Certainty Certaintly Not: Protocols of Change: Knowledge, Power, and Authority in Architecture and Science

As architects and historians of architecture we are all acquainted with major sea changes in our discipline. The birth of Modernism and the advent of Post modernism’ are two episodes of our recent history familiar to most ofus. Customarily however we focus upon the content of such changes rather than the protocols they obey. I talk of protocols rather than rules because I shall argue that these are not a natural given but a product of cultural2 propriety. It is my thesis that there are protocols for such changes, which if not invariant are subject to modifications themselves that are only manifest over long periods of time. I further contend that the structures of the institutions of architecture, the building industry, the profession, the academy and the architectural press for example and of their relation to culture at large have a more powerfidly formative influence on the nature of such changes than any individual, group or movement. This paper can provide but a mere outline and brief illustration of these broad claims.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Intl.1995.34

Volume Editors
John K. Edwards