The Third Condition
“Above” Architectural Theory, No Apologies
Dualities define the political, social and cultural landscapes of our time. Whether in the form of the two-party duopoly, the nature of social media, or how electronics operate based on the binary language of algorithms, the dictum of polarizations has underpinned the understanding through which we experience the material world. The narrowing to opposing interpretations has produced acts of self-containment, creating bounded territories defined by “a singular “transcendent” cause (a theology, a sovereignty, or Platonism).”1 This has activated formulations that are political by definition, determining the spatiality of “being” as either “inside of the box” or “outside of the box.” Being on the inside or being on the outside are both bounded forms. Each is either bounded territorially or discursively. The box, however, is the same. As a result, much of what binds us—ideologies, lifestyles, laws, policies, opinions—also tethers us to a particular sphere and associated point of view.
In his book, I am Not I, Jacob Needleman suggests, “there is always more than two opposing truths. The whole truth always includes a third part, which is the reconciliation.”2 Religion, shopping, or on a larger scale, the way we view the environment or globalization, are considered a whole, but yet rather than creating unrestrained spheres, these acts of surrounding and enclosing actually territorialize and materialize as systems of world-making. Even the immateriality of technologies has led to insides. German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk argues that the “inside” is a metaphor for the way societies have lost their sense for localization. However, there is ambiguity surrounding the notion of where we are. In question is not the spatiality, it is no longer an individual’s choice, the decision is predetermined, as being inside of a continuous interior feels like it is outside. Some environments or even buildings, such as the Crystal Palace or the Mall of America, are so large they actually and metaphorically produce their own climate, with invisible limits suggesting there is no outside. However, if we believe in the nature of duality, then where there is an inside for someone, there also must be an outside for someone else. Between ontology and paradigm, there exists what I refer to as “the third condition.”
With shifting frontiers and significantly increasing challenges in the future, the existence of the third condition is critical. Globalization and rapid urbanization have widened the territory, and inquiries have become more complex and broader in scope. The proliferation of (mis)information, climate change, environmental damage, demographic shifts, and inequality have further increased the stakes and led to transgressions of limits exposing parallel realities, for example, between the city and nature, as it appears one is operating on top of the other. If meaning were the value assigned to a set of relations, could the third condition provide a lens through which to recast the role of architecture and its ambitions in addressing the challenges placed in front of us?
Through the lens of biblical parables, “so-called” Easter eggs, and lingua franca, this book explores “the third condition” not as the result of two opposing truths, layered spatial dimensions, or different frames of reference, but as a permeable position in itself. Parallel worlds are inherent in parables, Easter eggs, and lingua franca, but the idiosyncratic third condition traverses these binary realities through “acts of doing,” which challenge the status quo of what has become mainstream radicalization. For protagonists like 16-year-old political activist Greta Thunberg who is seeking to stop climate change and global warming, 27-year-old Dutch historian Rutger Bregman who is an outspoken tax-reformer alleviating global inequality, or the Stoneman Douglas High School students who fight for the reform of gun laws, advocacy is characterized by acts of doing.
“Acts of doing” have taken on a new resonance, and this, I argue, is where the third condition exists. As epistemology, philosophy, and methodology, or shaped by ethos, political-cause, entrepreneurship, and social and civic innovation, the third condition carries acts of doing beyond polarizations, partisanship, and pigeonholing without apologizing for it. As a result, they spring from the grey areas between fixed binary realities, determining the scope of finding solutions rather than continuing to float between new definitions of the same problems.
For more than 2000 years, biblical parables have extracted the third condition as an alternative to the binarisms of juxtapositions and dichotomies. Taught in the New Testament, parables form relationships with their audience based on indirect communication to open new avenues of truth. “Direct communication is important for conveying information, but learning is more than information, especially when people think they already understand. People set their defenses against direct communication and learn to confirm their message to the channels for their understanding of reality. Indirect communication finds a way in a back window and confronts what one thinks is the reality.”3
Although parables and their method of indirect communication are sometimes hard to understand, they are engaging and reflective, “arresting the hearer with its vividness or strangeness and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.”4 Most famously, this is exemplified in the parable about the Good Samaritan. It not only became an allegory for someone who helps a stranger, but it also made evident that parables are deeply rooted in reality, and do not need “explanation so much as implementation. They in effect say to us, “Stop resisting and do it,” or “Believe it.”5
Historically, architecture has been slow in responding to emerging frontiers. This is not a matter of misunderstanding the urgencies, but architecture is not free from polarizations, lacks social and political currency, and is usually last to sit at the table where decisions are made. One reason is because architecture’s self-assurance has created narratives and eco-modernist idioms around which it rallies along with other suspicious majorities. Additionally, institutional discourses are hermetic with, at times, politically motivated dialectics that oppose the terms of the agencies that initially created them. Technological optimism, good-life-modernism, populism, environmentalism, and many other “isms” are not only indulgent, territorial, easy to manipulate, and exclusive, but they are also, I argue, the questionably presumed postures for architecture to lead and imagine better futures.
