"Junkspace is the sum total of our current architecture: we have built more than all previous history together, but we hardly register on the same scales" (Rem Koolhaas)
"Infrastructure is much more important than architecture" (Rem Koolhaas)
"There is an enormous, deliberate, and - I think - healthy discrepancy between what I write and what I do." (Rem Koolhaas)
Shortly after the turn of the century, in 2003,
Bernard Tschumi convened a conference at Columbia University where he asked about the "State of Architecture in the 21st Century". A book followed with the talks of 60 Illuminati, the architects, theorists and critics which had responded to his question. Assuming that "asking such a immoderate overreaching question" (Tschumi) has value, that architecture somehow matters, that different cities attract and foster different types of architecture, that architecture is "better" in some cities than in some others and that one could find a common base to communicate about all of that, I posed a similar question ("What is the State of Architecture in Baltimore?") to a diverse group of friends, young and old, black and white, male and female, academic and journalistic and asked them to present their view in a public event. All of them are foremost expert observers not makers of architecture, even the architects among them. The event, "Design Conversation #62" of Baltimore's design center (D center), packed the Wind-up space, an artsy creative bar in the burgeoning Station Norths arts and entertainment district, a far earthy setting than brainy Columbia University. My categories or sub-questions were also way more simplistic than Tschumi's, who had paired many unlikely headings such as
Aesthetics & Urbanism (Maas, Sorkin and Stern wrote here),
Form & Influence (Eisenmann, Gehry),
Envelope & Public-Private (Tschumi, Koolhaas, Hadid),
Globalization & Criticism (Norton) etc. Mine were simply this: