ARCHITECTURE NEVER SETTLES.

I utilize and embrace various experimental, explorational, and experiential trajectories in my own career, as well as in my pedagogy. These expose paths towards design processes and career choices based on a curated set of contextual manifolds comprised of elemental data points calibrated for optimal resolution. The trajectories ensure the opportunity for maximum choice at each landing point. Optimization occludes “the right answer” for the inclusion of “the best possible conclusion”. Manifolds lead towards value sets. Calibrations allow for shifting circumstances.  

Manifolds, or Architecture is curated value.
manifold: a collection of points forming a certain kind of set, such as those of a topologically closed surface or an analog of this in three or more dimensions.

Manifold Foundations
In mathematics, the term manifold refers to a collection of points forming a certain kind of set. The term manifold in my pedagogical context is intended as a metaphorical collection of data, influence, implication, or impact forming a set of values forming a certain context. Our manifolds become intrinsic to our design processes and are applicable to any given project. I’ve chosen to use the term “manifold” due to its immediate spatial connotation when understood within its topological usage, a locally Euclidean closed topological surface.

Architecture is a material manifestation and, eventually, an archaeological record of the world’s intangible forces – or a collection of points forming a certain kind of set. The intangible forces are comprised of multiple types of manifolds strewn across and stacked upon what we understand as civilization’s progress. Cultural manifolds, political manifolds, societal manifolds, environmental manifolds, economic manifolds and so on - each comprised of their relevant set of data points and extents - make up the definable borders of developed history (non-fiction), present circumstances and conjectured perceptions (parafictions), and projected futures (fiction). An architect’s experience of these multiple manifolds, considered and curated, ultimately adds up to define the shapes and boundaries of the architect’s values, and when applied to a project, the architect’s personal values manifold must collide with and mitigate the external contextual manifolds to chisel out the boundaries of a material solution. This is our entry into humanity’s manifold of shelter, spatial organization, material expressions, and technologies, i.e., Architecture.

Manifolds in Pedagogy
Students enter Architecture with their own inherent contexts and experiences, each student’s manifold different from the next. Stepping into their architectural education, students are faced with a landscape of novel and disparate pedagogies that, when made aware of the necessity of personal agency in their own development, become malleable topologies upon which students experiment and boundaries against which students test limits in finding their own value sets, or manifolds, in architecture.

In my teaching, I make it clear that it is within the students’ hands to construct their personal collection of manifolds with curated limits able to be applied to projects as their foundational launching pad for any given project. The design problems with which I challenge students are constructed with sets of either clearly dichotomous struggles or nuanced contradictory conditions requiring resolution. Each dichotomy and each slight complexity are presented as opportunities for researching the empirical data filling a manifold, as well as the moral or ethical limits defining the potential boundaries of a set of values. As design decision stacks upon design decision, students develop the process of defining their personal manifolds.  These manifolds, however, will not be complete by graduation; and this is how it should be.

Trajectory, or Architecture never settles.
trajectory: a path, progression, or line of development resembling a physical trajectory

Trajectory Foundations
Architecture never settles. Architecture, its pedagogy its practice, are part of a disciplinary-wide manifold from which trajectories are persistently departing towards the next obstacle after each resolution. These trajectories are arcs of conceptual movement towards optimization in the design of process, and ultimately the amalgamation of a collection of architectural work.

 Those that make occupy a significantly higher percentage of humanity’s cultural value than that which is made. In a society focused on the hyper-consumption of made objects, it is dire that students understand that those that make are the accelerators of architectural discipline, thought, imagination, experimentation, and innovation – not that which is made. These disparate accelerations yield collisions between which are unique trajectories that each student of architecture define for themselves throughout their relationship with the discipline. Through the evolution of an architectural career the trajectories do not settle. Rather, these trajectories intersect at points of rationalization that immediately switch to points of departure for an exploration of the next irrationality.

The discipline of architecture - its culture, so to speak - should not allow idleness, for idleness breeds complacency. This is architecture’s most immediate reflection of its users’ cultures. Cultures do not settle; therefore, their architectures do not settle - the trajectories persist.

Trajectory as Pedagogy
In this pedagogical framework, the process, as an intentionally designed system, is the most proximate component of design to the student. Built form, is at best (ap)proximate, or, toward proximate, relative to the student, and many professional architects. This notion situates a definition of the term architecture directly into the students’ hands. By understanding process as an architecture in and of itself, independent of any singular built work, students are allowed space to construct their individual approach to design as a thread extending between projects, from project to project, as a networked web - a simultaneously emergent and mapped set of trajectories that continuously defines, calibrates and optimizes their own design philosophy through shifting landscapes.

In teaching, I encourage students to analyze these trajectories they take through the irrational towards the rationalized to productively synthesize their processes. In this philosophy, it is important that the students understand process as that which makes, as the precious element, and as the architecture that is most immediately adjacent to their own hand. 

Optimization, or Architecture is not correct.
optimize: make the best or most effective use of

Optimal Foundations
Correctness connotes conclusion, but architecture must be inconclusive. The emergence of architecture is a calibrated optimization of material, political, cultural, and societal manifolds of development interacting through trajectories stretched between relevant contexts. It is the calibration of these trajectories that yields the measured, allotted, etched, patched, strewn, scattered, clad, planted, excavated, lain, piled, and otherwise manifested architectures across the grounds upon which civilization simultaneously defines itself and evolves. These manifestations accumulate as a recording of humanity’s various relationships with its environment and within itself.

 There is perpetual and functional flaw built into this symbiosis between human and shelter. It is the precise function of this flaw to continue the dialog between humans and their places of shelters, and for humanity to project these sites of aggregation forward temporally to accommodate unknown scenarios beyond the immediate need. The relationship between humanity, its present desire, and its unknown fate can at best be resolved through processes of optimal drive.

Optimization in Pedagogy
Often students are shackled to ideas of absolute validation found by formulating the correct solution. Even when this is not the case, there is the specter of indecision that haunts a student’s progress in a project. While an architectural education’s role is to incorporate knowledge of various relevant subjects, my approach to a student’s development over the course of five years prioritizes developing a design process that ensures confidence in decision making. I teach that good architecture is at best the optimal resolution to complex sets of forces originating from disparate contexts; societal, cultural, economic, political, material, and more. Optimization as solution is a new concept to many students. A focus on the development of design processes that aim towards optimized solutions as opposed to correct solutions is a tool that students can utilize to build confidence in their decision making.

Onward
In teaching students and in my own learning, I embrace experimental, explorational, and experiential trajectories to illuminate diverse paths in design processes and career choices. These trajectories maximize choice at each point, focusing not on “the right answer” but on “the best possible proposal.”

 In this context, “manifolds” represent curated collections of data and influences that define the values driving architectural decisions, adaptable to shifting circumstances. Design challenges presented to students emphasize resolving dichotomies and complexities, fostering the development of their value sets. The concept of “trajectory” underscores the dynamic, evolving nature of architecture. This perspective allows students to construct their approach to design as a continuous, emergent network of trajectories, defining and refining their philosophy through diverse experiences. Optimization, in this framework, shifts focus from seeking correctness to achieving the best possible resolution of complex, intersecting forces. The ongoing objective is to cultivate an adaptive, resilient design philosophy that evolves with each new challenge.

 With this understanding, I challenge students to define architecture’s role in society, ensuring that they understand its potential as a catalyst for change, either positive or negative. Finally, I strive to instill in students the responsibility that architects and architecture have had, and will continue to have, in the development of humanity’s cultures, societies, and civilization.