Text | Kevin Mark Low
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Issue 44

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Dominant paradigms are values and systems of thinking that are held in common at any one given time in a particular society. They are as much a part of cultural and social background, as they are governed by context of the given moment, and are characterized by the general inability or refusal to see beyond current models of thinking. Dominant paradigms are governed less by fact as they are by pure belief, and are known to change over revolutionary circumstances, or when sufficient anomaly and differences of opinion have reached critical threshold, after which the entire belief system crumbles in the face of a freshly adopted belief, one which may not necessarily be founded on deeper truth itself. The belief that rule over the masses came from God through royal birth and aristocracy used to be a dominant paradigm, as with the belief that governments globally had the best interests of their people at heart. Bloodletting was a foundation of accepted medical practice, and Native American cultures welcomed the first Europeans to arrive as fair-skinned Gods; the same Europeans who believed it was unhealthy to bathe.

Dominant paradigms curtail discovery, and the act of learning. As with every other sphere of academia and practice, Architecture and the molding of space has its dominant paradigms. We currently live under multiple paradigms architecturally, unchanged and unchallenged for hundreds of years – ways of thinking so dominant that even the most important individuals in architectural thinking and learning remain largely unaware of their presence. The most paralyzing of these is also the paradigm that governs all the others, the one that rules them all – it is the paradigm of what we believe designing is. Much of the reason for the existence of this paradigm is due to insufficient critical reading material, and the lack of our exposure to it – we may not be illiterate, but our predominant reading sources come by way of style, fashion and business magazines, blurbs in newspapers and on the Internet, and books on architecture that advertise rather than critically examine in catering to our under-developed attention spans through images and soundbites. Architecturally, we have become dependent on the ‘feature’ in magazines and posts, a device of journalistic invention that delivers the equivalent of fully-processed fast food by way of photographs and completed products for quick consumption, appropriation, and reapplication, instead of offering us raw material for our individual critical abilities to be developed in our own work. We rely on a picture being worth a thousand words, failing to uncover the veracity of those virtual words, stuck in belief that the full story has thus already been told. And, while many images of architecture are understandably taken only when projects are fully finished, many published renderings and drawings by architects are also done after the projects have been completed, for the sole purpose of altering and showing, rather than for reasons of discussion and learning. 

However, the lack of discourse and reading material vital to furthering our critical abilities is but an obvious, lesser part of the problem. The paradigm has deeper origins in a much overlooked aspect of learning and education itself, one that we have to touch on in order to clarify the problem at hand. The act of learning is such a complex and profound process, it is no wonder so much has been theorized, written, and debated about it. Almost everything we read in books and the Internet becomes so quickly embroiled in thick language of the field, that further reading is rendered drudgery. However, as understanding creativity is itself rooted in the science of learning, it feels more pressing than ever for us to better understand how the thinking behind learning indeed happens and how it informs the what, why, and how, of the work we do. We will not attempt to unravel the entire learning process for the purposes of this essay, but instead find relevant focus on a specific part of learning, on the singular aspect of it that has become one of the most neglected paradigms of academia itself, accepted and unquestioned since deeper understanding of the cognitive process began decades before. 

Our focus will be on the learning paradigm referred to as imitating, or copying. Touted as either good or bad depending on the argument being made, the act of copying has been misunderstood or misused by educators and laypeople over the past century; more so than almost any other teaching method in existence. Why is the act of copying one of those rare examples of the learning process that is understood to have both positive and negative effects, and in truth, how can copying be both good and bad simultaneously? Why does copying among students in examinations lead to expulsion from schools, and yet find promotion by professionals and quotes attributed to famous people such as Picasso? And, although we will scoff at direct copies of an object, building, or thing as fake, why do we often hear praise given to indirect or part copying as evolved and thoughtful? Why do we create classes in Art school where children are taught to draw or paint like the Masters, and yet criticize working artists for lacking originality? Is there any difference between a good copy and an evolved copy, if both are nonetheless copies of something truly original? What indeed, is originality, and is imitation truly the best form of flattery? 

