James Taylor-Foster
Selected writing 2015 – 2023
  • About
  • Category
  • Title
  • Publication
  • Year
  • Writing
  • Foreword: On the Manifesto
  • 2019
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2015 – 2023
  • Foreword: On the Manifesto

A manifesto is a vision, but also a fiction. Lucid, concise, and inherently public in tone, the manifesto is by design anchored in a recognisable version of the world we inhabit while, in the same breath, capable of imagining beyond it. In and around the percolative sphere of architecture the act of imagination is, quite literally, easier said than done. For a discipline that demands considered speculation and projection, architecture calls for practitioners and collaborators to be designers, thinkers, historians, and futurologists alike – a challenge that requires far more than drawing, or modelling, or—dare I say—compromise. It more often than not needs to be articulated through words, whether they be written or spoken aloud.

If a speculation cannot be rendered in a vacuum, a manifesto cannot be shaped in thin air. Today, as before, the air is heavy and the rhetoric around our accelerated existences, existential obstacles, and looming threats to our collective stability are apparently all-pervasive. It is, therefore, all too easy to absorb a sense that darkened clouds are metaphorically forming overhead—big, cumulonimbus types—that seem to forecast only turbulence. This may be true and yet, if so, it provides an important opportunity to cruise on the fumes of history, to reflect upon what is happening, and to appraise how these might indicate possible future directions. As such, the manifesto—a paradoxical combination of a handshake and a declaration rolled into one—should be read as an attempt to slice through time, albeit taken with a pinch of salt and a healthy dollop of good faith.

There are precedents to draw upon that emphasise the potential of the ‘manifestonian’ tone. Vitruvius’s 16th Century adage firmitas, utilitas, venustas (firmness, commodity, delight) resonates, for better or for worse, to this day. In conceptualising a “retroactive manifesto” with Delirious New York (1978), Rem Koolhaas married storytelling and speculation to span the durations and histories of a single granite rock on the eastern seaboard of the United States. Both examples, scooped out from a melting pot of many than spans centuries, are characterised by being both defiant and elastic, bridging practical conditions and contexts with the understanding that in order to illuminate an intangible vision of the future one must evaluate, persuade, and take a position.

As the 2019 Copenhagen Architecture Festival and its actors grapple with a timely theme—Skiftende Idealer (Shifting Ideals)—the manifestos presented here represent a reclamation of one of the defining baselines that underpin what it means to be an architect, and what architecture can contribute to communities. They should not be read as monuments, but as capsules; defences of speculative futures, which provide lenses through which we can all consider how to forge new and configure existing avenues for action.

Whether you might subscribe to the ideas penned for these pages or not, each manifesto embodies the idealism, sincerity and self-belief that the format engenders – and that the profession, as an agent in shaping how we perform our lives, needs more now than ever. When something needs to be said—and much, we must agree, needs to be said—it is often more useful when it is put frankly.

—March 2019

 

Read at source.
First published in Manifest Stafet. © James Taylor-Foster (2019).

