building as a thing

the dinstinction between "object and thing" was at the core of the lecture hosted at the Sociology deperatment of Goldsmith's college where a diverse audience of architects, designers and Social Scientists where gathered to follow an ANT methodological approach to Rem Koolhaas' design process. I didn't get exactly the arguments cause all of them where so obvious... I suppose for the social scientists and the ethnographers to understand the process of an architectural project was some kind of revealing... Yes, I will agree with the distinction between the object and the thing, between a symbolic understanding of a build project and its understanding as a multiplicity but however as an Architect I would expect to see such a distinction in the way occupants inhabit spaces. I had my conclusions and I have to admit this kind of "synergies" between different fileds could only be constructive.

oh! and it is something else... the really annoying fascination of Architects with the trendiness... they feel guilty if they use words that somehow have been used before and mark a theoretical exploration in architectural design... and this is happening due to the fact that architects approach theory in a fragmented fashion and not as a continuous transformation of concepts and ideas...