QUESTION No. 4: (Part 1)
SHOULDN’T ARCHITECTURE BE (MORE) EXCITING? Part I
EXCITEMENT? WHAT’S THAT?
The National Museum is incredible. It’s colourful, sweeping, swirling, slightly crazed. It’s very emotive. I can only describe it as exciting. – Author’s notes, January, 2002, Canberra, Australia
Is it natural to be excited about a museum before you’ve seen as single exhibit; or a concert hall before you’ve even heard a concert? Is it natural to get excited about buildings at all? Probably not. Unless you’re an architect.
But we architects are experts at containing our excitement, as though our demeanour needs to reflect our buildings: solid, respectable, deferential and immobile. And this is true whether we’re talking about big “A” architecture (the forms and spaces we create), or little “a” architecture (our profession and dayto- day job). It’s almost as if we are going out of our way to make ourselves and our work seem … boring.
We’re increasingly surrounded by characterless buildings. I believe we’re living through an epidemic of boringness. [dramatic pause] – British architect Thomas Heatherwick, TED talk
When architects speak and write about their work in this way, is it any wonder that excitement is omitted from the conversation? If architects aren’t that excited about architecture, why should anyone else be? Of course architecture is exciting, so wouldn’t it be good if more people knew it?
DO BUILDINGS SPEAK?
Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves.
– Julia Morgan, architect, first woman to receive an AIA Gold Medal
Many architects have echoed Julia Morgan’s now-famous quote. What need is there for architects to express their feelings about their work, when the work can express its own feelings? This is an admirable thought, because it suggests that architects put some of themselves into their work. And there are many examples of architecture, ancient and modern, that seem to speak for their architect by conveying strong emotions. But the majority of architecture is speechless, or if it does make a statement, it does so in a language that not many people – except maybe architects – understand.
To begin with, few architects nowadays would agree that architecture is a purely visual art. Writers like Susanne Langer, Juhani Pallasmaa, Gaston Bachelard and many others have helped to cure us of that misconception. Architecture is for experiencing, not looking at. So how can we know its sensory appeal without getting involved with it, first-hand? Photographs, snapchats, “pics or it didn’t happen,” Travel Advisor reviews and renderings don’t come close.
We think our buildings speak for themselves – and for us – but they usually don’t, at least not to very many people.
THE WRITE ANGLE
There is a way around this: writing. Few other means of expression are as close-at-hand, as travel friendly, as easily understood, or as adept at stirring our deep wells of emotion and memory. Writing can tell stories; architecture can’t. Architecture can set the scene and even create the mood, but can’t narrate. Architecture can suggest stories, and it can initiate stories, but it can’t tell them.
Insofar as buildings speak to us, they do so through quotation — that is by referring to, and triggering memories of, the contexts in which we have previously seen them, their counterparts or their models. – Alain de Botton. The Architecture of Happiness. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2006. P. 93
One other crucial thing: architects need to do the writing themselves. We’re far too happy to leave the work to others who may or may not understand or appreciate the ideas that matter to us.
We tend to shy away from public controversy and allow developers, engineers, and others to speak for us, and, as a result, … the public doesn’t understand what we do or why.
– Toon Dreessen. RAIC Digest, March 29, 2022
Dreessen could have included bloggers, screenwriters, novelists, angry letter-writers and many others in his short list, which raises another problem: people often pass judgment on things that they have never experienced. The entire sum of their knowledge – and the things they pass along to others – comes from images they’ve seen, things they’ve heard, and occasionally things they’ve read. We’re all guilty of this; who has time anymore? And in the past two years, who has had the opportunity to experience much of anything firsthand?
Architecture and architects bear the unfortunate consequences of this state of affairs. Not just because they are also forced to be part of this world of vicarious knowledge, but even more so, because architects and the work they do is poorly represented in this second-hand world.
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE CUDDLY
Architectural critics are another matter. It’s understandable that an architect might be reluctant to criticize the work of another architect. After all, who would know better about glass houses, and the danger of throwing stones from within them. So we’re trapped between two extremes: the professional reluctance to criticize and the constitutional reluctance to gush.
Besides, there is already a lot of excellent, informative, entertaining architectural criticism out there. It’s just not written by architects.
