ЦARЬCHITECT

цarьchitect is written by Neil Flanagan, who also contributes to Greater Greater Washington. The opinions expressed herein are his opinions exclusively All content falls under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license. Content can be freely reproduced and sampled for non commercial purposes as long as you clearly attribute the source.

Post I feel represent the best of my work can be found at Good Posts.

A Statement of Probable Purposes

Sometimes, цarьchitect exists to pose questions properly. An architect must consider the particular conditions of a site and balance them against the needs of humane program and the demands of art. The blog is a just a means of expressing verbal and graphical observations, to expose them to public and lay scrutiny. The blog is practice then, for the future – but a kind of practice that can still have relevance in the present.

Sometimes, цarьchitect is proof of the emerging truth that blogs are the new manifestos. A manifesto must be whole and self-contained. A blog is ongoing, collaborative, and perpetually in flux. A manifesto is prescriptive and absolute. A blog is descriptive and dynamic. A manifesto shouts only violence at the reader and at the world. A blog can speak in multiple voices, and the reader can shout back. A manifesto is kitsch; to exist, it denies its own perspectivism. A blog that denies personal fallibility is parody. A blog knows when it’s become a manifesto.

Sometimes, цarьchitect is committed to the local. To study the particular, to bring about change without violence, an activist has to cooperate with the people living on the ground. Tenleytown and Tobago are the cases to be studied; the discoveries there will compost on the blog and be grown into a speculative design for public space in Tenleytown.

And

Sometimes things just deserve to be noticed.