We are still struggling with the understanding of the 'structure' of architecture. The conscious ethical desire of architecture and the underlying human evolutionary formation of architecture are two distinct topics. One could never juggle across the boundary of each discourse or else it would be a futile discussion.
Two concepts we need to understand. The 'Ethics' of architecture (being what our desire of future architecture tell us to pursuit) is a mental construct/morality that is inconsistent. Simply saying, what kind of architecture is considered morally correct differs over time and the kind of dominating social ideology.
For instance, 21-th century's ethics of architecture (which based upon our self-conscious heroic individuality), if we suggest it in an Ecole des-Beaux-Arts' artelier in the 19-th century, most probably we would be kicked out of the school. The formality and the tradition are the virtual at that time. If the playfulness of the current individual ideas been raised in Mies' IIT studio for instant, we can expect the same consequence. The epoch of the Heroic Modern era was the formality of space and construction. The ethics, being conservative (like the Ecole), or obedient (like a Malaysian architect), or heroic (like the modernist), or visionary (like Boullee), is undergoing an evolutionary change. Now we talk about how architecture should be, what architect should do, the term 'should' signify nothing in singularity. It is merely an objective individual mental obsession. Just like how the Capitalist tell us what brand we should wear, what we should buy, indeed we are just pursuing a more confident 'Me'.
-Charles Jencks, Evolutionary Tree of Architecture, 2000.Second, no matter how radical our spoken ethics change, no matter it is the Palladian's neoclassicism, or Beaux-Arts' defiant, or a Boullee's happy drawing, or a Bjarke Ingel's boast... an undeniable natural fact is that the habitat of human (being his architecture) is undergoing the Darwinian evolution, side-by-side with humans bio-genetical evolution. We are just a small equation in this great motherly shift. The birdhives are just a species under the evolutionary tree, no matter what is its moral stand.
-Reminder to architecture: The modern man's denial and ethics is fruitless, he is just an inseparable part in the evolution. 'It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.' Clarence Darrow on Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
So, now, we should clarify our position of discourse, whether it is a conscious talk of our new ethics, or we put things in a big zoomed out perspective: the fact that our architecture idea could only contribute to a fraction of an equation in the whole great ecological evolution. These are two different kinds of dialogue.
After the status of different realms are clear, we can proceed. First, lets speak of ethics. I think architecture could never move us. This is because it has never be able to suggest a future to us. Every architectural act is a story-telling of the past, it is the crystallization of our yesterday's epoch, no matter how modern and advance a concept or a technology it possess, a building becomes obsolete of itself right after the second it is built/proposed. Time never wait. It suggest the past second, the past hour, the past day and year, how it moves us? That is the reason every Utopian vision of a better tomorrow could only be found on a paper or across our tongue. It waits for a proper technological reality to construct, but it tend to outdate itself after it is realized, time past, the vision instantly transformed into a retrovision.
It is a reminder that the analogy you use - the Etienne Boullee's cenotaph is a false example. The tomb proposal is never visionary. Your quotes say it all in a reverse mockery. 'While in night, a singular ball of fire illuminates the sphere like a sun in still. The Cenotaph, exemplified the spirit of Age of Enlightenment, “Light represents Newton, lighting the knowledge of Mankind.” – Francisco Martinez.' In the text, it says the platonic sphere symbolised a sun, it symbolised the Age of Enlightenment, light represent Newton, represent Mankind... It is in no way suggesting the future. All it could do is symbolically reinvent the past, glorifying the past, glorifying the dead (Newton), suggesting the platonic aesthetics of the Egyptian past, representing the already happened (Age of Enlightenment started in the Renaissance Italy in the 15-th century). Worse, it has never been built because of the limitation of technology, the fact of its time. It is driven and manipulated by its epoch, so it remains on a paper. It is the ultimate story-teller of the past.
Saying architecture moves us is like saying a reading diary moves us, both contain unresolved duality. It moves us forward emotionally, but retreat us backward by describing the past. They could never suggest a concrete future.
Last, before he suggest anything, error already occur in the structure of his statement. Adelyn Perez says: 'function follows art'. Has art devoid of a function? Art does has a function. It emotionally moves us! It contributes to the social well-being. So what is function follows art means? It is 'function follows the function of art', it means the function of architecture follows its functionality for well-being. If the functionality of architecture fail, it fails itself, Peter Eisenman and his unfunctional bedroom - FAILS!
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