There is a comfort with design that may be a detail, rather than a building; comfort with form that is time-released and never finished. How do you represent an instruction set that will play out in time? There may be slightly different kinds of documents for representing those forms, and different skills for advocating change outside of our fee-for-service habits.
Keller EasterlingIn architecture, to do anything beyond object form is often treated as something extra-disciplinary - something outside the discipline that has nothing to do with art. So I'm making it clear that this is an artistic choice. It's not everyone's artistic choice. Some people should choose only to make object form because that's what gives them pleasure. But there are people for whom aesthetic pleasure comes from doing something else, and why would you deny that choice? It's another autonomous choice.
Keller EasterlingIt's funny how much one learns from context. Throughout that entire visit to Kenya, with all its meetings, there was an experience of the place that taught me things I couldn't learn by reading global newswires. The fact that I learned so much makes me wish that I could visit more places. So many of the zones, of course, are closed, so one knows about them only in secondhand ways. My research has only scratched the surface. There are thousands of zones around the world. There's just so much work to do.
Keller EasterlingThe whole idea of action being a carrier of information is something that comes directly from theater. That's, in some ways, the one thing I've been trying to contribute. I still write things outside of architecture - not really fiction, but not nonfiction. I like dialogue as a form, because the text is only the trace of an action. The consequential information is carried in the action you choose to put on that text.
Keller EasterlingThere are dangers surrounding innocuousness and consensus and habit. ISO organizes hundreds of people on technical committees who are, no doubt, trying to do their best. But the standards in some cases end up reinforcing violence and destruction thousands of miles away.
Keller EasterlingRather than asking architecture to be more interdisciplinary - a perennial issue within the discipline - I am suggesting that other disciplines might exploit the powers of architecture and urbanism. When addressing urgent situations, whether it's the depletion of the rainforest or abuse of labor, well-meaning people are working with tools, like standards, that seem like very blunt instruments. I am suggesting that spatial variables that are underexploited in governance might add to that repertoire.
Keller EasterlingArchitects and urbanists are fascinated with cities that are shrinking, like the Rust Belt cities. Or, alternatively, we are fascinated with the growth of favelas and informal settlements. The 2008 financial crisis made these changes more extreme. The subtraction protocols rehearse a way of thinking about multiple properties in counterbalancing interdependence - not just the shaping of one property but the ratcheting interplay between properties.
Keller Easterling