Millard the MALarch Mallard

MALarch is an occasional practice of the architecturally adjacent. Its entries explore building and space through written forms and imagery. Its most recent entry appears after a random architectural definition below. Farther still lie the entry's comments, and eventually the archive where prior entries endure. Consider looking around and leaving a comment.

Nothing is malarkey at MALarch because everything is. The premise is bad architecture.

Autonomy ⟨ɑ'tɑnəmi⟩
concept The thing about writing definitions (and I've only taken a first pass through A as of this definition's writing) is it doesn't really feel like writing. It's pithy. It's quick. Get a grasp of the gist, and get out.

But quips, bromides and the occasional apothegm do not make up for the lush narratives that unroll in the process of writing, that create deeper definitions. Perhaps a better glossary would be longer, would take the time to define each word at length.

Long-form definitions capture nuances, but they invite more noise too. Without the threat of a word count, definitions can beat around the bush, maybe getting two birds while at it. A thousand plateaus may better define ideas than a couple sentences, but who has time for that?

The imposed order limits: 280 characters (minus the word itself and the darling phonics). This breeds mostly succinct definitions. It also defines the volume as a whole until some word decides how to define itself — there's the rub!

Deviation does not necessarily entail better definitions. In this instance an ulterior discussion arguably taints its conceptual purity. Spurning the overarching rules does not mean the definition is doing so by or for itself; it can be a vassal for (or vassalize) a third entity.

Architectural design similarly responds to outside criteria, and must often do so per a client, review board or other entity wholly outside itself. Even when self-determined, architecture of the city is read against the city — a context that relates it to a greater order.

e.g. "In the course of history, certain architects have articulated the autonomy of form through a radical and systematic confrontation with the city in which they have operated." - Aureli

Whether the reasoning is for or against another, it is still of another and thus not wholly of the self. But who are those others anyway to tell the thing itself not to consider another in its decision-making? It only matters that the impetus comes from within.

While at it, why not use this somewhat self-determined (but not self-exclusive or self-dependent) definition to address the ongoing project, its context? I've yet to actually write a blurb as to what I'm trying to do with this glossary, in part because I'm still figuring it out.

I am defining, as best I can, words that architects and the architecturally-adjacent use, overuse or otherwise appropriate. The list is never complete, and suggestions are welcome.