Peter Cook

Peter Cook
And I thought Peter Cook had switched firms and gone to work with the great architect in the sky! Certainly did not expect to find him writing 'I told you so' pieces for online magazines.
It's refreshing to hear someone who is suggesting that borrowing from the theories of other disciplines has limited use in one's own discipline (linguistics for Strauss/de Saussure ideas of a fundamental 'deep structure' to architectural language; Deleuze and company for some idea of - well what exactly - analogies about time / experience and the unfolding of space?; Derrida for an obscurely worded deconstruction of the 'text' - whatever text is in architecture, surely not just the writing about architecture? - where the understanding of the philosophy cannot be disentangled from the understanding of the philosopher;) However, it's hard to see this as other than an argument that the craft tradition of sitting at the feet of the 'prominent architect' in class, are employed by them and then eventually strike out on their own to become the next gen's 'prominent architect'.

I have always understood that the idea of a university education was to challenge, to advance, to analyse and to develop the status quo - not merely to perpetuate it. The institution provides the distance from practice to allow this to occur. Sitting at the feet of the 'prominent architect' is more likely to develop clones. Still: well worth the read.