DAVID MAYERNIK
LTD.

The Italians have a compact aphorism for the problem of translation: traduttore, traditore. Translator, Traitor in English. To translate is to betray. This gets at the fundamental problem of accessing texts in other languages (although T. S. Eliot supposedly said he could tell Dante was a great poet reading him in Italian, before Eliot could speak Italian himself). But translations can take other forms, like texts into the visual arts. Or into films.

Today, we either take architecture too seriously, or not enough: in the former case we see it as either the destruction or salvation of society and the environment, in the latter it’s at best mere packaging and at worst shelter.

Architects should stop thinking they have to be pseudo-scientists or technocrats to be taken seriously. Our research is naturally in the realm of imagination, not tabulation.

Our memory’s limitations and imprecision facilitate creativity.