"The fact that the 1909 "project" is published in the old Life, a popular magazine, and drawn by a cartoonist - while the architectural magazines of the time are still devoted to Beaux-Arts - suggests that early in the century "the people" intuit the promise of the Skyscraper more profoundly than Manhattan's architects, that there exists a subterranean collective dialogue about the new form from which the official architect is excluded."(Koolhaas, p.85)
The translation of "blueprinted" into a "blueprint method" would sound in a very casual language like this: Blueprint is the combination of the first derivatives of typology, shape grammar and functionalism plus an additional brise of what is in the air. Blueprint thereby stands for a complex of reading the existing, deriving information and generating coherent solutions. Proof has to be given if this is a serious method at all, and if so if it is an effective one.
Koolhaas uses "blueprint" in Delirious New York in a Deleuzian sense as to express that every future is already embedded either in built structures or in peoples minds as "virtual reality". Althought every experience might show that the most powerful hint for change is the mistake, the leak in each system, Koolhaas's idea is that each leak expresses itself also and more powerful in a notion of quality. He finds complaints not too helpful for design.
The most important force for the formulation of a blueprint is thereby seen in the "virtual force", as the sum of the "not-yet-real". This has as a consequence that in general any credibility of solutions within a society can only emerge as a result of the implementation of the virtual force.
"Virtual Reality" is the sum of the unnoticed future events, as "virtual" derives from the the Latin virtus in the sense of force; virtual reality is the reality of the forces, which are not yet noticed and not yet visible as rules and recognizeable patterns (Rajchman).
Subsequently any designer has to be aware that his task is to have the ability of reading the virtual forces and the skill of "virtual design".
John Rajchman says: Koolhaas thinks that architects do not only have a role of social responsibility or as administrators of the collective memory, but the task to uncover the "unnoticed future events" (John Rajchman).
The term blueprint seems to be monopolized by the typological faction as the search for features embedded in existing structures. But where typology derives rules directly from the properties of existing physical structures within a certain context, blueprint tries to read from properties of selected "important" existing structures (either of pysical nature or in peoples' mind) their underlying attitudes and tries to indirectly formulate these attitudes as rules.
The "blueprint" approach crosses the border from an objective to a subjective approach at all major points: first in the selection of "important" structures, second in the reading of attitudes instead of physical properties, and third in translating attitudes to physical rules. It is therefore open to interpretation, to pure subjectivity, and as a consequence to all sorts of mistakes.
The blueprint "method" though allows for radical changes through this at least three steps of interpretation and implementation.
Only the freeing from physical ties seems to allow for the accomplishment of rapid change or of features yet unknown at the time of the precedestors. This does not mean that a typological approach doesn't allow for any change or progress (in fact this is the core of its process). What it means is that solely variation often doesn't allow for fast and radical shifts of environments, tasks and attitudes.
On the other hand it is necessary to develop a method which allows for these change without leaving them to total randomness, a blueprint method. For the selection of objects and events serving as examples the characteristic method may be named as the search for what is in the air; for the reading of them it might be the focus on only a few actual features, for the translation the method might to concentrate on the discovery of constant trends or to rely on the power of personal imagination. Expressed here seems to be a move away from a scientific to a more emotional approach.
This is not necessary the case. The idea is not that single individuals create ingenious imaginative artifacts; although this might happen in some cases it still cannot serve as general rule.
The idea is more that the possibilities of an informational age should be engaged in processes around sensing blueprint. This is the power of creative software, visualizations and of all sorts of interactive possibilities.
The process of some kind of programming becomes an inevitable part of all attempts to discover the virtual forces. It starts from the assumption that all knowledge and solutions are already embedded, in this case in peoples' minds, ready to be pulled out and immediately translated or abstracted to proposals. The big problem and the killing force for the discovery of a common sense is definitely huge amounts of detailed information; a phenomenon which is familiar from all participatory approaches and intense questionaires and workshops.
To avoid an information overflow one could try for instance programming and interaction with selfgenerating architectural and planning proposals to be influenced in all stages by all actors. The process seperates the creation of design from any of the involved persons to a neutral but not random instance, the machine, to be influenced by a group or a hierarchy with certain rights and means of intervention and supported by high quality visualizational tools. Here information technology provides the means for quick generation and interaction.
There is some hints that outstanding solutions and that the admired works of architecture are outstanding for the reason that they catch elements which are in the air, either in their time or timeless, a distinction which maybe does not too much matter. Giedion writes about Corbusier's Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp: "In one single building all of the desire of contemporary architecture seems to be concentrated..."
The most important weakness of Post Modernism would be in these terms that it works with the technique of "collage"; collage standing for the putting together of well known and proved elements or even solely decorations out of the belief, that "the house" has already been invented and that its perception has after thousands of years reached a point of almost genetic information, the change of which causes much more disadvantages than possible advantages. From the Post Modernist viewpoint blueprint could be seen as a litteral advice for a solution. The act of critical abstraction could be seen as superfluous since easy and widespread recognizeable good solutions are available, ready to be recollected and applied to particular needs.
From a modern viewpoint blueprint means that new developments, ideas, criticism and possible reactions are already imbedded, blueprinted, in the existing city, and that by force of an act of abstraction and innovation the blueprint can be translated into adequate solutions. The existence of overcrowded, unhealthy speculation blocks or the unadequateness of their streets for modern traffic would stand for a blueprint, most probably there would in addition be some accidental or very fortunate "right" solutions be found, both of them ready to be translated to the general solution in form of the ville contemporain.
Other Chapters:
1 Venice I
2 Venice II
3 Venice III
4 Browsing
6 Construction
7 Bigness
8 Lille
9 Literature