The Architecture of Failure

'The Architecture of Failure' A conversation with Mark Wigley and Brett Steele, Moderated by Shumon Bhasar Graphic: a large quote: 'I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work'Thomas Edison In 2011, the world finds itself adrift in a world of accelerating forms of failure. Global economies are mired in the financial consequences of widespread banking failure. Failed political regimes and failing foreign policies have lead dozens of countries into ongoing wars, being fought across the developed and emerging world. The failure of 20th century business, design and planning models, including widespread examples within the architectural profession are creating the conditions around which new strategies, projects and forms of practise are emerging. Architectural histories and theories have forever focused on narratives of individual, stylistic, or intellectual, cultural success. Architects have long sought to escape failure of all kinds as Mies van der Rohe was once quoted as saying late in his career, 'I had to flee to the new world to escape the failures of my youth what the old world made impossible for me to accomplish there'. The overwhelming part of an arc hitect's working life is spent working with failure: for every project realised, dozens fail to reach their conclusion. All movements and styles are eventually superseded by their successors. Hundreds of entries in a design competition are losers, while a single proposal is selected and judged the winner. Tonight's conversation by Mark Wigley and Brett Steele, the latest of a series of public conversations begun in 2008, will embrace an architecture of failure. The conversation will be moderated by Shumon Bhasar, Head of AACP, the curatorial practises group of the AA School of Architecture.