Disobedience. The new architecture and the challenge to the status quo

Abstract

We humans are disobedient by nature. For a long time we have been fighting against imposed limitations and forces, some of which tend to create illusions and false needs in our minds. Doing nothing, in times when some action is expected, is often a choice for dissent, mostly made by those who defy the establishment, the status-quo, and tend to reveal the falsity of the prevailing conditions, of programmed obedience. These realities have been threatened, ignored, silenced, and unknown, but it is time to take them up again. It time to claim our autonomy based on the definition of the person and his exploration. We seem to have lost the ability to disobey. It seems that we let our instincts be silenced, without resisting. We rarely question why we obey, who we really obey, why we obey. We seem to have forgotten that choice is not only possible, but welcome. How many of us praise doubt? How many of us feel that the ability of questioning everything is not only desirable, but healthy? Throughout our lives, we humans, are persistently instructed to limit ourselves, and are driven by an artificial devotion to what we are told to do, to be, to feel… We often misunderstand the difference between the means and the end. We lock ourselves into a world of blind obedience, where even architecture is no longer alive, no longer evolves, does not breathe or decide, a world where architecture is a field in continuous decline, where there is nothing new under the Sun. Such a feeling creates a fertile ground for skepticism and raises even more barriers against evolutionary change; killing architecture itself, in a continuous loop heading towards emptiness. Reversing such a loop requires new alternatives. Architecture has to further embrace art and become more deeply inspired by literature, drink from its influences, absorb its motivations and evolve based on similar premises. A few brave souls have already had the courage to take risks, choosing to disobey the establishment, showing an ability to stand firm with their innovative choices, to have the choice and cause change in knowledge, resistance and criticism.