A couple days ago I was informed a group of students from my alma mater had swept the podium in a design competition. This is more prestigious than it sounds. Some professors deliberately assign projects that precisely meet the criteria for submissions in a particular competition and then encourage their students to enter. I see nothing wrong with this strategy - it gives the students something impressive to put on a resume, it brings prestige (of a limited sort) to the school, and it makes the professor look good. Three birds, one stone. Efficient. In fact, the only thing I have against it is it's efficiency. Anyway, I looked through the entries to see for myself what it takes to win competitions these days and, while flipping through (or paging through, whatever the correct internet terminology) I immediately spotted the winner. I was looking at the entries page, not the results but I had absolutely no doubt. One project practically leapt off the screen screaming "Professional!"
What made this project so spectacular was the quality of the panels - everything about them was top notch, the composition, the drawings, and most importantly the renderings. I don't know what software the winning team used (my guess is 3D Max with an add-on rendering tool like V-Ray) but the results were spectacular. The effect was like finding an image by a professional photographer mixed in with a bunch of cell-phone pics taken by (slightly drunk) people. That is kind of demeaning to the other competitors but, trust me, the difference really was that dramatic.
I pride myself on being intelligent at least once a week so I'm not embarrassed to say it took me two days to start wondering whether really excellent rendering (and graphic design) is sufficient to win an architecture competition. Or rather, if it should be sufficient. And since this is my smart day I can say the answer is not as clear cut as I would like it to be.
Architecture is, as I wrote in an earlier post, something that is either a) built or b) not really architecture. Completed buildings never look like their drawings. Ever. I know of some cases where the differences are very slight. I have a friend who can model the world with a degree of precision I find frightening. More frequently, the differences are huge. At the very least, images are deliberately constructed to show the proposed building in the best possible circumstance. And then they are edited to make both the building and the world just a little more perfect (a scary and fascist idea when applied to the world). In school I heard a professional renderer give the odd bit of advice, "add more cats." Apparently, in his experience people associate cats with happiness. He also advocated including a lot of children holding balloons (something of a cliche now). What that lecture drove home in a very un-subtle way is potential clients can be manipulated by rendering tricks into approving buildings of dubious architectural merit. If an image of a building requires a truckload of cats and large groups of ethnically diverse children holding balloons to convince a client, the building itself can't be very convincing. And it is the building that ultimately matters. It will be there, occupying space in the real world, with or without cats and balloons, for a long time. If it is ill-conceived and poorly designed the world is measurably worse for its existence. Architecture should stand on its own merits or not at all. Tricks used to make buildings more attractive are under-handed and unsuited to (what I consider) a noble profession.
On the other hand. Architecture is a business. It is the business of getting people who often know almost nothing about architecture to pay millions of dollars for a building. Reading orthographic drawings is not a talent; it is a learned skill. And not a skill people engaged in the earning of millions of dollars are likely to acquire. The design, the ideas behind it, its architectural merits have to be communicated to the client one way or another. This used to be done with models and perspective drawings but both of these have one major drawback when compared to computer models - they are difficult to edit. Once a physical model is built any changes to the design result in the necessity for a new model. But a digital model can be altered (and any number of new images generated) in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost.
I think architectural models are beautiful objects. If I owned a firm (and had sufficient money to do so) I would have models built for every project. One of my former professors used to build models from brass - gorgeous sculptural objects I lusted after. I also think the very best computer renders are beautiful objects; the friend I mentioned above can create amazing images that look like the work of an incredibly skilled photographer who happened to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment.
The contradictory demands made on architecture by its twin nature as art and business are problematic to say the least. Selling architecture is a good thing. Convincing people good design is worth good money is a good thing (stop me before I write something controversial). The manner in which architecture is currently sold can be very bad for the profession. No building can be summed up in a single image. Even the simplest building is too complex. Whether the image is hand-drawn, a photograph of a model, or a digital image doesn't really matter against the ruthlessly reductive impulse to present a building with a single iconic image. That one image, reprinted again and again in advertisements, is what the building becomes in the public mind. Architecture periodicals and books combat this by the (perhaps ill-conceived) remedy of printing many images. The strategy is still reductive - buildings judged by how well they photograph. But I don't know a better way to do it. Until 3D smell-o-vision is a reality, this is what we have. And if completely immersive virtual reality does become a reality, touring libraries isn't going to be high on the list of things people use it for.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
On Public Buildings
I'm originally from London, Ontario so I have a kind of fascination for public buildings. London didn't have much in the way of architecture when I was growing up and the Dominion Public Building was by far the best building in town. Here's a picture:
What this image doesn't capture is how the building is usually seen. It's on one of the busiest streets in London. Most often all you see is the front, an extremely terse essay on the skyscraper (10 storeys counted as a skyscraper in 1930s Canada):
It is an example of the style now called Modern Classicism but it is filled with little Deco moments. The building was part of the Public Works Construction Act of 1934 - the government was trying to spend its way out of the Great Depression (a story that should sound familiar). The design was by chief architect of the Department of Public Works T. W. Fuller and it was completed in 1936. Despite the place it occupies in my imagination it never occurred to me to look for either other buildings constructed under the Public Works Construction Act or other designs by Fuller. It turns out there are a lot and, helpfully, many of them are also called the Dominion Public Building.
