Wednesday, August 21, 2013

La Pensée Unique

Excerpts (and update) from a letter sent to xxxxxxx (July 9, 2012)
Original thought/text in French, La Pensée Unique.

[...]
As architects, we would like to share one of our recent concerns. It is related to -let call this- the 'decolonization process'. Intriguing and complex process, with wide and unexpected contours.
Process we think still reinvents itself and regenerates, depending on circumstances.
Therefore, process, always in progress ...
Our vision wants to be critical, but however appeased. And in our minds, decolonization includes of course in addition of the political aspect, the social and cultural dimension. More insidious and pernicious. Architecture, and more globally urbanism, are fully part of this.
We talk here in fact, and moreover, about decolonization of the 'way of thinking'. This 'single thought', which reigns as watchword on our contemporary societies, under cover of globalization, globalism, ... A single worldview. We are programed (formatted) to think the same way. Great universities, companies, organizations and medias deliver always the same message. So, be critical ? Hard times for that. Even in architecture ...
Thereby, decolonization process, several decades after ‘physical independencies’, still remains a cyclical and burning matter, which regularly arise, depending on current events, polemics and controversies.
For (us) architects, our contribution would like to make it into a (RE)reading. (RE)reading, for the future. We think rehashing the past is no longer useful. Today, more than ever before, we need to a critical and positive (RE)reading.
[...]

More here:
RE: Decolonized Ar(t)chitecture
Texts (Architecturization, WiiCulture™, Unsolicited Architecture, ...)