WHATEVER HAPPENED TO TOTAL DESIGN?

摘要

What does "total design" mean today? What does it mean, let's say, after postmodernism? Not so long ago, the expression was part of the basic vocabulary of architects, teachers, and critics. Yet it is remarkably absent from contemporary debates and seems to play no role in schools today. What happened? Total design has two meanings: first, what might be called the implosion of design, the focusing of design inward on a single intense point; second, what might be called the explosion of design, the expansion of design outward to touch every possible point in the world. In either case, the architect is in control, centralizing, orchestrating, dominating. Total design is a fantasy about control, about architecture as control.