Here is the Halifax Dominion Public Building:
According to what I can find on Google, it was designed by the Chief Architect's Office of Canada and I can see Fuller's hand. He has a tendency to emphasize the building's height by recessing the windows in long vertical bands - there is a restrained gothic element, you can see it in the emphasized vertical banding right below the toque-like dome. The sculptural elements (reserved for ground level and the top of the building) show a similarity. The corners are very strong and have multiple articulations.
The Dominion building's are barely a blip in Fuller's career. He is far more famous for the Library of Parliament and the Parliament Building itself. But these buildings, built in the last half of the 1930's are the ones that grab me. When the government was faced with a financial crisis of unprecedented proportions its architectural response was to create buildings that practically scream of solidity. They are massive stone constructions intended to last a lifetime. Since Fuller died in 1898, they have lasted longer than a lifetime.
Compare them to the Dominion Public Building of Toronto:
Construction on this building started in 1926 - less than a decade before the DPB in London but it looks like it could have been a century before. Unremarkable classicism. Rusticated ground floor, doric (ish) columns, exaggerated intercolumnation, and a heavy (yet incomplete) pediment. Could be England in 1700. If the glazing was less prominent, it could be the House of Raphael (an obvious precedent). This building is old-fashioned. Strange that something designed in 1926, when the stock market was still sound and optimism ruled, should take no chances when a building designed in the middle of the Great Depression can't find enough opportunities to try new things. For example, check out the main entrance for the DPB London:
Where did that come from? It isn't Deco, really. It's close in the way surfaces appear to be layered on top of each other. It certainly isn't classical. The main entrances don't face the street directly, you enter on a diagonal - an distinctly non-classical touch. And those lights are completely nuts. Many, many times I have dreamed of stealing them. The inside is even wilder, pity I can't find any pictures (because it's a public building they are understandably nervous about people taking snapshots inside).
The point I'm trying to make (other than T. W. Fuller's DPB's are greatly under-appreciated) is the way architects respond to social crises is important. Fuller (and the government of Canada) responded by the architectural equivalent of saying, "Relax. We are going to be here for a long time. Everything is cool." In the last decade, a period of more financial and cultural shocks than I care to enumerate, the architectural response has been more glass curtain walls. Not reassuring.
There seems to be some small movement, hard to see and sporadic, to change this. Architects are slowly moving to stone instead of concrete, wood instead of steel. I think this change is both important and appropriate. What people were afraid of in the 1930s was the collapse of the financial and political systems they had previously thought eternal; the response was buildings designed to last. What people are afraid of now are elaborate fictions that have enormous power over their lives, commodities that don't really exist but can nevertheless bring down entire nations. So the response (choosing materials that are natural rather than manufactured, regardless if such a distinction has any real merit) is reassuring. Stone is stone and wood is wood. We know what they are and where they come from. Fuller's DPBs also demonstrate times of crisis do not require retrograde designs. Architects can continue to embrace new ideas about design even in times of social unrest.
Monday, September 9, 2013
The Separation of Church and State
My previous experience in architecture was mostly spent in firms that enforced a separation of church and state - "church" in this case denoting the designers (for whom faith, in one form or another, is the guiding force) and "state" meaning the drafts-people (who follow rules, regulations, and the laws of statics, thermodynamics, etc). I have also worked in firms where the two were integrated, most often in the same people. This is one of those rare instances when I don't actually have an opinion (at least not one set in stone) about which is best.
Separating the designers from the drafts-people seemed like a good idea when it was presented to me. When I was working for a firm that enforced the separation I would be approached by the drafts-people and asked, "Can you take the curve out of that wall and make that a right angle, it's going to be a bitch to detail." Or something similar. In those moments it seemed like allowing the designers the freedom to draw what seemed best to them (as opposed to what was unlikely to cause problems when it came to figuring out how to build it) was an excellent idea. Designers need to dream. I think I've written this before but the only compass a designer has to guide them through the wilderness of endless possibilities is that instant emotional reaction. I call it the "That's cool!" hypothesis. I know; it's a terrible name and when I think of a better one I will start using it.
Writers are not the only ones terrified of a blank page, what novelists call "the white monster." Architects, like novelists, do not lack ways to fill the page; the problem is precisely the opposite. The possibilities are literally infinite. I contend the only criteria that can usefully differentiate between them are emotional. Sure, after the first few lines are drawn, the first tentative shapes emerge, analysis starts to help. But in the beginning there was cool. Or hot. Or wicked. Or whatever. There was an instant emotional response to a form (or an idea of a form). It's difficult to talk about because the process is opaque even to the person designing. From my own experience I can say designers are almost never motivated by "That will work, I guess."
So, the decoupling of design and detailing seemed the best way to remove impediments to that instant emotional response. The process simply wouldn't work if as soon as you have that idea that makes you exclaim, "That's cool!" your internal editor replied, "And you couldn't figure out how to build it in a million years."
The flip side of that particular argument is as soon as designers separate themselves from the process of determining how a design will be realized they are surrendering a tremendous amount of control over the final product. One firm I worked for was structured so that one person was assigned a project and was responsible for it from start to finish. They did everything - from the first lines on the blank sheet until they handed over the keys and manuals. And they chose to run their projects that way because they wanted complete control over every aspect of the project. They believed, as I do now, that details matter. And they were courageous enough not to listen to the nagging voice that warned them not to over-reach.