One of the most moving and exciting pieces of architectural criticism in recent years is Herbert Muschamp’s “Miracle in Bilbao.” Muschamp was not an architect, but was immersed in architecture, and seemed to understand better than many others, what architectural ideas consist of. His critique of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is filled with the excitement of architecture at many levels. He has referred to its architectural form as “voluptuous, emotional, intuitive and exhibitionist. It is mobile, fluid, material, mercurial, fearless, radiant and as fragile as a newborn child.”
This degree of enthusiasm was considered too unseemly by some. As critic Alexandra Lange wrote in a critique of Muschamp’s critique:
Considered simply as a work of prose, Mr. Muschamp’s panting encomium to Frank Gehry’s latest joke is probably the most egregious bit of writing we have yet encountered in the Times.
In stark contrast, the architect himself says simply:
They said they wanted … a Sydney Opera House. … I said, ‘Well, that’s a big order. I can’t guarantee anything like that. But I’ll do my best.
– Barbara Isenberg. Conversations with Frank Gehry. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2009, P. 136
The Sydney Opera House is an exciting building. So is the Guggenheim Bilbao. You don’t have to be an architect to know that.
There’s an old saying: “All I know is what I read in the newspapers.” You can update that to “All I have time to read, and form an opinion about, I get from mainstream and social media.” It’s not as catchy as the original saying, but it’s just as true. There is so much to know – and more everyday – that you can’t keep tabs on it all. Many things in life – travel, concerts, roller coasters, meetings – really need to be experienced firsthand – or at least through thoughtful, reliable, engaging prose. Architecture is another one of those things, But we’re too often obliged to rely not just on second-hand experience, but on second-hand writing as well.
MORE EXCITEMENT
Referring to his newest Toronto project, Frank Gehry says, "I wanted to create an ensemble of buildings that were respectful to the city and referential to the Toronto that I once knew." Respectful and referential are not exciting qualities. But they are hallmarks of great architecture, and Gehry is justified in discussing them since they frequently escape the notice of many observers. Equally important and unexciting are: budgets, schedules, contracts, specifications, efficiency, economy, durability, sustainability, profitability, permeability, contextuality, “firmness, commodity and delight,” “God is in the details,” and all the other things that architects and architecture have to contend with. Is it any surprise that “excitement” gets lost along the way? Does it even belong in the list?
Right now, if you want to join a profession that guarantees excitement, you might want to explore cosmology, or particle physics, or neuroscience. Exciting discoveries are being made in those areas all the time, but they can’t possibly be experienced firsthand. If we’re lucky we can see them through a telescope or a microscope or on a computer monitor. For most of us, everything we know about these things is what we “read in the newspaper.”
Consider architecture. We engage in a practice that allows us to come up with an idea about spaces where real people can act and interact in ways that they haven’t done before. Then we figure out how to create that space in three dimensions, along with all the forms that go with it, like a giant puzzle that we’ve invented. Then we watch, as other people build the idea from the ground up. And, when it’s finished, people start using it, more-or-less as we imagined they would. This is architecture from the inside. It’s our story, and somewhere, excitement is involved.
Or we can simply rely on the way other people tell our stories, from the outside.
POSTSCRIPT
The Canadian Law of Architecture and Engineering, Third Edition, the voice of authority for architectural practice, dramatizes our work nicely. Architects, it tells us, are required to act with “reasonable care and competence,” undertaking to bring “a fair, reasonable and competent degree of skill”; and while the success of our work is not guaranteed, if we have exercised reasonable “judgment, competence and diligence,” then we have discharged our professional obligations. If that’s not exciting, I don’t know what is.
Forget about exciting. How about stimulating, inspiring, powerful, enjoyable, cathartic. Only architects can write architecture from an architect’s point of view. We should really do it a lot more.
PREVIEW: SHOULDN’T ARCHITECTURE BE (MORE) EXCITING? Part II
Architectural practice, it seems, can be far more exciting than most people imagine …
… But in architecture as in life, the wrong kind of excitement can be perilous.
– PRO-DEMNITY Claims Stories, Introduction.
See also:
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/25/archives/buildings-speak-to-us-how-to-listen-buildings-speak-tous-heres-how.html