Well stated, rationalist. I like reenactionary as its own word.
It seems to me just about everything is a reenactment. I think designers often find inspiration in objects that are not "architecture", for example, the connection between a hammer handle and head may inspire the resolution of two wings of a building in plan. That wouldn't be "copying" a hammer, but taking in information and reenacting it in another form.
Leave it to architects to get into a diction battle and then wonder why society perceives the profession as not providing services on par with dostors or lawyers.
Maybe we need a construction manager/ wordsmith Safire to settle the loquacious action?
Or maybe we can all just continue the masturbatory intellectualization cum self-flagellagion and discuss where we can place the dash?
re-enactionary?
The real issue is when does borrrowing from precedent become theft? Everyone can and has borrowed an idea, a form, a folded plate or two or even a design trick here and there. However, to put ones name on anothers person's work without having added anything is theft. That SOM can be brought to ther knees by a student should serve as warning to all unimaginative people who like the easy road of design plagiarism.
suture: sure, i think we would all agree that design plagiarism is not design. after all, isn't design on one level a business of ideas?
but there are other issues that are relevant here: architectural history, how design and design history are produced, its influence on design today, and just what are we doing anyway? i don't think this is "masturbatory intellectualization"...
maybe the real reason "why society perceives the profession as not providing services on par with dostors or lawyers" is because we undermine the value of our profession by lame excuses that "nothing matters and nothing is really new anyway"... This type of argument strips architecture of the one thing that we actually have that is of real value: innovation and ideas... Its like saying that architecture doesn't have any teeth anymore, its just like a nice pet... Sure its nice, but nobody respects its opinion...
if we sell architecture as innovation, ideas and concepts, it will be susceptible to the laws of intellectual property.
if on the other hand we realise that yes, there is nothing new under the sun, and that all acts of creation require a moment of reinterpretation, reappropriation, recontextualisation or just plain reaction to what has gone before, then we can let go of the burden of concept and with it the ridiculous suggestion that a 5ft partition is the same thing as a 20 storey tower (shop vs zaha).
what's more damaging to our profession the idea that a partition is the same thing as a tower, or the charge of plagarism??
no one asks of lawyers or doctors, "save my life, but please, make it original". the problem facing architects is to realise the task before them does not involve wholesale redemption through originality, which for all its pretentions of progress, ultimately labours under a notion of style (where all concerns of difference are coded in appearance) that is a hangover from the 18th century enlightenment.
"don't hide your eyes, plagarize." quoting one of my profs, the old practical grouch.
Plagarizing highly original ideas is wrong however. Yet I don't think a floor/ceiling/wall fold is highly original.
Copying entire structures is of course infringing on copyright.
Design is not so much about pure originality as problem solving, which takes known elements and arranges them originally. Therefore the original element is bound to get lost or transformed, if it doesn't, that designer didn't inform the design enough (childs).
Here's an interesting note: A former-professor of mine has copyrighted the puzzle piece in architecture. Anybody (and I assume at this point this is almost everybody who has been in arch school in the last 5 yrs) who has used a laser cutter or 3 axis milling machine will understand the import of this. There is an interesting distinction, however. He could not patent the puzzle piece, nor claim any kind of intellectual rights to the puzzle piece as a tectonic or structural element; so feel free to puzzle away as a means of holding things together. What he could do, however, is copyright the puzzle piece as an expressed, stylistic, aesthetic element in the design.
What I find even more interesting (egregious) about this is that the puzzle piece is a result of a technique -- that of using computer numerically controlled processes to make positive connections in two-dimensional stock. So, if you express this technique--if it is apparent as an aesthetic element on your building--and you do not acknowledge the source, and perhaps pay royalties, you committing de facto and de jure plagiarism.
Oh, there is a loophole: Because the copyright deals with intellectual property, there is a precision about the appearance of the puzzle piece. He's copyrighted a bunch of them. As long as your puzzle piece doesn't look like any of the puzzle pieces he's copyrighted (in the eyes of a reasonable judge, I suppose), you're all good.
i've always had the idea that plagiarism was part of the game. i, personally, have never really invented a way of building or a formal language, merely tweaked some details here and there and recombined things toward a different end. it's all borrowed from somewhere.
elvis borrowed, as did little richard. bauhaus (the band) would never have gotten anywhere without bowie and warhol having come before. shakespeare's best content was from antiquity. novelists today often steal the premise of an older novel and recraft it from a different point-of-view ('the hours', 'mary reilly', 'wicked'). mies and breuer looked at american tractors' sprung seats prior to developing their cantilevered chairs.
i don't think that any architectural project should simply be reproduced exactly, but that ideas and methods that are floating around in architectural circles - and the formal implications of these ideas and methods - should be common property that all of us should be able to work from, riff on, etc.
actually, i also don't think that any architectural project CAN be reproduced exactly. i find a really interesting thing happens when you actually actively try to copy someone/something else. it's something new anyway! whether through distinctions in technique or misreading, you're going to get something 'wrong' that becomes your original contribution - and may be an improvement on the original subject.