I worked for them as a student intern and that might explain why I thought they were doing it wrong. I believed their system would inevitably lead to a bunch of projects that looked the same - for the simple reason it is easier to cut and paste details from previous projects than it is to develop new ones. Time is always against architects. I suspect this is true of most professions but if you knew how little time is allowed for each stage of the design process I think you would be surprised. People don't come to architects because they want a building 5 years from now - they want it today or, ideally, yesterday. For a big building, any of the dozens of condo towers that have gone up in Toronto in the last few years, architects' fees are approximately the same as the cost of the carpet. So, divide that into conceptual design, design development, fees for consultants, permit drawings, contract drawings, tendering (not what it sounds like), specifications, site visits and all the stuff I'm leaving out and the amount of time available for each section (assuming you want to pay your staff) is not very much. There is a tremendous financial pressure to do what you know. Then there is the pressure of potential litigation if you do anything wrong.
It is entirely reasonable to expect architects to design buildings that don't collapse and kill people. It is entirely reasonable to expect architects to design buildings that don't leak. No one would dispute this. But every single time an architect tries something new, he or she is taking a calculated risk that it won't result in anything surprising or unexpected. Because in architecture surprises are almost never good. The only motivation architects have to try new things is the desire to be better, to surpass themselves. Seen in this light any architecture that is new and different is also kind of heroic. Anyway, enough with enumerating the thousand and one reasons architects have to crank out nearly identical buildings year after year.
One result of my (naive I think) opinion that separation of church and state is a good idea is I have spent a lot of time designing things and comparatively little figuring out how to build them. I took the classes at school. I know the basics. I can draw a parapet detail or a wall section (steel, concrete, or wood frame). But I don't know building systems inside out. I am much better at explaining why a design is good or bad, or providing historical precedents (both completely useless skills) than I am at detailing buildings. The word architect means "head (or chief) builder" and I have not earned the right to call myself that - not by the standards of my professional organization or by my own standards.
I have had the privilege of working with architects who design things they have absolutely no idea how to build. It's a strange kind of thrill, like watching a horror movie. You have to be able to enjoy those occasional instants of panic. What surprises me, in retrospect, is that the most adventurous designers were in those firms where they were also responsible for figuring out how to build what they designed. The projects weren't flashy or deliberately outrageous; more often it was the type of detail you would have to look at carefully before you'd think to ask, "How the hell did they do that?"
I have deliberately kept my personal ambitions out of these pieces - except when dealing with the zombie apocalypse. This is because there is nothing less interesting than other peoples' dreams. This time, just once, I will confess my ambition is to become a master builder. I want the confidence necessary to design something I have no idea how to build. I don't care if I am ever a great architect; greatness is over-rated. What I want, and am willing to spend the next 20 years of my life to achieve, is extraordinary competence. And for that I will need a firm that integrates design and detailing.
Separating the designers from the drafts-people seemed like a good idea when it was presented to me. When I was working for a firm that enforced the separation I would be approached by the drafts-people and asked, "Can you take the curve out of that wall and make that a right angle, it's going to be a bitch to detail." Or something similar. In those moments it seemed like allowing the designers the freedom to draw what seemed best to them (as opposed to what was unlikely to cause problems when it came to figuring out how to build it) was an excellent idea. Designers need to dream. I think I've written this before but the only compass a designer has to guide them through the wilderness of endless possibilities is that instant emotional reaction. I call it the "That's cool!" hypothesis. I know; it's a terrible name and when I think of a better one I will start using it.
Writers are not the only ones terrified of a blank page, what novelists call "the white monster." Architects, like novelists, do not lack ways to fill the page; the problem is precisely the opposite. The possibilities are literally infinite. I contend the only criteria that can usefully differentiate between them are emotional. Sure, after the first few lines are drawn, the first tentative shapes emerge, analysis starts to help. But in the beginning there was cool. Or hot. Or wicked. Or whatever. There was an instant emotional response to a form (or an idea of a form). It's difficult to talk about because the process is opaque even to the person designing. From my own experience I can say designers are almost never motivated by "That will work, I guess."
So, the decoupling of design and detailing seemed the best way to remove impediments to that instant emotional response. The process simply wouldn't work if as soon as you have that idea that makes you exclaim, "That's cool!" your internal editor replied, "And you couldn't figure out how to build it in a million years."
The flip side of that particular argument is as soon as designers separate themselves from the process of determining how a design will be realized they are surrendering a tremendous amount of control over the final product. One firm I worked for was structured so that one person was assigned a project and was responsible for it from start to finish. They did everything - from the first lines on the blank sheet until they handed over the keys and manuals. And they chose to run their projects that way because they wanted complete control over every aspect of the project. They believed, as I do now, that details matter. And they were courageous enough not to listen to the nagging voice that warned them not to over-reach.
I worked for them as a student intern and that might explain why I thought they were doing it wrong. I believed their system would inevitably lead to a bunch of projects that looked the same - for the simple reason it is easier to cut and paste details from previous projects than it is to develop new ones. Time is always against architects. I suspect this is true of most professions but if you knew how little time is allowed for each stage of the design process I think you would be surprised. People don't come to architects because they want a building 5 years from now - they want it today or, ideally, yesterday. For a big building, any of the dozens of condo towers that have gone up in Toronto in the last few years, architects' fees are approximately the same as the cost of the carpet. So, divide that into conceptual design, design development, fees for consultants, permit drawings, contract drawings, tendering (not what it sounds like), specifications, site visits and all the stuff I'm leaving out and the amount of time available for each section (assuming you want to pay your staff) is not very much. There is a tremendous financial pressure to do what you know. Then there is the pressure of potential litigation if you do anything wrong.
