I remember back in Columbia GSAPP during Tschumi's reign I (unfortunately) had a studio with Stan Allen. The theme was "Brownian Motion" I kid you not, and he s

I remember back in Columbia GSAPP during Tschumi's reign I (unfortunately) had a studio with Stan Allen. The theme was "Brownian Motion" I kid you not, and he started us off with "consider a career in minor architecture" and how we really should be focusing on the "skin condition". Right around the corner, a young hot wunderkind from Princeton's studio was doing 'organic' forms that basically amounted to 'turd' forms. I came to architecture from Electrical Engineering. It was shocking to discover that, from a theoretical basis, there was no there there in Architecture. As far as I can tell, it is still a field caught in an identity crisis. CAD and advances in materials and structural engineering has definitely helped carry it along but fundamentally, Architecture is struggling to establish a sound theoretical foundation (beyond sound bites) to guide the design of buildings. At least Alexander, et al. put forth an actionable bottom-up program for design.