Designing for the Homeless 2: Permanence

Why is “Permanence” a relevant concept?

Well, essentially because I find that permanence is commonly the core subject that society enthusiastically prescribes both consciously and unconsciously to be architecture’s inherent “turf” and its single pragmatic pursuit. One could go so far as to assert that this is the consequence of architecture having been systematically objectified as the embodiment of stability, or otherwise the permanent state; this simply because of the assumption that, by virtue of its attainable form and delineation of space, it’s default manifestation as object invariably yields the condition of permanence.

But, as it’s been exposed through the various “heated” discussions I’ve had in the previous week, even the general concept of permanence itself remains amorphous and highly tenuous in its paradoxical antagonism to a stable and acceptable definition. Over the course of broad contemporary societal advances, it has indeed increasingly been subjected to relentless conceptual confusion and a myriad of enigmatic alterations to its perceived “original” method and practice. In my own view, this is of course on a large part due to society’s evolving predilection for impermanence as well as a systematic reduction of classic ideological perceptions of place, centralized culture, and even family for the sake of unexplored economic and professional gain. And by the rejection of rules traditionally regulated by site-restriction or site-situatedness, individuals adherent to the new mode of existence have evolved beyond to wanderlusts, nomads, and itinerants. What possible relevance then, is there for permanence if its traditional meaning is obsolete in direct reference to the new modes of existence?

Rather than rejecting permanence outright, I’m inclined to argue that ultimately and inevitably, the operation of this new mobility is still fundamentally dependent on a stable, albeit unrestrictive framework that facilitates for flexible exchange and interchange. This is essentially why I’d insist that permanence is a subject therefore indisputably consigned to a necessarily paradoxical position: as what it might possibly be objectively manifested as – the framework – but in reciprocal conjunction with its subjective antithesis – transience. In other words, I’m alleging that yes; permanence still does contain an indisputable necessity in itself for the sake of transience, and therefore, ultimately retains usefulness, though reformed. It is also on this relationship that I think flexible pragmatism finds its primary relevance; the mere existence and the condition of duplicity between these two naturally disparate concepts as they are perceived, actually qualifying each other as fundamental partners and therefore endowing a direct pragmatic value for each other in their concurrent dependency.

So what are the implications for Homelessness? Fundamentally speaking, I think that homelessness is the prime condition in which transience and permanence are constantly in a state of contemporaneous uncertainty yet ironic necessity – back and forth, to and fro, and somehow, continuously endowing pragmatic possibility upon each other as long as the socio-political sphere doesn’t figure out how to reform itself so that homelessness disappears. Very practically speaking, and harking back to the words of Sam Davis, architecture as it is objectified for homelessness from the level of frameworks or simply to bed organizational strategies, requires a capacity for permanence and transience, concurrently – the need for a degree of institutionalization yet of course, also a need to facilitate for and encourage personal freedom with which individuals once homeless would be empowered to choose (hopefully) towards personal permanence. Though some would argue that this concept of permanence is once again, obsolete in the sense of its dependency on a “traditional” and existing method of acceptable existence in our known society (that of physical permanence), I would argue that, no matter how theoretical one might get with homelessness, it is still a situation that is remarkably, inevitably and inescapably still directly restricted by its pragmatic consequences. And to satisfy the pragmatics of homelessness, the architecture, the social policy, the framework – these all must be pragmatic in and of themselves in the form of their immediately purposeful flexibility (somewhere with transience and permanence engaged like peas and carrots), or what I would call their divergent reciprocity.