THE RIGHT ANGLE JOURNAL REFRESHED
THE RIGHT ANGLE JOURNAL REFRESHED
Welcome back to The Right Angle Journal.
We’ve come up with some new answers to old questions and we hope you’ll join us in the discussion.
Tune in next month for “Residential Architecture: Sanctuary or Asset?”
Architectural Obsolescence
Is Obsolescence inevitable? Out with the old, in with the new, ad infinitum? It feels like this is the way of the world. Progress depends on it.
During the COVID hiatus, we took some time off to ask ourselves: is The Right Angle Journal becoming obsolete? Would that be so terrible? After all, obsolescence has been the hallmark of so many architectural journals over the past century-and-a-half that our departure would be helping to perpetuate a noble tradition. In other words, we could help keep obsolescence from becoming obsolete. It seemed the least we could do.
But that led us to deeper questions. Was architecture itself becoming obsolete? By design (as in the planned obsolescence of buildings)? By neglect (e.g., the Ontario Science Centre)? By attrition (the profession itself)? If so, can this process be harnessed, halted or reversed?
We began to think that these questions were serious enough to merit serious discussion, which required that we pick up where we left off. Let’s call this Question No. 5.
BUILDINGS: HOW DID ARCHITECTURE GET TO BE A DISPOSABLE COMMODITY?
When did it become OK to treat a sound building like an old appliance? On the Ontario Science Centre, planned obsolescence, and the cost of throwing architecture away.
ONTARIO SCIENCE CENTRE 1: THE LOSS
Three generations of one family grew up in Raymond Moriyama’s Ontario Science Centre; now the province is dismantling it. A personal and political lament for a brutalist landmark.
ONTARIO SCIENCE CENTRE 2: AGEISM
The Ontario Science Centre, not yet 55 and facing demolition, speaks for itself in this first-person plea against architectural ageism.
LITTLE BRITAIN TOT LOT
Sudbury’s Little Britain Tot Lot is neglected by the city but loved by its users: the case for a garbage bin, a gate, and saving a condemned log building.
THE PROFESSION 1: ARCHITECTING WITHOUT ARCHITECTS
Obsolescence is a natural process and everything has a lifespan: the unsettling question of whether the architectural profession is letting its own slide.
THE PROFESSION 2: ARCHITECTURE REDEFINED
A UX designer, skateboarder, and photographer who never trained as an architect argues the profession’s definition is too narrow: architecture is what happens when design meets experience, digital or concrete.