i did a project once called 'from bauhaus to bauhaus' that was an attempt to develop a timeline of the relationship between mechanical reproduction and plagiarism from the time of bauhaus the school to the emergence of bauhaus the band (through bowie, warhol, etc. as noted above). in doing so i put together a text made up of other people's observations, but strung together to mean what i wanted it to mean. i then had other people read this text that i had put together, i recorded it, and i presented this recording as the project summary. of course, when other people read my stolen texts, their own misreadings added another layer of original interpretation... can i say that the plagiarized, recombined, and misread text was an original creation?
of course, the above (done in '90) is not different from sampling in music, really. which is why i think the creative commons program that lawrence lessig has developed is brilliant. it seems the only time that artists/designers/performers want to be pinned down and defined is when they think their original work is being taken. if not for this fear, they/we would never allow ourselves to be codified and pinned down in the same way.
put it out there! let someone else take their best shot at it. if it's truly original and not-to-be-improved-upon, then you've come out ahead. if someone else pushes it forward, we've all maybe come out ahead. take another stab at it and push it forward again.
great discussion peeps. and i completely agree that our profession is predominantly evolutive and originality is moot.
but all you folks arguing that there is no such thing as originality, where would you sit on the Shine v Childs battle?
weigh in. c'mon
me, personally i got to go with Shine on this one. although I dont think that Childs plagarized intentionally in the sense of. "gee i got no ideas, maybe i will just do what that kid at yale did a few years back" but more that it permeated his idealess subconscious and stuck like flypaper. kind of a "i got no ideas, oh wait, i got one, but man it is kinda familiar."
i think shine should watch it get built and sit back all smug and say 'he got that from me.' or just make sure that the whole of the architecture community knows it (we do), and then leave it alone. the public probably doesn't care and this may be shine's best chance of seeing something close to the ideas/forms he initiated get built anyway. was his firm going to do it?
philip johnson built his plagiarized glass house ('49) before mies got farnsworth built ('51). interesting aspect of this is that we respect mies more but a lot of people think johnson's version was better.
and anyway, isnt Shine v Childs more of a David and Goliath case than a Goliath Goliath. and also one that stands for all the times a prof has swiped from a student (and there are many).
Aug 29, 05 10:49 am ·
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As words, reenactionary and architecturism are intentionally tinted with satire.
tint 4. A barely detectable amount or degree; a trace.
agfa8x, given that relatively few here within archinect discussions make full disclosures, my not making full disclosure is then contextually suited.
Cher and Cher alike.
Maybe the book title will be Reenactionary Architecturism Tinted with Satire.
i think it is, lifeform. childs has been the whipping boy of architectural conversations since the freedom tower was first hijacked from libeskind. probably rightfully so. shine's accusations have done some additional damage, but it will have little effect on how childs operates or what jobs he continues to get.
childs may or may not win, but shine will still have had a design idea for a hypothetical school project and childs will still be the star architect getting big projects built. shine may stand to make some money from this case, but the lawyers will make more and the whole thing will make the profession look more petty/petulant than we're already perceived.
i'm also not a big believer in intellectual property as something which must be protected. i'm a fan of open source: doesn't it work to everyone's benefit if our best advances in ideas can be built on by everyone? do any of us think that shine's proposal was an original invention? no one seems to think the freedom tower is anything above mediocre - so is that what shine wants credit/compensation for?
[ultimately childs didn't win a competition with this design so would have seen similar compensation for a completely different design.]
so, sure, as unpopular as my opinion might be (david/goliath, etc.), i'd like to see shine back away. or one-up childs in some way by making a better piece of architecture based on the same ideas. make this whole episode a (cue the new age music) growing experience.
thinking about this more and wanted to bring up some questions floated in past discussions about this issue:
i think i heard that pelli was shine's critic - one of them, though there was probably someone else there day to day. so where do they stand on this? don't they deserve some credit? will shine include them? we all know that a student isn't working in a vacuum. others are involved in the creative process that yields a studio project.
is shine a structural engineer? hasn't he seen this structural configuration before? who did he steal it from?
to childs credit, he doesn't hold himself up as the architect/hero, merely as a functionary with a noted name leading a group of talented people. shine seems to be trying to present himself as a sole creator a la roark. 'scuse my scepticism, but i've been student and professor and i ain't buying it.
i know the daughter of the guy who invented chilli burger. later on somebody added cheese on it. but first few years before the cheese, he bought a 16 units apartment. this was 50 yrs ago.
