UNDERSTANDING PRIMITIVISM AS AN ARCHITECTURE DESIGN PROCESS IN A TRIBAL INFORMATION AGE

Abstract

This dissertation sets out to understand the primitive discourse in architecture. After which parallels will be drawn between the tribal nature of the digital culture of this information age we exist in, and the understanding of primitivism in architecture, to perhaps enable a glimpse of the near future of architecture. To understand the primitive discourse is to understand its primary use. The primitive has always been a tool for architects. It has been used and manipulated in the most creative ways to almost always affirm the architect, and the architecture discourse. There are three main manifestations of the primitive in architecture. An introductory definition of the three manifestation are as such: primitive images of origin as formal inspirations; returning to a primitive state as a reaction to the modern architecture discourse; and more recently, an abstract way of design thinking that encourages the architect to design like a primitive man. The categorization of the primitive discourse into the above-mentioned three manifestations is the inferential conclusion of the various texts scrutinized in this bibliography epitomized by the two following essays: “The Primitive as a Modern Problem”1 by Dalibor Vesely and “Digital Commerce and the Primitive Roots of Architectural Consumption”2 by Richard Coyne. Vesely distinguishes the terms primitive and primitivism and this dissertation shall take the same stance with regards to these two terms hitherto:“In the final judgment the primitive can be seen as an external understanding of its own nature, as something to approximate or imitate. The essence of primitivism, on the other hand, is in the creative process, motivated by the search for originality and universality.”3 “Digital Commerce and the Primitive Roots of Architectural Consumption” helped define the transitional stage that was a watershed for primitivism to emerge from the primitive. Here, Richard Coyne cited Marshall McLuhan‟s4 observation that digital culture had moved away from the printing press towards the information age. This “moving away” is seen as a critique of the intellectual construct (literacy) and will be put in parallel with post-modernist architecture‟s critique of the modern. The dissertation will therefore categorize the three manifestations of the primitive discourse in three chronological stages based on terms coined by Dalibor Vesely and Richard Coyne. They are in chronological order: the Primitive, The Return to the Tribal Hum, and Primitivism. These three manifestations will be discussed against architecture publications, writings, built and un-built works, together with painters, sculptors, dancers and musicians to appreciate the similar trajectories of the understanding of the primitive in both art and architecture. Finally, this understanding of the primitive discourse in architecture will be placed vis-à-vis the trajectories that art (digital culture) has taken with regards to McLuhan‟s “cacophony of digital media of the information age. The film PressPausePlay5 discusses the fears and hopes of artists and the common man in such an age, and will be the basis of how this dissertation attempts to understand the future of architecture with regards to the primitive discourse.