Radical Contingency. Strategy and Tactics in Architectural Design

Abstract

While narratives tend to show architectures as coherent results of a plot in which the abilities of involved people are far more relevant than the fate, actual projects are more like the conjuncture of various trajectories: involving actors, factors, aims, preferences, good (and bad) intentions, most of which will remain unknown. Tracing all these elements is indeed impossible but, for the architect, sailing through them all along the process is mandatory. The paper investigates how architectural design can exploit the so-called potential intrinsic to the radical contingency of all processes, instead of suffering their (apparent) haphazardness. By changing architectural design into a floating sequence of strategies and tactics, it is possible to overcome the facticity of the process, thus successfully promoting the project as an aim. Such an attitude may be enhanced in projects of all scales and in any moment of the process, for architects to gain a creative and purposeful role.