Apos Tekton Theos : Or The Self Behind The Curtain

Many architects love to charmingly reference Louis Kahn's conversation with the brick. For those unfamiliar with this idiosyncrasy, the convo classically goes a little something like :

Lou : What would you like, brick?
Brick : I would like an arch.
Lou : Oh brick, arches are expensive and difficult to construct. I could really use you over a concrete post and lintel construction.
Brick : But I would like an arch.

Architects like to use this example of the architect deriving the architectural design from the architecture itself; that the design, the materials, the structure, the site, or anything relating to the building design process should be derived from an intercourse with the design.

But in all actuality it's really just some crazy old guy talking a brick. The problem is that the metaphier of the design process is the paraphrand of a poor metaphor in a rapidly secularizing era of society.

Why must architects continue to "talk" to the building design as a means to develop the architecture? Architects are using a conceptual construct of their own creative imagination and conversing with the deus ex tectonicus, which is only a metaphor for the architect him / herself. And it is such a poor metaphor really. Architects (and any designer / artist / poet) can just cut god out of the equation and simply ask themselves what they want in their work.

It is rather odd that we would think it to be god out of the machine, when a more proper translation from the Greek would mean "god of our making" or "god out of our creation", since the machine is of our making. We can dismiss mysticism in a secular age of construction, but while architecture exists almost purely profane in the contemporary age, mysticism has not left the scene at all : it has only changed its form. We still talk to our creations as third party divine entities that have a conscious notion of what they "want" to be. When in all actuality it is really only us talking to ourselves via a poor metaphor of our creative imagination. And, to top it all off, we teach the usage of this misleading metaphor in architecture schools!

John Locke : I've done all you've asked of me! What do you want me to do! Tell me!
Then there was light.