Steven- you make a good point about Pelli. Where I went to school, the University owned the rights to your schoolwork. They could not only say, "give us that model for an exhibit we may or may not hold 3 years from now" and not reimburse you for it, they owned the intellectual property rights as well. I was told this was a standard thing for universities, so it may be the Shine has no grounds for injury. Where did he go to school?
rationalist, i think a school's rights to the work have a limit - a few years, if i remember right. and that has bearing more on the school's rights to publish, display, photograph, etc. than it does on intellectual property (the ideas).
i'm talking less about who owns the work but where the generating ideas/concepts came from. shine sitting by himself in a room? or an iterative conversation between shine and advisor(s) at yale?
if childs had not only been on a final review but an earlier/interim review, then maybe he could even have had some influence...wouldn't that be messy?
whatever the situation, shine is trying to claim ownership of a certain synthesis of ideas which were already from somewhere else. borrowing is what we do, so why does shine get to say 'the borrowing stops with me'?
no one asks of lawyers or doctors, "save my life, but please, make it original".True, except lawyers and doctors are service providers. I guess an architect can see himself as a service provider too... But the problem there is that people need
the services of lawyers and doctors but nobody really needs
the services of an architect (at least not the way they need a lawyer or a doctor). Because the value we have to offer is not just being building code consultants or building science consultants... You don't need an architect to obtain this kind of knowledge... Basically, we ARE on one level a business of ideas. Perhaps most ideas are not original, but this does not change the fact that we are what we are... All those in favor of plagiarism are basically selling our profession to things like cookie cutter developers...
Theres another thing to think about in this comparison to lawyers and doctors. The reason that they get paid well is because they have the burden of needing to know what they are doing, and they are LIABLE. Architects are gradually eliminating all responsibility (or liability) from their profession... Saying that we think everything is copying is kicking the profession's bucket for the last time: its eliminating DESIGN from the profession's expertise... I don't deny that there is copying, but to the extent that an architect simply copies, they are not designing or doing anything that a non architect could not do...
Borrowing may be what we do, but why object to borrowing in design becoming more like "quoting" in a paper to the extent that the designer is conscious of where the idea came from. Do you think architecture says anything? Is it a text? Doesn't architecture exist in a dialogue?
I think Childs should be held accountable if his design is a theft of the student project. What if Maya Lin's studio professor at Yale had submitted her studio project for the Vietnam War Memorial as his own instead of encouraging her to submit it herself. Would you be laughing at her and saying "gimme a break, no project is really original anyway..."?
b Rink - architecture is a service profession. Any architect that stamps a drawing and is prime consultant is liable. Check you AIA handbook!
Also, medicine and law are both struggling with protecting themselves in our litigeous, insurance driven society. And doctors often have to compromize their hippocratic ideals when working in a profit driven hospital environment.
Architects are the most self-pittying profession in the world.
Sure we are liable, but maybe not where it counts... The issue is, where do we accept liability? There is even talk of passing off building envelope as the architects domain to consultants.
We are a service profession... But we are also a creative service profession are we not? Do you consider yourself an author / publisher? Or are you simply a pirated cd/book seller in china?
I think related to the self-pity is a kind of inferiority complex... Architects are also the profession with the least balls in the world.
"...but to the extent that an architect simply copies, they are not designing or doing anything that a non architect could not do..."
i disagree with this statement, brink. our skills are in the studied recomposition, conceptualization, and synthesis of those things which we copy. non-architects typically don't do this well; the cookie cutter developments you refer to are often attempts by non-trained designers attempts to achieve 'design' through the collection of a certain inventory of the right stuff in one place. not the same thing.
your comment about maya lin is exactly what i was pointing out DID NOT happen.
-childs didn't enter into a freedom tower competition against shine with shine's design.
-he didn't enter a competition at all. he was hired to modify an existing design (libeskind's). however diluted, libeskind's initial gestures are/were still there.
-he may have integrated aspects of work he had seen before - whether from shine or from within his own office's ouevre.
-he can't have cribbed directly, so he would have been working from imperfect memory of what he had seen before - thus it will naturally have differences.
i'm guessing that, despite the magic photoshop compositions that suggest the similarities in the designs, a fuller look would show that there are significant divergences - possibly enough to make this conversation moot.
j-turn: that being said, i appreciate what you are saying... medicine and law are also struggling to protect themselves, as should we... i guess the point i am making is that i don't think "creative authorship" is an area that we should seek to reduce our risk... because it would be something that would actually cripple our profession... in fact, isn't protecting our creative rights in fact protecting our profession?
I more or less agree with what you are saying. But then "the studied recomposition, conceptualization, and synthesis of those things which we copy" is a type of originality too right? It is like a text, that is in dialogue with that which it is making reference to... The issue is at what point is something design, and at what point is it not design but rather representing anothers work as your own... It is about a degree to which design should be protected... What I said was that "to the EXTENT THAT an architect simply copies, they are not designing".
With regards to the Maya Lin example, I wasn't drawing a direct comparison... I said "I think Childs should be held accountable IF HIS DESIGN IS A THEFT of the student project." In other words, that has yet to be determined... I'm not against Childs, I'm only saying that if the design was stolen, he should be held accountable...