And, as accepted as copying is, in being even encouraged in creative fields, why does doubt nonetheless exist in our minds about this act, even among those who have built their entire reputations on it? For answer to these questions, we have to address two consistently under-emphasized aspects of the learning process – the first, having to do with an act of teaching instruction called ‘demonstration’, and the second, concerning part of the basic cognitive process referred to as ‘attention’. Demonstration is a vital part of instruction in as far as initial understanding is engaged by first being able to see, hear, or read about an activity or process, before attempt is made to perform it. Demonstration forms a fundamental part of almost every teaching theory currently known, as it enables superficial but vital introduction to activity that we have to then translate and transform to the particular manner that each of us thinks, or the unique ways in which each of our bodies are made. When it comes to specifically visual demonstration, however, a subtle problem comes into play by default – that due to the immediacy and graphic nature of visual demonstration, it becomes naturally difficult to separate an understanding of the principles behind the demonstration, from the act of purely imitating it with as much accuracy as possible. Bode Miller, a multiple world champion downhill skier, only learned the basics of skiing as a child. Honing his skills through deeper understanding of his unique differences over his formative years, he chose not to receive training the traditional way at professional level, yet shaved hundredths of a second off every turn through his unconventional and seemingly unrefined methods in winning races by unprecedented margins of half seconds or more, in many cases. He crashed out of races almost as much as he won them, as he prioritized getting down the race course as fast as he possibly could, rather than holding to the streamlined form that so characterizes the genre. 

We could certainly attempt to replicate his style of skiing, but, not being in possession of his exact physique, musculature, joints, and instinctive acumen, could never reach our own full potential since we would merely be imitating what his form demonstrated, rather than through fuller understanding of what he prioritized as fundamental objectives, develop our own unique abilities through rigorous selfcritique. Thus begins the act of copying: when demonstration is erringly used to legitimize imitation, and we mistake the fundamental principles behind the why of doing, for the outward expression – the look – of the how it is done. Visual demonstration may well be vital in beginning the process of learning, but by default, also sets us up for the cut/paste world of appropriation, as it is so much easier to imitate the work and products of others, in establishing an outward show of success, than to critique how to process our personal work, in establishing ourselves. The second aspect of the ubiquitous nature of copying involves the generally incomplete understanding of the basic cognitive process of ‘attention’.

Attention is about focus, the ability to center our senses and minds on a particular stimulus of interest. As with instructional theory, focus is achieved through seeing, hearing, and reading or writing – although different people find better means of focus through one or another of the various methods, we usually depend on a combination of them for balanced learning. And, in as far as avoiding being hit by buses and cars while crossing a street, falling off while attempting balance on a tightrope, or keeping from putting a hole through one’s hand while wielding a hand drill, attention is innately paramount to survival: physically endangering situations demand our focus in relation to the specifics of constantly changing context. However, over less physically demanding situations of the everyday, the human mind gravitates towards automating what is immediately received and perceived, in order to find refocus on other things deemed more important. In most cases, our freed attention is diverted to experiences and things that will guarantee, or at least provide hope for a better future, leaving a large degree of the immediately present neglected. As architects and individuals trained to create things, our future of promise is filled with the things we will do, how differently they can be done, and the legacy or acclaim it might bring, to effect that insufficient attention or none at all is given to the immediately present – that of the relationships between the particular physical and intangible aspects of context surrounding each task we take on. And, instead of focusing attention on those specific differences that characterize each new situation or site, we visually automate and cognitively generalize what is perceived and assimilated, to the typical result of superficial readings of the different contexts we are tasked with understanding. These readings inevitably priorities similarity over difference, since the understanding of similarity can be perceptually automated, whereas a deeper comprehension of difference/s takes tremendous attention and great effort to accomplish. And, not having developed any deeper perception or understanding of the existing relationships and forces that envelop our sites as context, we unconsciously revert to a simple default built into the human mind as answer: we look to solutions we have previously encountered by way of demonstrations, precedents, and case studies, and everything else we have been told that has been done before and had worked in approximately similar contexts – we copy. In part or in whole, we copy solutions of form for our promised future into the context of our sites because the only other way of developing a solution is through the arduous and daunting task of bringing our attention to first uncovering the problems of content specific to those sites. 

