Mixed Matters

All Is Behaviour
Theo Spyropoulos
"A true architecture of our time will have to redefine itself and expand
its means. Many areas outside of traditional building will enter
the realm of architecture, as architecture and "architects" will have
to enter new fields. All are architects. Everything is architecture."
(Hollein, 1968, p.2)
There are no blueprints or master plans for our future, when science fiction
has become fact; architecture today has to move beyond representation and
the fixed and finite tendencies that declare what architecture should be and
work towards what it could be. Within these evolving territories new models
by necessity must conceptualise our ever evolving present and the uncertain
and latent world with which we operate within. The once comfortable
and understood orthodoxies in architectural thinking have proven limited in
their capacity to engage and address our contemporary condition. Today,
the intersections of information, life, and matter display complexities that
suggest the possibility of a deeper synthesis. As we live in ever-evolving
information-rich environments, the question is not why but how architecture
can actively participate.
Architecture in this expanded field of experimentation should be understood
beyond building, beyond materiality and the inert tendencies that conventionally
define it. Constructing a framework to explore architecture today
is complex with the unfortunate tendency to rely on other fields to give it
intellectual legitimacy or worse, defaulting to conservative models of the
past, which only reinforce habit. Architecture within this article is argued as
a means to interrogate the contemporary condition and to provide means
with which to operate within it. In a time when terms of reference are con-
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