It is entirely reasonable to expect architects to design buildings that don't collapse and kill people. It is entirely reasonable to expect architects to design buildings that don't leak. No one would dispute this. But every single time an architect tries something new, he or she is taking a calculated risk that it won't result in anything surprising or unexpected. Because in architecture surprises are almost never good. The only motivation architects have to try new things is the desire to be better, to surpass themselves. Seen in this light any architecture that is new and different is also kind of heroic. Anyway, enough with enumerating the thousand and one reasons architects have to crank out nearly identical buildings year after year.
One result of my (naive I think) opinion that separation of church and state is a good idea is I have spent a lot of time designing things and comparatively little figuring out how to build them. I took the classes at school. I know the basics. I can draw a parapet detail or a wall section (steel, concrete, or wood frame). But I don't know building systems inside out. I am much better at explaining why a design is good or bad, or providing historical precedents (both completely useless skills) than I am at detailing buildings. The word architect means "head (or chief) builder" and I have not earned the right to call myself that - not by the standards of my professional organization or by my own standards.
I have had the privilege of working with architects who design things they have absolutely no idea how to build. It's a strange kind of thrill, like watching a horror movie. You have to be able to enjoy those occasional instants of panic. What surprises me, in retrospect, is that the most adventurous designers were in those firms where they were also responsible for figuring out how to build what they designed. The projects weren't flashy or deliberately outrageous; more often it was the type of detail you would have to look at carefully before you'd think to ask, "How the hell did they do that?"
I have deliberately kept my personal ambitions out of these pieces - except when dealing with the zombie apocalypse. This is because there is nothing less interesting than other peoples' dreams. This time, just once, I will confess my ambition is to become a master builder. I want the confidence necessary to design something I have no idea how to build. I don't care if I am ever a great architect; greatness is over-rated. What I want, and am willing to spend the next 20 years of my life to achieve, is extraordinary competence. And for that I will need a firm that integrates design and detailing.
Friday, September 6, 2013
Hong Kong
Here's a book review and interview from urbanphoto on navigating Hong Kong. As a student I was part of a case study on HK and the thing I remember most was there were no accurate maps of the island. We live in a mapped world - there are no blank spaces left for monsters and dragons. I expected to be able to find a map with a few minutes of Googling but there just aren't any. The island expands and reforms too fast to keep track of; by the time one map is finished the territory has already morphed into something else. Jonathan Soloman, Clara Wong, and Adam Frampton have taken a new approach to documenting the city - showing it in all its fabulous intricacy and three dimensionality - in their aptly titled Cities Without Ground. The plural is intriguing. I hope they tackle more cities but have difficulty thinking of another place so densely layered.
What makes HK unique, or at least extremely rare, is not just the density of its construction but the fact of its topography. The island is mostly composed of steep hills and was initially separated into zones, areas leveled for construction at different elevations. It's the interlocking of these previously separate elevations that generates HK's three dimensional complexity. As the density of the built environment increased the ground plain (the base elevation) became less and less significant.
HK is probably the biggest city in the world where cars aren't the dominant factor in urban planning. Part of the motivation for Cities Without Ground was the importance of pedestrian paths in successfully navigating HK. In Toronto, this factor is of negligible importance (as it is in almost all North American cities).
HK's three dimensionality is just one of the reasons I find the city fascinating. It is a cliche in North America that for every hour you travel off a main highway you also travel ten years back in time. This applies not only to social mores but to levels of technological sophistication and (most interesting for architects) the built environment. There was a scene in the TV series Heroes where two characters visit a small town in Texas. The Washington lobbyist remarks, "This looks like the kind of place I can get a good latte." Her associate replies, "There is a cafe down the road and I saw a cow on the outskirts of town."
"Backward" in this context means "behind the times". The implication is other places, typically cities, are current, with the times. I also take it to mean some places are "forward". A person from HK would see NYC as "backward". For a long time I have wanted to make a chronological map of the world, using location in time (rather than physical geography) as the basis for the structure. Places where people live as their ancestors have for thousands of years, and there are a lot of places like that, would be furthest in the past. Places where events are currently happening that will take years, or decades, to happen here are either the location of "now" or exist in the near future, depending on where the observer stands. What stops me is trying to invent a means to determine where "now" is - where the future arrives first. I don't know where that is at the moment; I do know it moves around.
Two thousand years ago Rome was the location of now. It was at least a millennium ahead of the rest of Europe, possibly more. Trying to create an index or set of criteria to determine where Rome stood, chronologically, compared to the major cities in China would be extremely difficult. Definitely beyond my current knowledge. But, confining myself to the "western World", Rome was it until 400 CE or so. Then things leveled out and all of Europe and the Mediterranean existed in the same now. They used the same technologies, the same economic systems, and social structures that were either similar or were coevals.
Starting around 1700 England began to pull itself into the future - or push the rest of Europe into the past. The phrasing gets awkward but it became the place events occurred that would take years, or decades to occur elsewhere. Then the locus of our connection to the future migrated to New York. And stayed there until it moved to Asia - maybe to Tokyo, maybe to HK.
So where is it now? Where is the place that not only looks on us as backward but on everyone else as well? HK? Shanghai? Singapore? I don't know. I'm not even sure what the dominant characteristic, the primary indication, of "now" should be. The most important, the signature, aspect of development is only revealed in hindsight. My map of the recent past suffers from the same problem as mapping HK - it cannot exist as an accurate depiction of "now" - it can only demonstrate conditions that no longer apply.
