I want an architecture

It’s not often that a poem has a full Wikipedia page dedicated to it. Zoe Leonard’s 1992 poem, “I want a president,” is different. Not only does it have its own Wikipedia page, but it has been reprinted numerous times (once in larger-than-life format on the Highline in 2016), posted and reposted online, performed by Mykki Blanco, and scribbled on many a Brooklyn bathroom stall (where I’ve seen the opening line at least once, but I think maybe thrice). People love this poem so much that they find ways to incorporate it into their public and personal spaces. Various critics and commentators opine about its proto-meme status, while Leonard herself reflected that she would not write the same poem today, but is “interested in the space this text opens up for us to imagine and voice what we want in our leaders, and even beyond that, what we can envision for the future of our society…”

Perhaps because it’s an election year, it was in this spirit of Leonard’s “I want a president” that I thought about what I want, or what I hope we want, for the future of architecture. Is architecture purely a commodity, service, or cultural product, or is it something deeper? Something that touches fundamentally on what it means to be: love. When I think of love, there is the romantic sense, but also the transcendent, universal, thing-that-makes-the-world-turn sense. For me, the concept of love, and how it impacts space, is inseparable from the divine. I want a president that isn’t the “lesser of two evils” as Zoe says, and I also want this for architecture. I want us to be completely, fully in love with everything we build. I want our architecture to be so full of love that it brings us to heaven. This poem is my wish.