If there was only one talk about Architecture which I could afford to attend each year - I would choose a 'Klopper Talk'.
My first attendance at a Klopper gig was in 2008 or 2009!? The timing doesn't really matter because what is said often stretches between the far past and the ponderings of the present (...timeless perhaps). I remember it as physically image-less presentation and would also allege, slightly inebriated, spoken word performance. It was a cryptic but cutting Bob Dylan like rambling in front of a typical black clad archi-crowd for which I am yet to have witnessed an equal.
So it was with much excitement that I ditched work commitments and attended the Brownbag Talk No.8:
Brian Klopper - Culture of Culture.
"What is an architect to do? For that matter - a poor student…Do you give the client or the lecturer exactly what they want because they are paying for it with their money and their marks - not their marks - but they've got control of them? Or do you work for some higher authority like prosperity or as the muse of God? And is it alright to deceive people to get the right solution? Is it ok to use any material or structure or finish to achieve the end you seek? If it looks like a marble column is it alright that is not a marble column? Is it your role to educate the public to appreciate good architecture (and anyway what is good architecture)? Is it something in the latest European style? Are the practical matters of organisation and environmental modifications necessary evils attached to the more mystical matters of art, beauty or message? And the answer to all this? Well for all complex human problems, as you know, there is one single answer - and its wrong.
…of course Im not going to give you the answer. You must decide for yourselves."
Image: http://perthsbest.wordpress.com