What makes HK unique, or at least extremely rare, is not just the density of its construction but the fact of its topography. The island is mostly composed of steep hills and was initially separated into zones, areas leveled for construction at different elevations. It's the interlocking of these previously separate elevations that generates HK's three dimensional complexity. As the density of the built environment increased the ground plain (the base elevation) became less and less significant.
HK is probably the biggest city in the world where cars aren't the dominant factor in urban planning. Part of the motivation for Cities Without Ground was the importance of pedestrian paths in successfully navigating HK. In Toronto, this factor is of negligible importance (as it is in almost all North American cities).
HK's three dimensionality is just one of the reasons I find the city fascinating. It is a cliche in North America that for every hour you travel off a main highway you also travel ten years back in time. This applies not only to social mores but to levels of technological sophistication and (most interesting for architects) the built environment. There was a scene in the TV series Heroes where two characters visit a small town in Texas. The Washington lobbyist remarks, "This looks like the kind of place I can get a good latte." Her associate replies, "There is a cafe down the road and I saw a cow on the outskirts of town."
"Backward" in this context means "behind the times". The implication is other places, typically cities, are current, with the times. I also take it to mean some places are "forward". A person from HK would see NYC as "backward". For a long time I have wanted to make a chronological map of the world, using location in time (rather than physical geography) as the basis for the structure. Places where people live as their ancestors have for thousands of years, and there are a lot of places like that, would be furthest in the past. Places where events are currently happening that will take years, or decades, to happen here are either the location of "now" or exist in the near future, depending on where the observer stands. What stops me is trying to invent a means to determine where "now" is - where the future arrives first. I don't know where that is at the moment; I do know it moves around.
Two thousand years ago Rome was the location of now. It was at least a millennium ahead of the rest of Europe, possibly more. Trying to create an index or set of criteria to determine where Rome stood, chronologically, compared to the major cities in China would be extremely difficult. Definitely beyond my current knowledge. But, confining myself to the "western World", Rome was it until 400 CE or so. Then things leveled out and all of Europe and the Mediterranean existed in the same now. They used the same technologies, the same economic systems, and social structures that were either similar or were coevals.
Starting around 1700 England began to pull itself into the future - or push the rest of Europe into the past. The phrasing gets awkward but it became the place events occurred that would take years, or decades to occur elsewhere. Then the locus of our connection to the future migrated to New York. And stayed there until it moved to Asia - maybe to Tokyo, maybe to HK.
So where is it now? Where is the place that not only looks on us as backward but on everyone else as well? HK? Shanghai? Singapore? I don't know. I'm not even sure what the dominant characteristic, the primary indication, of "now" should be. The most important, the signature, aspect of development is only revealed in hindsight. My map of the recent past suffers from the same problem as mapping HK - it cannot exist as an accurate depiction of "now" - it can only demonstrate conditions that no longer apply.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
On Paper Architecture (and Published Works)
The term "paper architecture" is a prejudicial way to describe designs that were never realized. Despite the prejudice revealed by using the term I will admit some of it is fantastic and world-changing. The Italian Futurist Antonio Sant'Elia is one example.
He never realized any large scale projects and died young but he has blown the mind's of generations of architects posthumously. His projects could have been built - at a different time, in a different economy, by a government with different values.
Then their are the projects that were never intended to be built. Like the collages of Hans Hollein:
These are the visual equivalent of rhetorical exercises. Instantly memorable, inspiring thought and conversation.
Of course, the greatest of all paper architects was the artist and architectural fantasist Giovani Piranesi. He is most famous for his Carceri series but my favorites are his fictional plans of ancient Rome:
There is a long-standing debate as to whether paper architecture is, in fact, architecture. I maintain it isn't. It is certainly design and worth the consideration of architects but to privilege design over construction to such a degree one is willing to forgo the process of actually building something entirely seems, to me, wrong-headed.
Not many people practice paper architecture today. The last great proponent and practitioner was Lebbeus Woods. I had deeply ambiguous feelings about Woods; I envied his talent immensely but always thought his influence within architecture was too great for someone who built so little:
Today, instead of paper architecture there is digital architecture. High resolution, photo quality images of buildings that do not (and will never) exist. This gets confusing as hell because the available software (and the talent of many practitioners) can make it next to impossible to determine whether an image is computer generated or a photograph.
Digital architecture has two enormous advantages over actually building. First, you don't have to convince anyone to pay the millions of dollars required to realize an actual building and second, you don't have to build it! In its current state it lacks the clarity of purpose Hollein or Sant'Elia or Woods possessed (and where able to imbue their work with). One is never certain whether the image is a competition entry, a work in progress, or a theoretical exercise.
All of this is a little beside the point. It provided a pretext to include a lot of great images. But the real issue I want to tackle is architectural publishing.
Architecture students learn very early that no matter what else a studio project yields, it should produce at least one fantastic image - something for their portfolio. The project can be conceptually vague, poorly executed, inappropriate for its site, and structurally unsound but if it generates one really great image it isn't a total failure. Of course, a project that is well conceived and executed, with a masterly feel for its site and a sound structural system is much better (and will earn a correspondingly higher grade) but if it doesn't yield that one great image it is very difficult to include in a portfolio. The simple fact is you not only need to do the work, you need to demonstrate you did it in the most handsome way possible. As a student, we called these portfolio images "money shots", a term we borrowed from the porn industry.
