Felix Madrazo and Winy Maas: Copy Paste.
The Badass Architectural Copy Guide

Text: Péter Debreczeni

The unique nature of design is a priority, and there is a wide variety of tools and devices that can be used to achieve this goal. As it is quite a difficult task to find out something entirely individual, and requires a lot of time, yet copying and imitating saves both time and energy. However, if we do it badly, it makes us an immoral, unethical monster besides a law-breaker. Besides and to top it all, we may also have a wrong plan. This book by Felix Madrazo and Winy Maas guides us like a manual to orientate in the methodology of conscious and regular copying (“copy right”) from the déja-vu effect to the tools of algorithmic design. It underlines and confirms from the aspects of art history, law and science history, essentially proves, that copying is a more ancient and humane approach than enforced originality. In line with this, conscious inspiration-drawing and rational practice of plagiarism turn out to be essential components of design, art and human civilization as such. The banning of copying would actually lead to chaos, as everything would turn into a l’art pour l’art, unique mini-universe with a system of principles of their own, whereas the exclusiveness of copying would bring about objects without any character.