Misalignment and Disposition

Abstract

Misalignment, or lack of perfect fit, happens within every part of life and events; therefore, architects cannot create perfect designs that satisfy all requirements simultaneously and indefinitely. The more complex the situation and the larger the number of relationships involved, the more misalignments may occur. Also, when there are such misalignments, some of the secondary design strategies may become evident, i.e., if there is misalignment, there could be a “disposition” implying an unfolding relationship, an oriented tendency, and a set of developing possibilities that are temporarily blocked by other dominant factors. The sense of the word ‘disposition’ here is adopted from Keller Easterling’s Active Form and is taken to represent potential tendencies and ‘a condition-ing substrate’ that is used as a guide to developing architecture and infrastructure. This concept will be discussed in this document, and examples provided. Architectural design is how architects fulfill their subjective intentions and ideas about form and aesthetics into an existing built environment, during which misalignments will always occur. Easterling talks about the disposition of infrastructure in her book ‘Extrastatecraft,’ illustrating how the actual location of infra-structure causes and influences the resulting design process to be adjusted and reconsidered. While infrastructure seems the most logical and rational building type to make this argument for, other building types and designs could also contribute even more complicated and productive misalignments. For example, we could find misalignments through the relationship of existing buildings and urban fabrics to abandoned infrastructure, decaying neighborhoods, and graffiti statues. In short, observing and recognizing misalignment is a prerequisite to start using misalignment as a productive design strategy.