What is radical today? An Architect’s Manifesto, 2021

To rediscover the holistic nature of being, one which is less anthropocentric, also requires questioning the values and role of religions – the ways in which western religions led to imperialism, the spread of market capitalism and to globalisation at the expense of peoples and the environment.

To change demands radical thought. It becomes a question of how humanity perceives itself in relation to the environment and to itself. What is it to be human? How should we define progress? Does progress exist?

A MANIFESTO: ‘UNSELF’: BEING REAL NOT RADICAL

A Post-Cartesian Philosophy of Design requires a completely and fundamentally different way of thinking.

I suggest this might initially be achieved by cultivating an internal position of graceful humility through fully understanding the damage we – in this case I mean Western capitalist societies have done through misunderstanding the world and us in it, and by adopting a new architectural philosophy suited to our growing knowledge of what the human ‘Being’ is.

A philosophy of ‘UNSELF’, in which the architect’s ego is subsumed into an ethical and altruistic expression of the needs, desires and forces outside self, and which are unique to each project.

Architecture based upon this philosophy will not be an embodiment of the self-asserting identity of the architect and apartheid thinking, but of holistic awareness of space, time, environment and nature which become places completed by human beings – truly human architectural and urban spaces that resonate with our ‘being’, in tune with our needs – truly appropriate works of architecture.

Our task is to allow human sensuality – a basic language of being human -to become a partner with our thinking/processing minds. Architecture is biological, procreative as nature, moving us spiritually and evolving us even at a genetic level, for good or ill.

The purpose of the art of architecture will be to enable the spiritual voices of society to be heard – to create harmonious, global refuges that respect the earth in an age of planetary upheaval.

We must consider the potential impact of every act of design. As architects and artists our work should embody the reverberant core of compassion that is our shared humanity’s birthright.

© Ian Ritchie