Like obsolescence, building tolerance (one manifestation of lateral thinking) is a process. Architecture’s role in this process is of paramount importance: architecture is the most easily visible and most widely accessible part of the design industry. It should highlight both problems and solutions, bearing the marks of its social, historical, physical, and technological context, even if that context is no longer contemporary (architecture does not exist in a vacuum, so it should not act/look that way). In this way, architecture can then profoundly affect cultural behaviors (and elicit new ones) in pursuit of liberation.
What follows is a proposal for how exactly architecture will do that.
First, entropic interventions will take place. These, acting like Lebbeus Woods’ scabs, will highlight instances of entropy and allow people to recognize the presence of time. Ma, wabi-sabi, and mono no aware are new concepts that can be introduced into an open system, and their ‘differenceness’ will help the cultural shift into heterarchy. These will be localized and contextual.
Second, as the interventions too become obsolete, appreciation of depreciation will be established.
Third, a new architecture shall be introduced, as a result of the affects that the interventions had on individuals. It will provide an alternative experience that humbles humanity while activating anarchistic predispositions of human behavior.
Lastly, the hierarchy will be dismantled and replaced by heterarchy.