Something to Cheer About?

Here is an article about what some people have decided to do with their architectural education - instead of practicing architecture in the conventional sense. I would like to note two things: they all graduated from extremely prestigious (and expensive) architecture schools, and two of them (the brothers) got mentioned on Oprah! Which is more than most architects can brag on.

If you read the first post On Ugliness you will remember I have a problem with the design industry as it applies to small things. Here is yet another reason why - architects retreating from the complexity of the built environment for the relative safety of the manufactured one.

There are real reasons to move out the industry that creates the built world. Many of them could be summed up under the rubric classism - not at all the same thing as classicism. Poor people build a lot, they don't hire architects tho. Unless your net worth is more than $5 million, you are unlikely to hire an architect. The exception being if you work for someone, or a group of someones, who are worth more than $5 million.

The population of the world is growing and it is growing poorer. Architects are, in large degree, an insult to this particular injury. For example, the world's largest and most expensive private home, the $1 billion, 400 000 sq ft Antilia house was recently completed in Mumbai.

This is a private home designed for Mukesh Ambani, his wife, and three children. Five people live here, plus an undisclosed number of servants. According to Wikipedia, the land this monster stands on was previously the site of an orphanage - hard to imagine a more devastating symbol of criminal capitalism at its worst. Mumbai is also the site of one of the largest slums in the world.

Are all architects culpable in this kind of malfeasance? Of course not. But, to use a hack-kneed saying, whoever pays the piper calls the tune. Even the best architecture firms have to take business where they can find it.

This being the case the retreat to small things might seem not only defensible but morally superior to remaining is such a messed up industry. Here's why it isn't.

The built environment is something we share by definition. The world of small things is private, again by definition. So when people who are educated to think about the shared world, who are taught to think about the effects of their designs in a broader context abandon the industry they are replaced by people educated in building systems.

I have no problem with architectural technologists. I'm amazed by the competency they demonstrate as recent graduates (whereas graduate architects, like myself, are kind of useless) and they have a place in any architecture office. But they aren't trained the same way architects are. Their training is not better or worse, not more or less, just different. If you want to know how to keep your building from leaking, ask a technologist. If you want to know what the building is saying, what it means to the community you are better off asking an architect.

Do architecture interns have an obligation to stay in the industry? It's hard to make a pronouncement about this. Architecture is very unkind to its practitioners. Our professional associations are useless. Our employers tend to demand a lot of overtime. Architecture Interns have no representation, low wages, and an obscene commitment to doing good work. We are absolute suckers. The people in the article I started this with are probably the smart ones, those who have figured out how to make money with their training without making themselves and all those around them insane. I, however, am deeply quixotic and can't cheer their success. This is the same personality flaw that prevents me from cheering for architects who become successful because of their ability to market themselves (the hated Bjarke Ingels for example).

Architecture Interns are the peasants of the construction industry. We are all just waiting for the harvest to fail. But until it does we just want to do good work. And I guess I find that much easier to cheer for than success.

Perkins and Will should never have built the Antilia house. No one should have. It is abhorrent. It's a open question whether anyone - never mind any Intern - can prevent this kind of building, or 7 star hotels and resorts, or massive headquarters for the banks that pillaged the World economy. It takes so much effort just to keep track of all the things to abhor. Eventually a kind of moral exhaustion is going to take over. Still, when some of the smartest graduates from some of the best schools abandon the industry to make jewelry or other meaningless garbage - it's disheartening. I guess that's the only conclusion I can reach and the reason for the question mark on this posts title.

I desperately wish architecture was simpler. Morally clearer. Or that I was smart enough to create some hard and fast rules for when something crosses the line from opulent to abhorrent. But I am not and cannot. So instead of cheering for people who create success outside of the building industry, I'll keep looking for the small victories inside the industry.