The promise of today’s avant-gardist architecture

There has been a great deal of heated debate about the parameters determining whether an architectural work today is avant-garde. Throughout my path being close to architecture, I remember having studied built examples of a self-proclaimed cutting-edge architecture merely relied on new technological innovation; and then questioning how was actually, architecture, doing its job. For this opinion text, originally written as an academic work, I used pieces from different authors cited along the paragraphs and linked them at the end.

By and large, an avant-garde practice in cultural production is projected differently from the typical modus operandi. While it might be true that it implies innovations in formality and technologies, this is intended to be something other than its focus. The avant-garde in architecture is born by questioning and removing conventions in the name of the orders of power. Today, it is a critical response to our century’s imminent socio-political and ecological developments. A forward-looking production in architecture implies a sense of responsibility towards social collectivity. With this in mind, it is currently a concept that seeks to restore architecture with the power to apply effective design strategies against an individualistic and often unethical development.

I will argue contemporary architecture as avant-garde by using three examples to illustrate and demonstrate that architectural praxis nowadays is attempting to question the status quo; in my opinion, setting…