The issue we need to ask ourselves is "what constitutes theft?"... I don't think its a "is theft okay or not?" issue... In any case, it is the details of the case which will set up some legal precedents and have a significant impact on our profession...
well, what if his design is a theft of the structural concept and skin of the building, but he addressed the base in a different way, and the core plan is different? Is that theft, or is there enough difference there?
What do you guys think of Zaha's sin?
Or the writer of the feature in NYT himself: http://gutter.curbed.com/
In the gutter there are better pics of the zaha bldg jacking, it is remarkably similar...
Diller and Scoffidio jacked the educatorium
and Libeskind jacked a WTC proposal
(all these allegedly)
Koolhaas jacked a train station in Chile for his IIT bldg
Im jacking the gutter spewing off their ideas....
Lets broaden the conversation from Childs Shine
The design of a car is integral to the whole object and can be subject to patent or copyright. If a competing manufacturer copied the same design, yet everything else about the car was unique, you can be guaranteed that the original manufacturer would be suing its competitor.
However, there are only a limited number of engine types, suspension types, interior trims, exhaust systems etc. The BMW Vanos system is simlar to Honda's VTEC system, but they are seen as variants of a common technological advance.
In a building there are a variety of systems and products. Most of the time, these systems or products are proprietary and not unique. Generally architecture is an assembly of concrete, steel, timber, glazing and other structural and material systems.
Where conditions, budget, or desire allow variation from proprietary systems, some unique combination of elements [Dominus Winery], or totally unique design [Blur Building] then the designer should have the right to exercise copyright [or patent if applicable].
Witness this example in recent car design. The first one is the new Jaguar XK, and the one below is the new Aston Martin AMV8. There has been much talk about the similarity of the designs. But the reason that there is no talk of lawsuits is because each company is owned by Ford.
I would'nt expect that Mies would sue Johnstone, or Libeskind would sue Bates, because there is a common interest in the promotion of the design aside from financial concerns. If Shine can show that Child's design has a direct relation, and if it is unique enough, ie, that it deviates enough from common or proprietary architectural or structural systems to not be a linear product, then he has every right to sue.
"The only way to avert the problem of plagiarism is to be a moving target. If your work is copied and that upsets you, it means you waited too long to move on."
I think what she is really trying to say is that the one sure way to avert plagiarism is to not be upset if you are copied... In other words, we are in an ideas business... If you are equipped with the technology to continually generate new ideas, any one particular idea is not so precious to you... If you keep moving from one new thing to the next, you can't really get burned by copycats. A copycat can only be along for the ride, a moving target is always one step ahead...
WOW! I just found the answer to everything discussed here. It's in a new book--Billions of Ways to Catch a Euphrates Cat by "The Tigress". It's tricky reading though because you have to be a step a head of the next page, but there's comfort in that one good turn deserves another.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
But I also like these:
14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
This one is also interesting:
42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
Aug 29, 05 6:42 pm ·
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Yeah, Hamilton is a great (occasional) reenactor of Duchamp's work (personally, I prefer the reenacted Ocular Witnesses), and Duchamp turned out to be a great reenactor of his own work. Reenacting Duchamp is a very Duchamp thing to do.
Aug 29, 05 6:50 pm ·
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There are old memories and there are new memories, but every memory by default is a reenactment.
Rita, but I guess the problem I have with that word is that it denies that anything we do is new... Isn't that quite different from Bruce Mau's #42 (Remember)?
Maybe you're right and I just don't like the idea of predestiny...
43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.
Aug 29, 05 7:03 pm ·
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Please explain to me how reenactionary "denies that anything we do is new." That's not how I see reenactment, and I certainly never said that all architecture is reenactionary architecturism.
I don't think architects generally have "dustbins inside their heads" (that's actually antithetical to the task of the profession), but they have been brainwashed into thinking that being original is the highest level of their art that all architects can achieve. Originality is relatively rare.
Maybe it is precisely the temporal distortion-- that which is actually different
and original in a memory that makes it not plagiarism? The originality of duchamp is certainly not the urinal... Its the performance. What he did with the urinal, and then what he did again with the urinal.
Aug 29, 05 7:20 pm ·
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I stand by what I wrote, but I'd rather it now read "...that being original is the highest level of their art and that all architects can achieve it."
Maybe the new (somewhat satirical) title should be Original Reenactionary Architecturism.
rita: full disclosure has nothing to do with it. i want to hear about your take on collingwood. your idea is worthless so long as you are the only one authorised to talk about it.
lifeform: Childs
... why sue? because you don't want your idea used? because you don't want your magnificent building built? Nope. Cash. Shine wants money. He might try to say it's the principle, but that's a lie. Even if he says he just wants recognition, he's lying.
Hi, Gorgeous. Haven't I Seen You Somewhere?
o you're a terrorist. for a minute i thought you said you were a theorist...
Well stated, rationalist. I like reenactionary as its own word.
