Active Dwellers

Not necessarily relevant to my post but I thought this was a cool article. It dives into how the 'iconic' house symbol (five-sided shape) is challenged and recreated around the world. 

Alexandra Lange’s introduction struck a chord with me as soon as I began reading it. Truth be told, I felt a pang of guilt right off the bat with her opening sentence:

“Buildings are everywhere, large and small, ugly and beautiful, ambitious and dumb. We walk among them and live inside them but are largely passive dwellers in cities of towers, houses, open spaces, and shops we had no hand in creating. But we are their best audience.”

As someone who has made a hefty time and monetary commitment to change the course of my career, it was a brief moment of embarrassment when realizing the frequent urgency I feel towards mastering the newest and best technology or thinking too much about how I will be able to get a job after graduating rather than keeping an appropriate perspective on what it is I am here to learn and why I made the decision to make the big switch in the first place.  I’ve always been attracted to design and architecture and Lange’s sentiment that we, I, am the ‘best audience’ reminds me that by simply observing the world around me, I should be learning. Granted, Lange is able to make my relatively ‘normal’ day-to-day architectural/design world sound a bit more poetic than I can usually see it. But I like that she seems to purposefully glorify all spaces so as to encourage us, the readers, to view them with a more active lens and resist the urge to simply be ‘passive dwellers’ among them.

The idea of being more actively engaged in our environments somehow brought me back to Martin Kemp’s thoughts regarding what makes an icon and the question I’ve had in my own head since last class: couldn’t the idea of an ‘icon’ simply be dependent on the person that is doing the observing and her experiences and knowledge to date? If so, I guess we could run the risk of over-iconizing, right? Is there such a thing as over-iconizing? Can I say that things as mundane as shiny new door hardware or peeling wallpaper are iconic (simply because they are to me)?

Let’s say I drop the role as the passive dweller (which I honestly intend to attempt) and hopefully begin to notice details within design and architecture that I once took for granted. I have a feeling that so many things would become ‘iconic’ in my eyes. I struggle with whether the term ‘icon’ is something we can use loosely by individuals or if it should be reverently reserved and essentially decided upon by a collective group.  (The fuzzy formula is real!) I am curious if anyone else has had this same thought – or better yet! – a light bulb moment on what makes an icon an icon…

*I don’t believe that by urging us to be active dwellers Lange is also encouraging us to iconize everything in sight nor do I think a true formula exists for something to be considered an icon – as we discussed in class.

One final/random note: I appreciated Lange's ability to succinctly put the importance of what designers do in a single, creative sentence: “Design is not the icing on the cake but what makes architecture out of buildings and the places we want to live and eat and shop rather than avoid.”