I'm not going to say firms approach their projects with the same cynicism as students. A project that is only successful when seen from one location is obviously not successful at all. But I think all architects are aware of the necessity of having their work photographed and having those photographs published. And there is, in one way, nothing more to this than a healthy dose of realism. Architecture is a business. Businesses advertise their products. Architects' products are buildings. Simple.
And yet. There is an element to this that isn't healthy for architecture at all. I recently read a lengthy discussion (more of a screaming match) in an online forum about the merits of publishing. Everyone agreed it was good. The extreme position was it is better not to waste your time building at all if you can't get the finished work published. This position not only misses the point of architecture (to build stuff) but is deeply problematic in terms of its implications for our profession.
Buildings are part of the human artifice. They tend to exist together, most often in cities - the places where people live. The argument a building's success is dependent (or can be determined) by the number of times it is published values the comparatively small number of people who read architecture periodicals (or the even smaller number who buy architecture books) over the large number of people who live in a given city. It is correct from a marketing perspective but absolutely wrong from any other. It is like a building that only looks good viewed from one location at one time of day.
As humans we rely on each other to validate our own perceptions of reality. We do not create the world individually, we participate in a consensus. This is me paraphrasing Hannah Arendt again. And a work presented in isolation in a magazine or book has very little in common with the work as it exists in the world. The thing itself, the factness of it, is what makes it important. Not only to architects but to everyone. Architecture is suffering from the mistaken belief a thing can be removed from its circumstance without losing its meaning, its significance. Not only does this have a negative effect on the quality of work architects produce, it isolates an already isolated profession. Those who build to publish are intentionally isolating (or insulating, in the negative sense of "insular") themselves. They are actively participating in what Shaw called the "conspiracy against the laity".
Our duty as architects, as I was taught and still believe, is to the laity. Not to each other and not to the publishers who make more money from our work than we do. The construction of the world in which we live is so much more important than the construction and maintenance of a brand or corporate image. Or maybe I'm hopelessly naive.
Sorry for using so many italics.
Then their are the projects that were never intended to be built. Like the collages of Hans Hollein:
Of course, the greatest of all paper architects was the artist and architectural fantasist Giovani Piranesi. He is most famous for his Carceri series but my favorites are his fictional plans of ancient Rome:
Not many people practice paper architecture today. The last great proponent and practitioner was Lebbeus Woods. I had deeply ambiguous feelings about Woods; I envied his talent immensely but always thought his influence within architecture was too great for someone who built so little:
Digital architecture has two enormous advantages over actually building. First, you don't have to convince anyone to pay the millions of dollars required to realize an actual building and second, you don't have to build it! In its current state it lacks the clarity of purpose Hollein or Sant'Elia or Woods possessed (and where able to imbue their work with). One is never certain whether the image is a competition entry, a work in progress, or a theoretical exercise.
All of this is a little beside the point. It provided a pretext to include a lot of great images. But the real issue I want to tackle is architectural publishing.
Architecture students learn very early that no matter what else a studio project yields, it should produce at least one fantastic image - something for their portfolio. The project can be conceptually vague, poorly executed, inappropriate for its site, and structurally unsound but if it generates one really great image it isn't a total failure. Of course, a project that is well conceived and executed, with a masterly feel for its site and a sound structural system is much better (and will earn a correspondingly higher grade) but if it doesn't yield that one great image it is very difficult to include in a portfolio. The simple fact is you not only need to do the work, you need to demonstrate you did it in the most handsome way possible. As a student, we called these portfolio images "money shots", a term we borrowed from the porn industry.
I'm not going to say firms approach their projects with the same cynicism as students. A project that is only successful when seen from one location is obviously not successful at all. But I think all architects are aware of the necessity of having their work photographed and having those photographs published. And there is, in one way, nothing more to this than a healthy dose of realism. Architecture is a business. Businesses advertise their products. Architects' products are buildings. Simple.
And yet. There is an element to this that isn't healthy for architecture at all. I recently read a lengthy discussion (more of a screaming match) in an online forum about the merits of publishing. Everyone agreed it was good. The extreme position was it is better not to waste your time building at all if you can't get the finished work published. This position not only misses the point of architecture (to build stuff) but is deeply problematic in terms of its implications for our profession.
Buildings are part of the human artifice. They tend to exist together, most often in cities - the places where people live. The argument a building's success is dependent (or can be determined) by the number of times it is published values the comparatively small number of people who read architecture periodicals (or the even smaller number who buy architecture books) over the large number of people who live in a given city. It is correct from a marketing perspective but absolutely wrong from any other. It is like a building that only looks good viewed from one location at one time of day.
As humans we rely on each other to validate our own perceptions of reality. We do not create the world individually, we participate in a consensus. This is me paraphrasing Hannah Arendt again. And a work presented in isolation in a magazine or book has very little in common with the work as it exists in the world. The thing itself, the factness of it, is what makes it important. Not only to architects but to everyone. Architecture is suffering from the mistaken belief a thing can be removed from its circumstance without losing its meaning, its significance. Not only does this have a negative effect on the quality of work architects produce, it isolates an already isolated profession. Those who build to publish are intentionally isolating (or insulating, in the negative sense of "insular") themselves. They are actively participating in what Shaw called the "conspiracy against the laity".
