Three Little pigs

"One day the big bad wolf came and knocked on the first little pig's door and said, "Little pig, little pig, let me come in." And the little pig answered, "No, no, I won't let you come in, not by the hair on my chinny chin chin." "Well," said the wolf, "then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in." So he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down"[1]


The famous fairy tale of the three little pigs[2] and the big bad wolf is a story that intends to be didactic and teach children the value of consistency and hard working but I would like to inverse this and attempt to see it the other way round. This is probably because I never considered the first little pig as lazy or less smart and also because I consider the story as a good start for a discussion about the architectural practices and in general the technical world. In the story, the little pigs build small houses for their protection and what is noticeable is that while building takes place, every single little pig solves practically only one problem disregarding others. The first pig considers as a major problem the spending of time so sets as his main goal to build fast and finish in a short time. He really solves the problem and brings his goal to an end by building the house with the use of hay which is a light material therefore easy to carry and manipulate quite fast with the use of the minimum power. In that sense the little pig has succeeded. But then the wolf blows and the wind comes and demolishes the house. The same happens in the case of the wooden house, the aim is fulfilled with the use of a material which is more stable and can resist wind but it is easy to put on fire and this is how the wolf destroys it. The pigs finally hide themselves in the third house which is the most stable and safe because it is made of bricks and this is how they get saved. But the brick house took more time to be built and the story unfortunately doesn't tell us what would have happened to the three little pigs if the wolf had decided to come earlier before the brick house was finished or which pig would have survived in a case where the houses would collapse during an earthquake. On the other hand I cannot avoid mentioning that there was also the possibility that the wolf would never come which would mean that the first pig would be the most successful. What I mean is that the problem of the fairy tale is that it takes the overall context for granted and sets the conditional problem as something fixed while in reality it never is.

Taking the context for granted is also what the pigs did and it is what happens in all technical practices. Every pig set his own problematic and worked according to that and eventually all of them came up with solutions that suited them and achieved the goals they had set. What they did wrong was that they failed to consider the totality therefore what they initially defined as problem was only a part of the totality and was solving only one of the possible problems. While building, they imposed a goal and brought things to an end by giving a material form that as they thought would serve the goal. But every single house had a different end and it was build to serve one singular purpose, not all possible purposes. When the wolf appeared, his presence revealed (or activated) several needs and dangers (e.g. the wind) that the pigs had failed to predict and consequently hadn't designed possible "solutions" for them. This is why their houses didn't manage to survive, because their processes had concluded. But this is how it is in real; there is always an "outside" that we fail to examine, the other (l'autre) which we fail to predict and to design for, there is always the unknown and the unpredictable (which certainly is not random).

Therefore, if we look at the reality in total, or the totality of certain processes, we understand that it is rather impossible to define a singular thing as "problem" and certainly there cannot exist something that we can clearly name "solution". Problems and solutions exist only within fragments, as constructions or conventions that serve the better understanding of the world but they are not the world. Reality is a complex continuum where infinite sets of problems and solutions are interconnected in ways we often don't know and cannot predict. Within this complexity any kind of interference alters the system in ways that are not necessarily singular or fragmental therefore what we consider as solution to a problem might often deteriorate other problems in ways we hadn't predicted. Therefore what we tend to consider as solution to a problem, is rather a negotiation among several problems.

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[1] Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_little_pigs

[2] Published versions of the story date back to the late 18th century, but the story is thought to be much older. The phrases used in the story, and the various morals which can be drawn from it, have become enshrined in western culture.