introduction: Practice vs. Project’, in Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, (2009) Page 15.

[7] Allen. Stan, ‘Introduction: Practice vs. Project’, in Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, (2009) Page 15.