It seems to me just about everything is a reenactment. I think designers often find inspiration in objects that are not "architecture", for example, the connection between a hammer handle and head may inspire the resolution of two wings of a building in plan. That wouldn't be "copying" a hammer, but taking in information and reenacting it in another form.
classic archi-courtroom drama:
Bernini v Borromini
Ledoux v Boullee
Loos v Corbusier
johnson v mies
Leave it to architects to get into a diction battle and then wonder why society perceives the profession as not providing services on par with dostors or lawyers.
Maybe we need a construction manager/ wordsmith Safire to settle the loquacious action?
Or maybe we can all just continue the masturbatory intellectualization cum self-flagellagion and discuss where we can place the dash?
re-enactionary?
The real issue is when does borrrowing from precedent become theft? Everyone can and has borrowed an idea, a form, a folded plate or two or even a design trick here and there. However, to put ones name on anothers person's work without having added anything is theft. That SOM can be brought to ther knees by a student should serve as warning to all unimaginative people who like the easy road of design plagiarism.
thanks suture. that is what we are discussing.
keep it as real as you like, but I don't see why people using long words should offend you.
suture: sure, i think we would all agree that design plagiarism is not design. after all, isn't design on one level a business of ideas?
but there are other issues that are relevant here: architectural history, how design and design history are produced, its influence on design today, and just what are we doing anyway? i don't think this is "masturbatory intellectualization"...
maybe the real reason "why society perceives the profession as not providing services on par with dostors or lawyers" is because we undermine the value of our profession by lame excuses that "nothing matters and nothing is really new anyway"... This type of argument strips architecture of the one thing that we actually have that is of real value: innovation and ideas... Its like saying that architecture doesn't have any teeth anymore, its just like a nice pet... Sure its nice, but nobody respects its opinion...
javier: nice link.. nice new long words
if we sell architecture as innovation, ideas and concepts, it will be susceptible to the laws of intellectual property.
if on the other hand we realise that yes, there is nothing new under the sun, and that all acts of creation require a moment of reinterpretation, reappropriation, recontextualisation or just plain reaction to what has gone before, then we can let go of the burden of concept and with it the ridiculous suggestion that a 5ft partition is the same thing as a 20 storey tower (shop vs zaha).
what's more damaging to our profession the idea that a partition is the same thing as a tower, or the charge of plagarism??
no one asks of lawyers or doctors, "save my life, but please, make it original". the problem facing architects is to realise the task before them does not involve wholesale redemption through originality, which for all its pretentions of progress, ultimately labours under a notion of style (where all concerns of difference are coded in appearance) that is a hangover from the 18th century enlightenment.
"don't hide your eyes, plagarize." quoting one of my profs, the old practical grouch.
Plagarizing highly original ideas is wrong however. Yet I don't think a floor/ceiling/wall fold is highly original.
Copying entire structures is of course infringing on copyright.
Design is not so much about pure originality as problem solving, which takes known elements and arranges them originally. Therefore the original element is bound to get lost or transformed, if it doesn't, that designer didn't inform the design enough (childs).
Here's an interesting note: A former-professor of mine has copyrighted the puzzle piece in architecture. Anybody (and I assume at this point this is almost everybody who has been in arch school in the last 5 yrs) who has used a laser cutter or 3 axis milling machine will understand the import of this. There is an interesting distinction, however. He could not patent the puzzle piece, nor claim any kind of intellectual rights to the puzzle piece as a tectonic or structural element; so feel free to puzzle away as a means of holding things together. What he could do, however, is copyright the puzzle piece as an expressed, stylistic, aesthetic element in the design.
What I find even more interesting (egregious) about this is that the puzzle piece is a result of a technique -- that of using computer numerically controlled processes to make positive connections in two-dimensional stock. So, if you express this technique--if it is apparent as an aesthetic element on your building--and you do not acknowledge the source, and perhaps pay royalties, you committing de facto and de jure plagiarism.
Oh, there is a loophole: Because the copyright deals with intellectual property, there is a precision about the appearance of the puzzle piece. He's copyrighted a bunch of them. As long as your puzzle piece doesn't look like any of the puzzle pieces he's copyrighted (in the eyes of a reasonable judge, I suppose), you're all good.
i've always had the idea that plagiarism was part of the game. i, personally, have never really invented a way of building or a formal language, merely tweaked some details here and there and recombined things toward a different end. it's all borrowed from somewhere.
elvis borrowed, as did little richard. bauhaus (the band) would never have gotten anywhere without bowie and warhol having come before. shakespeare's best content was from antiquity. novelists today often steal the premise of an older novel and recraft it from a different point-of-view ('the hours', 'mary reilly', 'wicked'). mies and breuer looked at american tractors' sprung seats prior to developing their cantilevered chairs.
i don't think that any architectural project should simply be reproduced exactly, but that ideas and methods that are floating around in architectural circles - and the formal implications of these ideas and methods - should be common property that all of us should be able to work from, riff on, etc.