Our duty as architects, as I was taught and still believe, is to the laity. Not to each other and not to the publishers who make more money from our work than we do. The construction of the world in which we live is so much more important than the construction and maintenance of a brand or corporate image. Or maybe I'm hopelessly naive.
Sorry for using so many italics.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Zadie Smith is a Better Writer Than I Am (and Probably a Better Person)
"If you ask what's lost, it's really a very simple thing - it's something about being relational rather than performative. The weird thing about Facebook is that everybody on it is like a mini-celebrity. That's what it turns them into. You have fans, you're constantly giving them updates. You are like a little celebrity and the relation, no matter what anyone says, is pretty much one way."
That's author (and heart-wrenchingly gorgeous, intimidatingly brilliant) Zadie Smith analyzing Facebook, in an interview held under the auspices of the New York Public Library. Here's the link. The topic came up because of Smith's review of The Social Network for the New York Times. You can read that here.
I don't mind that Smith's critique of the movie (and of Facebook) is better written than my previous entry. She is a pro at the top of her game and I'm strictly amateur. That it is more intelligent and more carefully observed does bug me. I guess I should try harder.
To get off the FB topic momentarily, I've read all of Smith's books and have been sufficiently impressed by each to buy and read the next. Yet somehow I find she is more compelling as a speaker, and essayist, than as a writer of fiction. Maybe that's because of the almost palpable sense she has been anointed - chosen to succeed as much for her personality and education as for her skills as an author. In her essay on writing a novel (from which she reads at the beginning of the NYPL interview) she describes her own complex relationship with formalism in fiction and I think that (a combination of her enviable education and the completely natural and kind of charming reluctance to presume she has the prerogative of assuming the authorial voice) is a big part of why she interests me as much or more than her novels. Or it could be the far simpler explanation that I fancy her.
Anyway, as a result of watching the interview I watched The Social Network again. This is something I recommend if you have gone to the trouble of following both preceding links. It is extremely rare that a review of a movie actually makes the movie more interesting but I think this is an example.
That's author (and heart-wrenchingly gorgeous, intimidatingly brilliant) Zadie Smith analyzing Facebook, in an interview held under the auspices of the New York Public Library. Here's the link. The topic came up because of Smith's review of The Social Network for the New York Times. You can read that here.
I don't mind that Smith's critique of the movie (and of Facebook) is better written than my previous entry. She is a pro at the top of her game and I'm strictly amateur. That it is more intelligent and more carefully observed does bug me. I guess I should try harder.
To get off the FB topic momentarily, I've read all of Smith's books and have been sufficiently impressed by each to buy and read the next. Yet somehow I find she is more compelling as a speaker, and essayist, than as a writer of fiction. Maybe that's because of the almost palpable sense she has been anointed - chosen to succeed as much for her personality and education as for her skills as an author. In her essay on writing a novel (from which she reads at the beginning of the NYPL interview) she describes her own complex relationship with formalism in fiction and I think that (a combination of her enviable education and the completely natural and kind of charming reluctance to presume she has the prerogative of assuming the authorial voice) is a big part of why she interests me as much or more than her novels. Or it could be the far simpler explanation that I fancy her.
Anyway, as a result of watching the interview I watched The Social Network again. This is something I recommend if you have gone to the trouble of following both preceding links. It is extremely rare that a review of a movie actually makes the movie more interesting but I think this is an example.
Monday, September 2, 2013
The Facebook Problem
The correct title of this should be "My Facebook Problem" but I am so damned lazy I'm not going to bother to change it. Here's my Facebook (FB from now on) problem:
I limit the number of "friends" I have on FB to a manageable number (typically around 300). I don't accept people I don't know fairly well because I post some bizarre shit there. My favourite "friends" (in quotations denotes someone I'm connected to on FB, out of quotes and it's the common usage) are the ones with boring jobs or very demanding educations who, as a result, just post interesting things they find killing time on the internet. But, because of my education and the career I would have (if I had a job) and because of the circumstances of my education (starting 10 years later than most of my peers) my "friends" are typically young, highly educated, motivated, and (reasonably) well-paid. As a result there is no time when at least a dozen of them aren't going somewhere or doing something interesting, something FB worthy.
People only put things on FB that show their lives in the best possible light. Most people anyway. I use it as a collator for weird shit I find other places on the internet. I don't remember the last time I posted a picture of myself doing something interesting. I guess I am just in the last generation who don't conceive of their lives as fodder for the internet. My qualifications are sullied by things like this blog but there are substantial differences between a blog like this and FB. FB simulates immediacy (as do Instagram, Twitter, and the dozen other apps I don't bother with). The picture gets snapped with a cell phone, geo-tagged, and posted. Whereas this blog is subject to layers upon layers of mediation. It is not a simulacrum of reality. It is my own (deeply mediated) take on certain aspects of my own life. My friends do not appear in it. You cannot tell what I look like (that picture might not be me, it is me but if I'm lying you have no way of telling). And I don't write these posts while skydiving, hanging out in the park with my extremely attractive friends, going to parties with famous people, or touring the cities of Europe. I write them in my apartment. Alone. That is not something I'm going to post a picture of on FB - even if I could stretch my arm far enough behind my head to take a selfie.
