Literary Dose #10

"Architecture can only intervene in situations which have already been defined as being worthy of intervention. Yet, to fully exploit its potential as a generator of reality, architecture has to position itself in such a way that it is not bound to wait until a brief is presented (which it can then gracefully react to), but rather so that it can produce a brief in any given situation of its own. Architecture's avatistic habit of responding to a brief is then replaced by a practice of scanning reality for situations which have the potential to be acted upon by architecture itself. Escaping the reductive assignment of being the problem-solver, architecture assumes the capacity to pose problems, or rather, issues, that are relevant for architectural intervention. In doing so architecture would ultimately escape the boundaries it has been living with for too long and start to self-confidentially negotiate the limits of its actions in every step it takes."

- Andreas Ruby, from "Reprogramming Architecture," in Organizing for Change (2007), edited by Michael Shamiyeh & DOM Research Laboratory.