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.