“In its purest form, the ‘un-built’ project is devoid of the collaborative inputs by the other agencies that make a building come together. In it we see a formal spatial and tectonic composition as the architects ideal, the architects utopia.”
— Rahoul B. Singh

The un-built project represents architectures raison d’être. It encapsulates within it the architecture’s ambitions and aspirations, its speculations and vulnerabilities. Arguably, as a representation of its essence, unadulterated by external agencies, the un-built project represents the zeitgeist in a manner that few other representations of it can do. In its “incompleteness” lies its potency.

As the embodiment of an idea, the material manifestation of individual situations and places, architecture is defined as much by the dilemmas surrounding the circumstances of its conception as by the multiple agencies that contribute towards its material realisation.

The construction of an argument that simultaneously incorporates the exigencies of site, climate, program, budget etc., while also transcending it and serving as a comment to that moment of history, is in many ways what also distinguishes architecture from the increasingly omnipresent building project.

While arguably architecture is primarily a spatial art and is experienced sense perceptively, the“inhabitation” of a work, its “knowing”, is as much a sense perceptual act as it is an intellectual endeavour. In fact, one could go so far in saying that the act of inhabitation is as foreign to the discipline of architecture as it is intrinsic to the practice of architecture.

And so, a book such as this on the “unbuilt” serves as an archive of how architecture as a discipline has evolved.

In fact, one could go further – the unbuilt project serves to document architectural production at a moment in time before collaborative consultants and other tradespeople enter the process. Co-dependencies that represent the negotiated terrain that ultimately defines the “built work” don’t play as assertive a role in the early conceptual and schematic stages of a project. The work of the “unadulterated architect” is the “un-built work”.

Coincidentally, a book such as this also documents the influence of technology on the architects’ modes and methods of practice. Are the drawings made by hand? Are projects represented through computer simulations or wooden models? Do they reference global imagery or look at local precedent? What new forms of analysis has technology enabled, and consequently what has it helped improve?

The Unbuilt Project and Architectural Practice

Typologically, the projects represented in this book are varied. Collectively seen, they represent where architects feel their most potent works and ideas are manifested. Is the small dwelling unit a case study for other projects to come, or do the larger competition entries represent what the architect would hope to be their magnum opus?

The unbuilt project also serves as both the bedrock and impetus for subsequent work. Research done and ideas developed inform other projects that the studio may undertake in the future. The quality and quantity of such work define the type of firm that the studio is.

Consider for example, an “expertise” based firm, one that relies less on the individual talents of a few people than on an institutionalised ability to deliver projects that are at the cutting edge of architectural production, would such a firm do relatively less work than a firm that professes professional “efficiency” and project delivery as its operating model?¹

The latter is representative of firms that have their processes and systems geared towards delivering efficiency on a set of very defined tasks, often specialising in specific project types or even only on particular aspects of a project. Unlike the first category that focuses on creating “new content (knowledge)”, this type of firm does not “break new ground” but rather, as a solution provider, delivers predictability and efficiency through a project’s life cycle. The robustness of the systems and processes for a particular project type is often leveraged to other building types as well.

On the other hand, “legacy practices” have the advantage of time. Embedded within them is a partial history of the profession and its practices, along with established networks for collaborative work, project delivery and an extensive archive of past projects. Often multi-generational, such practices come either laden with the baggage of a bygone era or with a combination of experience and current-day best practices.

The Unbuilt and the Practice of Architecture in its purest form, the “un-built” project, is devoid of the collaborative inputs by the other agencies that make a building come together. In it, we see the formal spatial and tectonic composition as the architect’s ideal, the architect’s utopia.

However, in an era increasingly marked by programmatic instability, spatial and tectonic composition have become the structure within which “chance encounters” occur and programmatic hybrids and ambiguities are created. Together, they test and push the elastic limits of architectural form and production.²

That said, these spatial and tectonic transformations beget the question of typology and, by consequence, that of design method. Does the typological archive serve to anchor the project in the greater crucible of architectural production, or does it serve as a point of departure, a catalyst for the architectural project?

Alternatively, is the architectural project the result of a linear analytical process involving urban, programmatic, climatic, economic, social and cultural data sets? Does such an approach make the architect a mere intermediary between a given set of data and a building? Do the forms generated by a parametric analysis of data make a building a static response to dynamic change, and in doing so, does it make it immediately obsolete? Does the strategy of placing the infrastructure needed for communities to self-build absolve the architect of the responsibility of creating a better built environment? Is the transference of an architectural image from a different context a form of cultural or social arbitrage? The questions are limitless.

What arguments are we constructing, and what comments do our buildings make? Does capitalist consumption fuel the civic responsibilities associated with the socialist project, or has architecture become a vehicle to realise the economic value of a site as against its social and cultural potential?

The answers to those questions, along with others associated with the unbuilt project, will continue to shape the discourse of architectural practice and, by extension, the practice of architecture itself.

1. David H. Master, Managing the Professional Service Firm (Simon & Schuster, 1993) 21-30 ↩︎
2. Felipe Hernandez, Thinkers for Architects – Bhabha for Architects (Routledge, 2010) 1-20. ↩︎