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25
Aphorisms  for the Occasional Student of  a Consumerist Architecture

. . . or the last waltz  by the  passengers of the Titanic
                   
   

©    osvaldo valdes,     1996,     The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI  Arc), 1998   

1- Architecture originates with a disappointment in the provisional.

2- Small budgets modify ideological alignment.

3- In the province of inspiration, logic is peripheral.

4- Less is more cheap.

5- For financial achievement, artistic aptitude is superfluous.

6- If we cannot convince each other that architecture is spiritual, surely we can agree that it is valuable.

7- Contrary to appearance, some buildings are aesthetic statements.

8- An ever present danger: at any minute, the whole thing can turn into real state.

9- Certain factions endorse rhythmic repetition as an indispensable ingredient of architecture.

10- The conspicuousness of the picturesque is inversely proportional to its importance.

11- The monumental, if not obsolete, is expensive.

12- Expressive architecture is like . . . money in the bank.

13- There are those who maintain: ". . . deconstruction is not a style".

14- Contradictions in design, validate criticism.

15- Transgressions of taste are theoretical suicide.

16- In the realm of the personal there is no architecture, only taste.

17- Architectural research is an amusing little story.

18- Architecture, no matter how radically proposed, is always a socially sanctioned event.

19- In Architecture, rationalization is the price of aesthetics.

20- Political disposition is the root of all aesthetics.

21- Order is: easier to market than disorder.

22- It is questionable if mechanization has improved the look of architecture.

23- Architecture should only be proposed as a form of poetry.
      [Caution; for this, you may need to be a poet....]


24-All great Architeture is made by those whose  
     feelings run ahead of their thoughts.

25- To embody the highest expression of capitalism, architecture adapts.

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