Re: Re: DDDA / Docklands Miscellany

Basically, you introduce an idea or provocation from a field totally outside your own, to enable Lateral Thinking.

Brian, your posts are very interesting, but after the second paragraph I’ve normally lost the will to live. You’re showing far too much of the tendency towards academy-speak, which may be wonderful in overawing a tutorial but somehow loses its flavour ‘out there’ in the real world. This notion of ‘provocation’ in order to induce thought is the equivalent of defending much bad contemporary art on the basis that it ‘makes people talk about art’ (but it’s still bad art).
The problem with thinking laterally, particularly in relation to economics, is that it can produce precisely the voodoo economics that have landed us in the present mess. Architecture and design – in an urban context – must above all be ‘grounded’; getting out and walking about will outdo any amount of theorising. By all means have a vision; but a ‘theory’? I’m not so sure.