It seems this one just doesn’t want to lie down. Salingaros posted a response to the criticism of his paper on Tschumi, and Brutal Joint followed it with a response to the response. City Comforts just filed a response to the response to the response.
It went like this:
Salingaros…
Note that we are not dealing here with theoretical physics, which requires a language not known to everyone; architectural theory should be written in a common language understandable to every person. After all, they have to live with its applications.
Brutal Joint…
We have to live with the laws of physics, too; that doesn’t mean we should all be conversant in string theory. We listen to music, but we’re not all expected to perform Schenkerian analysis. It is wrong to suggest that just because everyone uses buildings, architectural theory should be dumbed-down to the level of those who have had no architectural instruction.
City Comforts…
I don’t think so. By the same logic we should do away with voting and leave politics to political scientists. No
It might go further like this:
By the very act of voting we give a group of people permission to deal with politics on our behalf. We are asking them to be political scientists for us so that we don’t have to. It’s not that we should be blind to the subject and ignore what happens thereafter (the word idiot is derived from the Greek word ιδιωτης, idiôtês, meaning a person who declined to take part in public life, such as democratic city government1), but we should recognise that there are discussions that occur between politicians and politicians and then there are discussions that occur between politicians and the rest if us. So it is with architecture.
There is a long history of architect to architect discussions and even architect to architect design; what matters is whether or not the net result benefits the end user. You don’t need to to understand beauty to appreciate it. Well, I don’t anyway.