I've written previously about the FB effect - or what would more properly be called the Instagram / Twitter phenomenon - wherein everything in one's life is valuable only insofar as it contributes to the creation or maintenance of a digital persona. But what that theory misses is the people leading (or being lead through) those lives remain real people - people I know. And at this moment, several of them are in Europe (actually dozens because it's September and that means the yearly migration to Rome is underway), two are in L.A., one is playing (or just getting ready to play) a concert in B.C. and so on. The way FB (and all social media) both inherently glamorize and are intentionally used to glamorize people's lives is added to the combinatory mathematics of the number of friends you have and that makes FB (and all social media) enormously depressing if you, like me, lead a very quiet life.
All of this is territory covered by others before me. If I have anything to add that is unique to my circumstance it is this - because I pursued a design education a lot of my friends turned out to be professional photographers (and those that retain their amateur status are still really fucking good). They are able to make the simplest and stupidest things look glamorous as fuck. A picture of a group of people crowding around to look at a picture (so trite and hack-kneed it hurts to write a description of it) is so well done it inspires instant envy.
Actually, one thing I haven't read is a serious attempt to understand why so many people are trying so fucking hard to produce envy in their "friends". And I obviously don't mean the super-rich here. The quality that makes something FB-worthy is that it will produce envy. Whether it's envy for an adventurous life, envy of an achingly hip occasion, or envy of a talent, ability, or skill. People's online personas have the primary goal of inducing envy in others. Which strikes me as both completely human and incredibly strange because I'm friends with some very nice people (don't get me wrong a lot of my friends are assholes and that's why I love them but) and these nice people will go out of their way in an actual "meat-verse" encounter not to produce envy, not to show off, not to brag or even call attention to themselves. I mean, fuck, I'm Canadian. That isn't what we do. Unless we're talking hockey or online personas. I would like to know what that desire, to which social media caters so precisely, means, or might be taken to mean. If I thought about it for a while I could probably figure it out... but I'm going to go back to reading about the Punic Wars instead.
I limit the number of "friends" I have on FB to a manageable number (typically around 300). I don't accept people I don't know fairly well because I post some bizarre shit there. My favourite "friends" (in quotations denotes someone I'm connected to on FB, out of quotes and it's the common usage) are the ones with boring jobs or very demanding educations who, as a result, just post interesting things they find killing time on the internet. But, because of my education and the career I would have (if I had a job) and because of the circumstances of my education (starting 10 years later than most of my peers) my "friends" are typically young, highly educated, motivated, and (reasonably) well-paid. As a result there is no time when at least a dozen of them aren't going somewhere or doing something interesting, something FB worthy.
People only put things on FB that show their lives in the best possible light. Most people anyway. I use it as a collator for weird shit I find other places on the internet. I don't remember the last time I posted a picture of myself doing something interesting. I guess I am just in the last generation who don't conceive of their lives as fodder for the internet. My qualifications are sullied by things like this blog but there are substantial differences between a blog like this and FB. FB simulates immediacy (as do Instagram, Twitter, and the dozen other apps I don't bother with). The picture gets snapped with a cell phone, geo-tagged, and posted. Whereas this blog is subject to layers upon layers of mediation. It is not a simulacrum of reality. It is my own (deeply mediated) take on certain aspects of my own life. My friends do not appear in it. You cannot tell what I look like (that picture might not be me, it is me but if I'm lying you have no way of telling). And I don't write these posts while skydiving, hanging out in the park with my extremely attractive friends, going to parties with famous people, or touring the cities of Europe. I write them in my apartment. Alone. That is not something I'm going to post a picture of on FB - even if I could stretch my arm far enough behind my head to take a selfie.
I've written previously about the FB effect - or what would more properly be called the Instagram / Twitter phenomenon - wherein everything in one's life is valuable only insofar as it contributes to the creation or maintenance of a digital persona. But what that theory misses is the people leading (or being lead through) those lives remain real people - people I know. And at this moment, several of them are in Europe (actually dozens because it's September and that means the yearly migration to Rome is underway), two are in L.A., one is playing (or just getting ready to play) a concert in B.C. and so on. The way FB (and all social media) both inherently glamorize and are intentionally used to glamorize people's lives is added to the combinatory mathematics of the number of friends you have and that makes FB (and all social media) enormously depressing if you, like me, lead a very quiet life.
All of this is territory covered by others before me. If I have anything to add that is unique to my circumstance it is this - because I pursued a design education a lot of my friends turned out to be professional photographers (and those that retain their amateur status are still really fucking good). They are able to make the simplest and stupidest things look glamorous as fuck. A picture of a group of people crowding around to look at a picture (so trite and hack-kneed it hurts to write a description of it) is so well done it inspires instant envy.
Actually, one thing I haven't read is a serious attempt to understand why so many people are trying so fucking hard to produce envy in their "friends". And I obviously don't mean the super-rich here. The quality that makes something FB-worthy is that it will produce envy. Whether it's envy for an adventurous life, envy of an achingly hip occasion, or envy of a talent, ability, or skill. People's online personas have the primary goal of inducing envy in others. Which strikes me as both completely human and incredibly strange because I'm friends with some very nice people (don't get me wrong a lot of my friends are assholes and that's why I love them but) and these nice people will go out of their way in an actual "meat-verse" encounter not to produce envy, not to show off, not to brag or even call attention to themselves. I mean, fuck, I'm Canadian. That isn't what we do. Unless we're talking hockey or online personas. I would like to know what that desire, to which social media caters so precisely, means, or might be taken to mean. If I thought about it for a while I could probably figure it out... but I'm going to go back to reading about the Punic Wars instead.
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