In a recent interview at SXSW, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) illustrated the dilemma on a larger scale. “We’ve become so cynical, that we view … cynicism as an intellectually superior attitude, and we view ambition as youthful naivety when … the greatest things we have ever accomplished as a society have been ambitious acts of vision. The ‘meh’ is worshipped now. For what?” “Meh” not only expresses AOC’s dissatisfaction about polarized territories and how cynicism is a popular stronghold. It illuminates how there is inaction at the polarizing ends of the spectrum, and thus, a lack of the third condition.
Lingua Franca provides the space for “contact.” Derived from the Mediterranean to facilitate trade, cultural, religious, diplomatic and administrative matters, it is the chosen language of communication to connect persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common national culture.”6 For example, Spanglish is such a hybrid. It is a third condition that not only connects but, as a language, it is “shaped at least as much by non-native speakers as by its native speakers.”7
The nature of the environment suggests it is a “box,” and because of that we are conditioned to overlook and mishear. It is easier not to see or hear than to fully engage with the world. Holistic observation takes the right frame of mind, and this is crucial, as not seeing it holistically creates blind spots. We typically experience the world through the convenience of our environments, screens, gadgets, or material belongings. However, it takes “Easter Eggs”––purposefully hidden messages, surprises, or secret features intentionally placed in movies, video games, comic books, or music––to challenge the viewing or listening experience. The egg is cleverly concealed, as often only true fans will understand intentions and placement, and calls for holistic observation to notice there is an egg and how it broadens the medium it is presented in. These eggs always come as a surprise, which means the observer has to engage in the “act of objective observation” to receive them. They also challenge the observer to think beyond the existing creatively. For example, in Pink Floyd’s album, The Wall, in the song “Empty Spaces” Roger Waters can be heard saying, “Congratulations. You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the funny farm, Chalfont…Another voice call can also be heard exclaiming “Roger! Carolyne is on the phone!” Although the analogy suggests that one would go and search for the Easter Egg, I argue, it is a third condition that dismantles the traditional viewing or listening experience and elicits “acts” that come to you as a way of thinking and as a mindset.
Architecture is the discipline of territories, spaces, frameworks, boxes, and other enclosing and surrounding spatialities. It is also undeniable––and it is in the nature of the discipline––that architecture represents the “power or the metaphysical Aufwärtsbewegtheit (upward movement) of existence.”8 It is an act of doing and it represents itself above the status quo. Every future architecture is also a new approach, new self-determination, and a breaking from past generations. At stake are not the questions we are asking, what frameworks we are developing, or how to break free from habits. Instead, how do we create awareness for localization to allow new creations and new knowledge to emerge? Key to this is viewing the world, not as a self-contained, solitary, and bounded environment, but rather as a realm with infinite possibilities and social connections. This is not a matter of seeing the future of architecture only in the existence of expanded traditional forms, as it requires the transcendence of the adherence to particular (disciplinary) expectations and discursive narratives in favor of the third condition.
The following is indicative of how architecture plays a critical role in translating the political, ecological, economic, material, and technological agencies we as designers can produce as new vectors of action, meaning, authority, agency, and life. What we have habitually understood as the house, the environment, a church, data, and other spatial determinations will require re-kinning through the lens of the third condition, prompting its own evolution. The goal is to address concerns that arise in architecture’s spatial determinations when we operate within texts, contexts, environments, and territories, and highlight possible channels through which the third condition emerges.
Typically, the evolution of a subject is developed as a narrative that moves from plot to plot, protagonist to protagonist, and sometimes even from world to world with a beginning, middle, and an end with a resolution. It is the convolution and expectations harbored within polarizations that set the foundation for anticyclical readings through which the “above” comes into its own, without apologies. Rather than presenting resolutions at an end, it unfolds as moments of impact and moments of realizations. Some are long, short, or only one sentence, which could perhaps be more impactful, giving meaning to the third condition.
— Antonio Petrov
1 Sloterdijk, Peter. Philosophical Temperaments: From Plato to Foucault. Insurrections. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
2 Needleman, Jacob. The Heart of Philosophy. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1982.
3 Snodgrass, Klyne. Stories with Intent : A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2008.
4+5 Ibid.
6 Seidhofer, Barbara. “Key Concepts in Elt: English as a Ligua Franca.” ELT Journal 59, no. 4 (2005): 339-41.
7 Ibid.
8 Sloterdijk, Peter. “Foam City: About Urban Multitudes.” New Geographies, no. 0 (April 2008 2007): 151.