"Ça dépend" by Jeremy Till, Éditions de la Villette

It depends
Essay on the contingencies of architecture
Jeremy Till
With an original epilogue by the author
Collection : Theory & criticism
Publication date: September 2025
French and expanded version of : Architecture Depends (Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 2009)

What does architecture depend on? On people, times, politics, economics, ethics, disorder… in short, on reality in all its unpredictable complexity and irreducible uncertainty. Jeremy Till invites architects to take greater account of these contingencies, which exceed their sphere of control but always end up imposing themselves on their works. With rigor and irony, the author deconstructs step by step the autonomy that architects confer on their discipline, and which maintains them in a pure and ideal vision of the objects they design. Circumstances, however, thwart the best-laid plans at every stage of the process, from conception to construction and use of a building. Mies’ “Less is more” invariably gives way to Till’s “Mess is the law”. What if this threat of destabilization turns out to be a tremendous opportunity? Wouldn’t architects have everything to gain from coming down from their ivory towers, and “starchitects” from their pedestals, to engage in an open and constructive dialogue with their multiple interlocutors – experts, decision-makers, craftsmen, users, inhabitants – but also with the things that surround them – materials, regulations, waste, climatic phenomena? This is the key to producing more useful, more humane architecture, and above all, to hoping to transform the world.
For more information, visit Jeremy Till’s website.