Can pragmatism resolve the architectural or urban problems?

Background
In a past few decades, architecture has gone through different changes in terms of means architects can
use to resolve issues faced by architects. Pragmatism came as a response to two extremes of criticality
and post-criticality debate. Different authors wrote about this approach and this paper will discuss their
perspective to see which direction they were aiming at.

Key ideas and authors and Arguments

Main body of the paper will discuss the ideas that were put forward by theorists who supported
pragmatism in architecture including the following:

William S. Saunders (ed.) The New Architectural Pragmatism (2007); and Joan Ockman (ed.) The
Pragmatist Imagination (2000), the new Pragmatism article; Richard Rorty Consequences of Pragmatism:
Essays, 1972-1980.

Saunders: discussed pragmatic architecture in the businessman’s sense

Ockman: didn’t give direct direction but kept her essay open to let reader interpret in their own ways and
didn’t attempt to direct their opinion. She was influenced by Peirce, James, Dewey.

Rorty: wrote a book “consequence of Pragmatism”. He took pragmatism as not something that is solution
oriented by an approach that is skeptical towards arising challenges.

analysis
In this part, I will compare different point of views of authors above. They brought different flavor to
discussion on pragmatism in Architecture. Will also try to relate changing attitudes of architects to the
approach of pragmatism which also favored plurality. For example,

• Everyday architecture
• Relates to other arts that reflect society

We can’t have one definition or one solution to fit all. Therefore, a broader method to deal with different
issues and new trends is a better approach

Conclusion
Pragmatism, the way I understand it, is not problem-solving method but a broader approach that looks at
problems and like empiricism encourages experiments and is committed to pluralism without focusing on
single solution.