The architectural canon derives significance through distillation - a curated reduction into discourse extracted from one perspective grounded in epistemological experience: plans, a section, a seminal photograph.
However, in the poly-objective aftermath of the internet age, controlled narratives have a way of dissolving, diluted in the acerbic ether of non-hierarchical search results, democratized digital reproduction, factual populism, tangential cancellations …and it would seem the canon’s become conversely… less digestible.
If x then y, if all narratives are uncovered, if all canonical buildings are white, if this will kill that, then what can we still learn from a single reading? Or a single building?
Upon examination it would appear that this may be the root of the problem - there never was a single thing - and the canon relies on cherries picked, interpreted forms theorized into importance from a narrowed reality in support of a posited framework, a privileged theoretical view on a dais.
So what happens to the canon in the era of poly-objectivity, if every viewpoint exists on equal footing?
Turning the chosen few around and around as ideas, as objects, in 3D replica, in square holes, and ad nauseam for all time, inevitably leads to idealized arguments blurring, formative interpretations turned inconclusive, and, most significantly, the preclusion of possible invention and alternatives— a loss to the potential of architectural discourse which may never be fully overcome.
Or perhaps it’s simply a matter of perspective.
