What is The Carrier Bag Theory of Architecture?

Elizabeth Fisher argues that, rather than hunting tools, the first cultural device of humans was probably a carrier bag, which let them transport the vegetables they gathered.1 A weapon-wielding man, however, is apparently a more captivating image to depict on the walls of a cave than a food-carrying scene.

Ursula K. Le Guin adapted this theory to fiction, and managed to tell gripping stories in which unheroic characters make their way through life with all its failures and conflicts.2

The Carrier Bag Theory of Architecture applies Le Guin’s theory to architectural practice. Architecture requires a fundamental change in the age of crisis. However, whereas Le Guin’s dream finally comes true – those who collect oats into their carrier bags appear on the cave walls instead of those who hunt mammoths with their spears – as architects, can we tolerate such radical change in the images we have inherited, our ossified perceptions of beauty and functionality? What if we listen to and understand the stories of abandoned buildings, rather than focusing on more heroic, successful examples?

1. Fisher, E., “The Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution”, Womans Creation – Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society, Anchor Press, 1979.

2. Le Guin, U., The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, 1986.