actually, i also don't think that any architectural project CAN be reproduced exactly. i find a really interesting thing happens when you actually actively try to copy someone/something else. it's something new anyway! whether through distinctions in technique or misreading, you're going to get something 'wrong' that becomes your original contribution - and may be an improvement on the original subject.
i did a project once called 'from bauhaus to bauhaus' that was an attempt to develop a timeline of the relationship between mechanical reproduction and plagiarism from the time of bauhaus the school to the emergence of bauhaus the band (through bowie, warhol, etc. as noted above). in doing so i put together a text made up of other people's observations, but strung together to mean what i wanted it to mean. i then had other people read this text that i had put together, i recorded it, and i presented this recording as the project summary. of course, when other people read my stolen texts, their own misreadings added another layer of original interpretation... can i say that the plagiarized, recombined, and misread text was an original creation?
of course, the above (done in '90) is not different from sampling in music, really. which is why i think the creative commons program that lawrence lessig has developed is brilliant. it seems the only time that artists/designers/performers want to be pinned down and defined is when they think their original work is being taken. if not for this fear, they/we would never allow ourselves to be codified and pinned down in the same way.
put it out there! let someone else take their best shot at it. if it's truly original and not-to-be-improved-upon, then you've come out ahead. if someone else pushes it forward, we've all maybe come out ahead. take another stab at it and push it forward again.
great discussion peeps. and i completely agree that our profession is predominantly evolutive and originality is moot.
but all you folks arguing that there is no such thing as originality, where would you sit on the Shine v Childs battle?
weigh in. c'mon
me, personally i got to go with Shine on this one. although I dont think that Childs plagarized intentionally in the sense of. "gee i got no ideas, maybe i will just do what that kid at yale did a few years back" but more that it permeated his idealess subconscious and stuck like flypaper. kind of a "i got no ideas, oh wait, i got one, but man it is kinda familiar."
i think shine should watch it get built and sit back all smug and say 'he got that from me.' or just make sure that the whole of the architecture community knows it (we do), and then leave it alone. the public probably doesn't care and this may be shine's best chance of seeing something close to the ideas/forms he initiated get built anyway. was his firm going to do it?
philip johnson built his plagiarized glass house ('49) before mies got farnsworth built ('51). interesting aspect of this is that we respect mies more but a lot of people think johnson's version was better.
shine: why make the lawyers rich?
So Steven, is that one vote for Childs?
and anyway, isnt Shine v Childs more of a David and Goliath case than a Goliath Goliath. and also one that stands for all the times a prof has swiped from a student (and there are many).
As words, reenactionary and architecturism are intentionally tinted with satire.
tint 4. A barely detectable amount or degree; a trace.
agfa8x, given that relatively few here within archinect discussions make full disclosures, my not making full disclosure is then contextually suited.
Cher and Cher alike.
Maybe the book title will be Reenactionary Architecturism Tinted with Satire.
i think it is, lifeform. childs has been the whipping boy of architectural conversations since the freedom tower was first hijacked from libeskind. probably rightfully so. shine's accusations have done some additional damage, but it will have little effect on how childs operates or what jobs he continues to get.
childs may or may not win, but shine will still have had a design idea for a hypothetical school project and childs will still be the star architect getting big projects built. shine may stand to make some money from this case, but the lawyers will make more and the whole thing will make the profession look more petty/petulant than we're already perceived.
i'm also not a big believer in intellectual property as something which must be protected. i'm a fan of open source: doesn't it work to everyone's benefit if our best advances in ideas can be built on by everyone? do any of us think that shine's proposal was an original invention? no one seems to think the freedom tower is anything above mediocre - so is that what shine wants credit/compensation for?
[ultimately childs didn't win a competition with this design so would have seen similar compensation for a completely different design.]
so, sure, as unpopular as my opinion might be (david/goliath, etc.), i'd like to see shine back away. or one-up childs in some way by making a better piece of architecture based on the same ideas. make this whole episode a (cue the new age music) growing experience.
thinking about this more and wanted to bring up some questions floated in past discussions about this issue:
i think i heard that pelli was shine's critic - one of them, though there was probably someone else there day to day. so where do they stand on this? don't they deserve some credit? will shine include them? we all know that a student isn't working in a vacuum. others are involved in the creative process that yields a studio project.
is shine a structural engineer? hasn't he seen this structural configuration before? who did he steal it from?
to childs credit, he doesn't hold himself up as the architect/hero, merely as a functionary with a noted name leading a group of talented people. shine seems to be trying to present himself as a sole creator a la roark. 'scuse my scepticism, but i've been student and professor and i ain't buying it.
I heard that this suit has flied because SHine has a patent on his structural system. That is the only reason the courts have allowed it.
