Reflecting on the Fault of Forgetting

Should we anticipate re-chaining Prometheus? Not, this time, for his hubris in offering to humans what belonged to the gods, but for his distinctive stolen gifts: fire, curiosity and imagination – what could, in a word, be described as art? Prometheus introduced humans to an ecosystem that was carefully structured by his brother Epimetheus. For the construction of this ecosystem, Epimetheus granted to each of the mortals essential traits that could help them survive or have a particular place in the Cosmos (earth, sky, ocean, underworld), and a particular programmed, axiomatic archetype or model for them to behave and live by, a protocol. Through the gifts of Prometheus alone, humans were ‘obliged’ to be free and independent of any predetermined protocol in order to be able to survive, to invent in order to be able to live and to create in order to develop. Freedom acted as the pharmakon against predefined protocols, but, at the same time, as poison, since the use of the offered gifts alienated humans from the established natural and material ecosystem. Motivated by the illusive myth of being the only species that could create the Cosmos, and not the forgotten ones in possession of a rescue kit offered by divine grace, humans glorified Prometheus for giving them the means to observe, imagine, invent, create, use and develop tools, techniques, machines and technology, but also sciences, politics, arts and certainly architecture.

Architecture, the way we actually think and create it, is an outcome of this obligation for the freedom of humans to become the adored epicentre of the Cosmos. This dominance project was one of the most salient of human activities in the entire era of the Anthropocene because of its impact and effect, whether directly or indirectly, on the Cosmos and its different Epimethean ecosystems. Over this period, architecture was the representation of the glorification of human qualities that could legitimise its cosmic privilege, a statement of the conceptions of truth supporting the human-centred project, and the material expression of a world view according to which the glorified human and the conceived axiomatic truth could create a coherent assemblage.