We imitate from everything we have encountered in the dead or recent past, in apology of our under-developed abilities for focused attention to the subtle cues of the present, and in belief our copying has long been legitimized by the ways in which we were taught in school. We copy with sufficient change to the original so as not to be accused of blatant plagiarism, and then explain it all away as ideas evolved to fit our sites and contexts. We copy to spare the deep effort of questioning context and content, and hide the copying behind the label of inspiration. For decades now, the act of copying has been believed to have a positive effect for the only reason that it forms a part of learning through demonstration. Little could be further from the truth, in fact, since demonstration is but a single introductory aspect of the instructional progression that itself constitutes a mere part of the complex learning process. For generations now, students, teachers, and professionals have mistakenly used the act of basic demonstration to justify shortfall, subtly excuse the lesser effort required of appropriate techniques, and explain away subject matter that has not been adequately understood. Insufficient clarification regarding the instructional aspects of learning is the reason why copying is believed to possess seemingly conflicting qualities – the truth is, the primary quality of copying is one that engages scales of economy (money), or branding (advertising), rather than any association to the actual creative act. And, those scales of economy, those methods that help us put aside the effort in engaging our deeper thinking processes and actual creativity, are further bolstered by our incorrect focus of attention in creating and securing solutions to market the global future, instead of discovering and attending to problems of the specific present. In this way, physical and factual contexts are defined and determined more by what we can do to them in expectation of what they can do for us, rather than what we can learn about them and in service of what is expected of us. A basic misconception regarding the demonstrative aspect of learning has left the acts of copying and appropriation undefined and ambiguous for decades, if not centuries, to our subsequent adoption of these modes of behaviour as norms of accepted practice. A separate but concurrent misconception in relation to the attentive aspects of learning has created casual disregard globally for the varied and specific nuance of the tangible and intangible contexts surrounding the work we do. It has furthered the propensity for seeking answers in copying solutions into the contexts we inherit in avoidance of the deep effort required of addressing deeper questions and problems of content, as the starting point for relevant design. The combination of these misconceptions is the reason for the global trend of our search for answers before any question of relevance has been identified. Architecturally considered, we currently live the dominant paradigm of offering solutions in the absence of problems. The design of our built environment has been largely reduced to exercises in establishing and styling solutions and products as answers, failing as the professional service it is supposed to be, in identifying questions and problems for the process of designing relevance. Styling has become misconstrued as designing. Our misconceptions have led to the lack of distinction between styling as a method, and design as a philosophy. It has legitimized cut/ paste instincts, selective appropriation, and the mistaken belief that inspiration and imitation are different faces of the same coin. This coin is flipped globally whenever discussions regarding the built environment are engaged, from the highest levels of architectural discourse in Europe, the United States, or Japan, to the most commercial schools in Malaysia and India, in confident belief that it is invariably always ‘design’ we intelligently speak of and about.

It has become common practice in lectures or presentations to hear copying redefined with expressions that include words such as appropriate or reappropriate, inspired-by, emulate, exemplified, and creative adaptation; when the truth is that nothing changes in relation to the behaviour that guides the practice – one governed by imitation or duplication for purely formal effect. The outcome of the word games we play with the act of copying arrests our development as individuals and as a society, as it entitles all to perpetuate the dominant paradigm, the myth of ‘creative imitation’, as a legitimate form of expression, when its primary outcomes are the multitudes of forms, textures, and ideas we have out-sourced and copied into the contexts of our projects – the very same thing that we commonly criticize less aesthetically-coordinated or commercially-oriented projects of doing. Fundamentally, however, very little separates between them and our instincts for creative appropriation and misplaced focus. More detrimentally, our participation in the genre creates yet another paradigm called a trend, one which operates solely on the basis of sufficient numbers of people copying from an original source, regardless of who first began the copying, or how much later anyone else followed it. 

Trends may well dominate our world, but as the dominant paradigms they perpetuate damage actual creativity and paralyse progress like nothing else can, or does. The quote often attributed to Pablo Picasso – describing good artists as those who copy and great artists as those who steal – has long run its course of wide popularity through misreading. It is time we begin to realise the quote was made specifically in reference to the commodity Art had already become, being delivered tongue-in-cheek.

In as much as copying is detrimental to both individual and social development, many of us may nonetheless be unable to engage the abilities demanded by critical thinking and design – the process of leaving behind what we have seen demonstrated, and trusting our own abilities to focus attention on the subtlest issues of specific context in search for unasked questions, is indeed something only a select few can ever achieve more completely. For this reason, there might be some reading this essay who will believe it has only been written for the select few, the ones whom the rest of us truly look up to as being pioneers of thinking in design. This is not the case – the essay has been written for anyone who has ever questioned the lack of knowledge and available discourse regarding the true nature of copying, and indeed everyone else besides; because no one truly knows if they can lead until they understand that they do not need to cut/paste their work and lives as paradigms and trends dictate. This essay has been written for everyone to understand that we will never know if we can lead until we choose not to follow.

Kevin Mark Low is the sole Director of the Malaysian based architecture practice Small Projects. When time permits, he is a teacher and writer.