Does anyone know, Shine sounds like a bit of a garage genius with patents on many things.
where does the idea of appropriation fit in this convo...?
i read corb patented le modulor
i know the daughter of the guy who invented chilli burger. later on somebody added cheese on it. but first few years before the cheese, he bought a 16 units apartment. this was 50 yrs ago.
Steven- you make a good point about Pelli. Where I went to school, the University owned the rights to your schoolwork. They could not only say, "give us that model for an exhibit we may or may not hold 3 years from now" and not reimburse you for it, they owned the intellectual property rights as well. I was told this was a standard thing for universities, so it may be the Shine has no grounds for injury. Where did he go to school?
rationalist, i think a school's rights to the work have a limit - a few years, if i remember right. and that has bearing more on the school's rights to publish, display, photograph, etc. than it does on intellectual property (the ideas).
i'm talking less about who owns the work but where the generating ideas/concepts came from. shine sitting by himself in a room? or an iterative conversation between shine and advisor(s) at yale?
if childs had not only been on a final review but an earlier/interim review, then maybe he could even have had some influence...wouldn't that be messy?
whatever the situation, shine is trying to claim ownership of a certain synthesis of ideas which were already from somewhere else. borrowing is what we do, so why does shine get to say 'the borrowing stops with me'?
what happens now that the freedom towers been redesigned, and doesn't look like shine's project anymore? what does that do to the suit?? anybody know?
Shine is a whiner that needs to get back to drawing his details.
Theres another thing to think about in this comparison to lawyers and doctors. The reason that they get paid well is because they have the burden of needing to know what they are doing, and they are LIABLE. Architects are gradually eliminating all responsibility (or liability) from their profession... Saying that we think everything is copying is kicking the profession's bucket for the last time: its eliminating DESIGN from the profession's expertise... I don't deny that there is copying, but to the extent that an architect simply copies, they are not designing or doing anything that a non architect could not do...
Borrowing may be what we do, but why object to borrowing in design becoming more like "quoting" in a paper to the extent that the designer is conscious of where the idea came from. Do you think architecture says anything? Is it a text? Doesn't architecture exist in a dialogue?
I think Childs should be held accountable if his design is a theft of the student project. What if Maya Lin's studio professor at Yale had submitted her studio project for the Vietnam War Memorial as his own instead of encouraging her to submit it herself. Would you be laughing at her and saying "gimme a break, no project is really original anyway..."?
b Rink - architecture is a service profession. Any architect that stamps a drawing and is prime consultant is liable. Check you AIA handbook!
Also, medicine and law are both struggling with protecting themselves in our litigeous, insurance driven society. And doctors often have to compromize their hippocratic ideals when working in a profit driven hospital environment.
Architects are the most self-pittying profession in the world.
Sure we are liable, but maybe not where it counts... The issue is, where do we accept liability? There is even talk of passing off building envelope as the architects domain to consultants.
We are a service profession... But we are also a creative service profession are we not? Do you consider yourself an author / publisher? Or are you simply a pirated cd/book seller in china?
I think related to the self-pity is a kind of inferiority complex... Architects are also the profession with the least balls in the world.
"...but to the extent that an architect simply copies, they are not designing or doing anything that a non architect could not do..."
i disagree with this statement, brink. our skills are in the studied recomposition, conceptualization, and synthesis of those things which we copy. non-architects typically don't do this well; the cookie cutter developments you refer to are often attempts by non-trained designers attempts to achieve 'design' through the collection of a certain inventory of the right stuff in one place. not the same thing.
your comment about maya lin is exactly what i was pointing out DID NOT happen.
-childs didn't enter into a freedom tower competition against shine with shine's design.
-he didn't enter a competition at all. he was hired to modify an existing design (libeskind's). however diluted, libeskind's initial gestures are/were still there.
-he may have integrated aspects of work he had seen before - whether from shine or from within his own office's ouevre.
-he can't have cribbed directly, so he would have been working from imperfect memory of what he had seen before - thus it will naturally have differences.
i'm guessing that, despite the magic photoshop compositions that suggest the similarities in the designs, a fuller look would show that there are significant divergences - possibly enough to make this conversation moot.
j-turn: that being said, i appreciate what you are saying... medicine and law are also struggling to protect themselves, as should we... i guess the point i am making is that i don't think "creative authorship" is an area that we should seek to reduce our risk... because it would be something that would actually cripple our profession... in fact, isn't protecting our creative rights in fact protecting our profession?
steven:
I more or less agree with what you are saying. But then "the studied recomposition, conceptualization, and synthesis of those things which we copy" is a type of originality too right? It is like a text, that is in dialogue with that which it is making reference to... The issue is at what point is something design, and at what point is it not design but rather representing anothers work as your own... It is about a degree to which design should be protected... What I said was that "to the EXTENT THAT an architect simply copies, they are not designing".
With regards to the Maya Lin example, I wasn't drawing a direct comparison... I said "I think Childs should be held accountable IF HIS DESIGN IS A THEFT of the student project." In other words, that has yet to be determined... I'm not against Childs, I'm only saying that if the design was stolen, he should be held accountable...