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James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
  • CuratorialI.
  • ProjectsII.
  • PublicationsIII.
  • SpeakingIV.
  • WritingV.
I.Curatorial
  • ✶ WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD, London2022
  • ✶ Mira Bergh × Josefin Zachrisson: Utomhusverket2022
  • ✶ The Limits of Our World: LARP and Design2022
  • ✶ Solicited: Proposals2021
  • ✶ Studio Ossidiana: Utomhusverket2021
  • WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD, Stockholm2020
  • Architecture Projects: Skeppsbron + Brunnsparken2019
  • Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex, Cruising Culture2019
  • The Craft of Swedish Videogame Design2019
  • Petra Gipp and Mikael Olsson; Sigurd Lewerentz – Freestanding2018
  • Space Popular: Value in the Virtual2018
  • You Are Not Alone2017
  • In Therapy2016
  • Keeping Up Appearances2015
II.Projects
  • ASMR, An Exhibition Trailer2022
  • Watch & Chill 2.0: Streaming Senses2022
  • ASMRology2021
  • Plug-in Poesi2020
  • Interdependence: Stockholm and pandemia2020
  • Future Architecture Rooms2020
  • SOFT GOSSIP2020
  • Mukbang Veneziano2020
  • Körper2019
  • Architecture on Display2018
  • Boxen at ArkDes2018
  • The Stones of Venice: A Kimono2017
  • Misunderstandings (A Reliquary)2016
III.Publications
  • ✶ softspot2021
  • Living on Water2017
  • Elemental Living2016
  • People, Place, Purpose2015
IV.Speaking
  • ✶ Scaffold #612022
  • Salons, The New Architecture School2022
  • ✶ Protagonist of the Erotic: A Bed2022
  • OAT Academy, Curating Architecture2022
  • ✶ Protagonist of the Erotic: An Island2021
  • A Future for Exhibitions2021
  • Future Architecture CEx2020 Focus Talks2020
  • Modevisningar är den flyktigaste formen av arkitektur2018
  • Exhibition Models2017
V.Writing
  • Wang & Söderström: Royal Chambers2023
  • Studio Ossidiana on the Sentimental Scale of the City2022
  • A Strange Sort of Weight2021
  • What’s Mine Is Theirs: an interview with Max Lamb2020
  • ✶ Screen Glow Sedation2020
  • No Time to Stand and Stare2020
  • On Norra Tornen2020
  • ✶ Don’t Fear a Snowflake2020
  • In Riga, A Conference On Architecture and Migration2019
  • On Practical Futurology2019
  • Foreword: On the Manifesto2019
  • Making Believe with Charlap Hyman & Herrero2019
  • ✶ To Speak As If In Capital Letters2019
  • Baltoscandia: A Complex Utopia2018
  • ✶ Virgil Abloh, Editor in Brief2018
  • A Weak Monument2018
  • Sigurd Lewerentz: Villa Edstrand2018
  • On the Cruising Pavilion2018
  • A Diary of Virgil Abloh’s First Louis Vuitton Show2018
  • ✶ The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.2018
  • Concrete Mountain2017
  • ✶ On Liquid Modernity2017
  • ✶ #003399, #FFCC00; The Meaning of a Flag2017
  • Pillars of Society: “Jantelagen”2017
  • Exhibiting the Postmodern2017
  • Future Architecture and the Idea of Europe2017
  • Domains of Influence2017
  • Ingress: Black Rock City2017
  • In Dialogue With Gravity2017
  • Rem, Redacted2016
  • Media States, Or The State of Media2016
  • A Piece of England to Call One’s Own2016
  • Upon This Rock (I Will Build My Church)2016
  • The Design of the Species2016
  • Venice Isn’t Sinking, It’s Flooding2016
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2015 – 2023
Writing
  • Foreword: On the Manifesto 2019
  • in Manifest Stafet (2019) for the Copenhagen Architecture Festival (CAFx)
Back

A manifesto is a vision, but also a fiction. Lucid, concise, and inherently public in tone, the manifesto is by design anchored in a recognisable version of the world we inhabit while, in the same breath, capable of imagining beyond it. In and around the percolative sphere of architecture the act of imagination is, quite literally, easier said than done. For a discipline that demands considered speculation and projection, architecture calls for practitioners and collaborators to be designers, thinkers, historians, and futurologists alike – a challenge that requires far more than drawing, or modelling, or—dare I say—compromise. It more often than not needs to be articulated through words, whether they be written or spoken aloud.

If a speculation cannot be rendered in a vacuum, a manifesto cannot be shaped in thin air. Today, as before, the air is heavy and the rhetoric around our accelerated existences, existential obstacles, and looming threats to our collective stability are apparently all-pervasive. It is, therefore, all too easy to absorb a sense that darkened clouds are metaphorically forming overhead—big, cumulonimbus types—that seem to forecast only turbulence. This may be true and yet, if so, it provides an important opportunity to cruise on the fumes of history, to reflect upon what is happening, and to appraise how these might indicate possible future directions. As such, the manifesto—a paradoxical combination of a handshake and a declaration rolled into one—should be read as an attempt to slice through time, albeit taken with a pinch of salt and a healthy dollop of good faith.

There are precedents to draw upon that emphasise the potential of the ‘manifestonian’ tone. Vitruvius’s 16th Century adage firmitas, utilitas, venustas (firmness, commodity, delight) resonates, for better or for worse, to this day. In conceptualising a “retroactive manifesto” with Delirious New York (1978), Rem Koolhaas married storytelling and speculation to span the durations and histories of a single granite rock on the eastern seaboard of the United States. Both examples, scooped out from a melting pot of many than spans centuries, are characterised by being both defiant and elastic, bridging practical conditions and contexts with the understanding that in order to illuminate an intangible vision of the future one must evaluate, persuade, and take a position.

As the 2019 Copenhagen Architecture Festival and its actors grapple with a timely theme—Skiftende Idealer (Shifting Ideals)—the manifestos presented here represent a reclamation of one of the defining baselines that underpin what it means to be an architect, and what architecture can contribute to communities. They should not be read as monuments, but as capsules; defences of speculative futures, which provide lenses through which we can all consider how to forge new and configure existing avenues for action.

Whether you might subscribe to the ideas penned for these pages or not, each manifesto embodies the idealism, sincerity and self-belief that the format engenders – and that the profession, as an agent in shaping how we perform our lives, needs more now than ever. When something needs to be said—and much, we must agree, needs to be said—it is often more useful when it is put frankly.

—March 2019

 

Read at source.
First published in Manifest Stafet. © James Taylor-Foster (2019).
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