R3_Program vs Paradigm_Yingzi Zhang
Colin Rowe, in this essay Program vs Paradigm, trying to reveal the fundamental errors of modern architecture, questions several theories and thoughts at that time, such as Positivism, Transcendentalism, Classicism, neo-Rationalism, by investigating the relationship between program and paradigm, synonymously, between matter and mind, reality and speculation, fact and fantasy.
By the Oxford Dictionary, a program is defined as “a definite plan or scheme of any intended proceedings; an outline of abstract of something to be done”, while paradigms are, defined by Thomas Kuhn, “universally recognized scientific achievements that for a tome provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners”. An argument made by Rowe is that neither the position in worship of program or paradigm is adequate. Both of them are “relatively easy to destroy”. He has criticized the break of the relationship between program and paradigm (eg. data addiction in Positivism, excessive typological concerns in neo-Rationalism), and inspired by the dialectical interanimation method or hypothetical-deductive method (eg. knowledge of great criminal paradigms in detective novels).
To strengthen his argument, Rowe takes the “naive” city context of Austin as an example to show the “all-accommodating” urban planning idea of the Republic of Texas., which has nothing to do with location, culture, time and space. It’s like a plan without program. And then program based on facts is valued a lot by Positivism. However, according to Rowe, it is rarely neutral though it pretends to be. Then Rowe illustrates the drawings of Rainer Jagals to stress that “It is drawings such as these-desperate, translucent, eclectic, elegant, and ironical---and not the programmatic compilations of the data collectors that are going to affect our vision of the city”.
In my personal interpretation, Rowe has a positive attitude toward the neo-Rationalism and in terms of typology concerns. As to the big “dinner party”, we can see the future of neo-Rationalism. Modernism seemed to be dogmatic and rigid at that time, then, Rationalism appeared to show respect to tradition and combination of fact and history. But different from the simple architecture form of Rationalism and the fake architecture form of Classicism, neo-Rationalism tries to investigate the history and summarize a invariably foundation for architecture and urban design. Nowadays, when design, we do analysis of site, cultural, climate, traffic access, activity flow… Also, we check out codes, do program adjacencies… All these are a reflection of the interaction between program and paradigm.
PS: http://bombmagazine.org/article/2649/michael-bell
An interview with Micheal Bell by Magazine BOMB. He talked about something about city Houston and Typology.
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