Professor Brain Responds To Professor Perronet

IN RESPONSE to Prof. Perronet, Professor Brain (you can't make this stuff up) writes:

Before entering into such an ill-conceived rant, an architectural educator really ought to feel some responsibility to be a little more informed with regard to the challenges of providing housing in these devastated towns of the Gulf Coast. Did he stop to ask the question: why would an architect take on the task of re-designing a trailer at all? Did he stop to consider the real circumstances and real concerns of real people in these communities? Or is design merely an opportunity to impose his own notion of "truth and technology" on anybody unfortunate enough to have no choice or desparate enough to take his word for it?

Before entering into such an ill-conceived rant, an architectural educator really ought to feel some responsibility to be a little more informed with regard to the challenges of providing housing in these devastated towns of the Gulf Coast. Did he stop to ask the question: why would an architect take on the task of re-designing a trailer at all? Did he stop to consider the real circumstances and real concerns of real people in these communities? Or is design merely an opportunity to impose his own notion of "truth and technology" on anybody unfortunate enough to have no choice or desparate enough to take his word for it?

If this irresponsible fellow has a proposal to make with respect to a fast and effective way to intercept the flood of industry-designed manufactured houses into the region, we'd all like to see it. If this fellow has a proposal for building hundreds of thousands of housing units quickly, affordably, and in a way that doesn't do irreparable damage to existing neighborhoods in towns with a long local history, let's see it. IF this fellow has the ability to define a revolutionary artifact of such compelling reasonableness and technical brilliance that the manufacturers of the FEMA-financed trailers will immediately re-tool to produce them, then we'd really like to see it. If this fellow has the ability to design emergency housing that will contribute to the long term re-development of communities that have a stated popular commitment to restoring and maintaining their historic architectural character, let's see an example. Finally, if this fellow has a way to design emergency housing responsible to "truth and technology" that is ALSO responsible from the standpoint of real people and real communities who should be allowed to make a choice with regard to the future character of their communities, then he should stand and deliver.

If there is a better design for these cottages, then bring it on. Let's see it. By all means, let's build it. Let's put it out there and let people choose it for their neighborhoods and towns. It's time to put up or shut up.

I'm serious. I'd very much like to see what responsibility to "truth and technology" looks like in the context of a serious designer's effort to respond to the reality of the post-Katrina gulf coast.

Otherwise, this is not only a bunch of empty academic rhetoric, but a deeply irresponsible, self-indulgent intervention into a very serious practical debate, a debate in which real people's lives are at stake, not just somebody's ego-gratifying academic posturing. (He's in good company in this regard, of course, since he echoes a certain willful ignorance and knee-jerk wannabe radicalism expressed by a lot of big name architectural critics.)

If this fellow is concerned that the architectural profession is proliferating "non-solutions," he need only look in the mirror.

David Brain
Colin Clipson Fellow
Visiting Professor of Architecture
Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning
University of Michigan