On the Non-Complete in Visionary Architecture
ABSTRACT
Architecture adopts a preference for completion, stability, and unified objects and
concepts. Reality, rather paradoxically, suggests partiality and discontinuity of space,
experience, and conciseness. Unity, harmony, and finality compose the values
according to which architecture is measured. The tendency and the urge to create
according to these values is referred to as the complete. Visionary architecture uses
the same tools of expression as architecture, but is free from the consequences of the
built. As such it can stand in a polar position to built architecture and suggest an
opposing value system. Fragmentary, ruin-ness, and infinity – the work refers to this
value system as Non-complete.
The research examines, through theoretical and visual examples, the concept of Noncomplete
architecture, tracing its existence in Visionary architectural history, and
pointing out its main attributes. The research points it not merely as un-finished but
rather as an effort in establishing the work in a permanent state of incompletion. The
idea of Complete or wholeness is fundamental in western thought, it is so deeply
inherent that it is directly assumed rather then proved. This fundamental notion that the
whole has correspondence to the parts and to the parts amongst themselves and again
to the whole can be traced back to earliest theoretical ideas relating to architecture. In
the evolvement of western thought the tendency and preference to the complete has
remained central to this day. The primacy of the Complete has prevailed in philosophy,
science, and the arts. In the practical discipline of architecture that provides for human
needs, obeys the laws of physics, and confers to rules and regulations, it is even more
so.
Unity, harmony, and centrality are the defining values by which Architecture is
measured and evaluated, those values are referred here as the Complete. The Noncomplete
is exposed as positioned in opposition to this system, as polemical, critical,
and experimental; not as a revolutionary act against architecture, but as an attempt to
expand the discipline's realm of education, research, theory, and methods and tools of
discourse. Architecture, as a discipline, stands in a unique position towards the Noncomplete;
a rather contradictory one, for it rejects the Non-complete while it offers tools
and an opportunity for its creation. Architecture is about usability, and is measured by
its ability to become accomplished in the physical, material world as an object. As part
of its process and tools, through the means of drawing, the architectural artifact is
represented in its complete and finished state. By doing this architectural drawing has
the ability to fix the object in a state of becoming, a forever pregnant moment. It opensup
an alternative way of evaluating, criticizing, and exploring architecture and its
possibilities of becoming. Generally speaking this field of inquiry is defined as Visionary
Architecture, where the realm of the Non-complete exists.
The main research question that evolved out of the above issues is: What are the main
themes, attributes, and operation modes of the Non-complete in Visionary
Architecture? Following this main research question a line of secondary questions were
raised: What is the historical, cultural, and technological context of the Non-complete?
Is the Non-complete an idea in other disciplines such as science? literature? art? and
built architecture as well? Finally it was an issue of the research to evaluate the
contemporary work relating to Non-complete in Visionary architecture and to examine
the issues of its relevance and future contribution.
The research methodology was qualitative in nature. It used content analysis of
theoretical literature and visual resources. The research analyzed a verity of theoretical
content and defined from it the attributes, main themes, and operation methods relating
to the concept of the Non-complete in Visionary architecture. The theoretical part of the
study researched and defined the main terms of the study giving them a body of
theoretical and historical reference. Those terms include: Visionary architecture, the
complete – as the protagonist, and the Non-complete. As the subject of the research is
a theoretical term it was important to dwell on its appearance in other fields of thinking
and human creation. As such the issue of Non-complete was defined and exemplified
in an overall view ranging from science, philosophy, and into creative undertakings
such as literature and art. The scope of Non-complete was furthermore examined along
similar lines in built architecture. In conceptual, esthetic, and cultural values such as
traditional Islamic architecture, and in examining specific architects and their creations.
The research established the modes of operation and the main themes of operation of
the Non-complete in Visionary architecture. Following a discussion which expanded on
each issue a case-study relevant for every theme of operation was selected, through
which a deeper understanding of the subject was realized.
The modes of operation that were examined are:
Resist
Research
Represent
Reconcile
Each of those four modes can operate separately or with the others as a mode of
operation relevant in the creation of a Non-complete work in Visionary architecture.
Three main themes of operation were identified and researched, those are: Reality,
Interpretation, and Imagination. Each theme was explained through three subcategories
which together encompass its verity of manifestation.
Reality – consists of visual material wherein it is physically visible that the subjectmatter
is Non-complete. The sub-categories are: Ruins, Fragments and Partial
Representation.
Interpretation – includes general issues that can be interpreted in many different ways,
they were examined through the ways they are given relevance as Non-complete
subjects. The sub-categories in this are: Art, Technology, and Society.
Imagination – included the realm of the imagination that by its ways of representing its
subjects and issues does it in a Non-complete way, would it be symbolic, fragmentary
or unrealistic. The sub-categories of the imagination as defined in the work are: Utopia,
Fantasy and Dream.
As mentioned before 9 case-studies were selected to fit the sub-categories described.
Each case consisted of an architect\creator that his work became seminal in the field of
research. Through wide scope examination of each of the case's body of work, its
historical and cultural context, and theoretical interpretation the research goals were
achieved and its questions examined. As an example mentioned here is a more recent
creator that serves as one of the case-studies in the research, British architect and
theoretician Neil Spiller. His works are attempts to reconcile the virtual and physical, to
bring together an historical sense of architecture with suggestive new possibilities.
Spillers' drawings engage directly with conditions unfeasible by reason, and by
objectified representation. They are capable of producing a sublime space that
changes, that grows and decays and that sees human beings as partaking in a series
of conditions that can described as "quantum events".
The study aimed at establishing the term of Non-complete, identifying its ways of
operation, and pointing out its existence and relevance. This was done, then, not by
comparing or by tracing an historical or local development and evolvement but rather
by an overview and an episodic approach. This allowed putting emphasis on wide
verity of examples and a wide range and scope of issues. This approach was preferred
so not to bulge the research into minute details that might have comprehend the overall
view of the subject and its implications both historically and contemporary.
The research contribution is in several issues. It is relevant in the field of architectural
education. It is a methodological contributor to the field of education, also specifically
through the research findings, alternative methods of teaching can be developed. It
contributes to research in the sense that it expands and defines a relevant and much
discussed subject in current architecture theory. As such it contributes to the discourse
as well as suggesting future development in architectural research. Finally it contributes
to creation in architecture since it offers a method of expanding the modes of thinking
about architecture, its aims and its outcomes.
Non-complete Architecture is an ongoing practice that is built into the language of
Architecture. The utilitarian discipline of Architecture requires a system of values that,
in a paradoxical way, is negative or dichotomist to its main development course,
through which it can refurnish itself. As knowledge and mainstream modes of creating
in architecture progress towards the Complete, the opposition to this would be, and is,
Non-complete Architecture. Its wide range and historical manifestations are always
polemical, critical and experimental; it reevaluates current expertise by constantly
opposing it. It is important that Non-complete Architecture should be understood not as
an alternative to Architecture but as a constant opposition to it.
