About

цarьchitect is written by Neil Flanagan, graduate of the Yale School of Architecture who also contributes to Greater Greater Washington, and is a member of Ward 3 Vision. The opinions expressed on this platform are his opinions exclusively and do not represent the opinions of employers, or Greater Greater Washington.

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.

A Statement of Purpose

Architecture is contingent. Architecture depends on things that are bigger than me.

цarьchitect exists to pose questions properly. The blog is a way to make verbal and graphical observations and expose them to scrutiny. The blog is practice then, for the future – but a kind of practice that can still have relevance in the present.

цarьchitect has noticed that despite the political climate in Russia, brilliant architects are lurking in the corners, leveraging the histories they have rediscovered after years of late Soviet malaise. People should probably know about this.

цarьchitect is starving the manifesto. 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 violence at the reader and at the world. A blog can speak in multiple voices and it can listen. A manifesto is kitsch.  A blog knows when it’s become a manifesto.

цarьchitect is committed to the local. To study the particular with the general in mind is a way of testing theory. Tenleytown and Tobago are the cases to be studied.