The issue we need to ask ourselves is "what constitutes theft?"... I don't think its a "is theft okay or not?" issue... In any case, it is the details of the case which will set up some legal precedents and have a significant impact on our profession...
well, what if his design is a theft of the structural concept and skin of the building, but he addressed the base in a different way, and the core plan is different? Is that theft, or is there enough difference there?
What do you guys think of Zaha's sin?
Or the writer of the feature in NYT himself:
http://gutter.curbed.com/
In the gutter there are better pics of the zaha bldg jacking, it is remarkably similar...
Diller and Scoffidio jacked the educatorium
and Libeskind jacked a WTC proposal
(all these allegedly)
Koolhaas jacked a train station in Chile for his IIT bldg
Im jacking the gutter spewing off their ideas....
Lets broaden the conversation from Childs Shine
The design of a car is integral to the whole object and can be subject to patent or copyright. If a competing manufacturer copied the same design, yet everything else about the car was unique, you can be guaranteed that the original manufacturer would be suing its competitor.
However, there are only a limited number of engine types, suspension types, interior trims, exhaust systems etc. The BMW Vanos system is simlar to Honda's VTEC system, but they are seen as variants of a common technological advance.
In a building there are a variety of systems and products. Most of the time, these systems or products are proprietary and not unique. Generally architecture is an assembly of concrete, steel, timber, glazing and other structural and material systems.
Where conditions, budget, or desire allow variation from proprietary systems, some unique combination of elements [Dominus Winery], or totally unique design [Blur Building] then the designer should have the right to exercise copyright [or patent if applicable].
Witness this example in recent car design. The first one is the new Jaguar XK, and the one below is the new Aston Martin AMV8. There has been much talk about the similarity of the designs. But the reason that there is no talk of lawsuits is because each company is owned by Ford.
I would'nt expect that Mies would sue Johnstone, or Libeskind would sue Bates, because there is a common interest in the promotion of the design aside from financial concerns. If Shine can show that Child's design has a direct relation, and if it is unique enough, ie, that it deviates enough from common or proprietary architectural or structural systems to not be a linear product, then he has every right to sue.
Regarding Elizabeth Diller's quote:
"The only way to avert the problem of plagiarism is to be a moving target. If your work is copied and that upsets you, it means you waited too long to move on."
I think what she is really trying to say is that the one sure way to avert plagiarism is to not be upset if you are copied... In other words, we are in an ideas business... If you are equipped with the technology to continually generate new ideas, any one particular idea is not so precious to you... If you keep moving from one new thing to the next, you can't really get burned by copycats. A copycat can only be along for the ride, a moving target is always one step ahead...
is that a mercury cougar???
WOW! I just found the answer to everything discussed here. It's in a new book--Billions of Ways to Catch a Euphrates Cat by "The Tigress". It's tricky reading though because you have to be a step a head of the next page, but there's comfort in that one good turn deserves another.
Nice connection, shalak moore:
Theres also this one...
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
But I also like these:
14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
This one is also interesting:
42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
Yeah, Hamilton is a great (occasional) reenactor of Duchamp's work (personally, I prefer the reenacted Ocular Witnesses), and Duchamp turned out to be a great reenactor of his own work. Reenacting Duchamp is a very Duchamp thing to do.
There are old memories and there are new memories, but every memory by default is a reenactment.
Rita, but I guess the problem I have with that word is that it denies that anything we do is new... Isn't that quite different from Bruce Mau's #42 (Remember)?
Maybe you're right and I just don't like the idea of predestiny...
43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.
Please explain to me how reenactionary "denies that anything we do is new." That's not how I see reenactment, and I certainly never said that all architecture is reenactionary architecturism.
#44 its billable time. so quit jerkin around.
Okay, but you said early on that:
I don't think architects generally have "dustbins inside their heads" (that's actually antithetical to the task of the profession), but they have been brainwashed into thinking that being original is the highest level of their art that all architects can achieve. Originality is relatively rare.Maybe it is precisely the temporal distortion-- that which is actually different and original in a memory that makes it not plagiarism? The originality of duchamp is certainly not the urinal... Its the performance. What he did with the urinal, and then what he did again with the urinal.
I stand by what I wrote, but I'd rather it now read "...that being original is the highest level of their art and that all architects can achieve it."
Maybe the new (somewhat satirical) title should be Original Reenactionary Architecturism.
"Originality†only happened once.
wow, this thread is moving fast...
vado: i like #44.
rita: full disclosure has nothing to do with it. i want to hear about your take on collingwood. your idea is worthless so long as you are the only one authorised to talk about it.
lifeform: Childs
... why sue? because you don't want your idea used? because you don't want your magnificent building built? Nope. Cash. Shine wants money. He might try to say it's the principle, but that's a lie. Even if he says he just wants recognition, he's lying.
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