May 8
2011
I recently went to Africa where I experienced the brilliantly designed, environmentally sustainable homes of the Masai in Tanzania, who shape their buildings by hand based on conditions dictated by nature. Would architecture schools be doing their students--and the built-environment--a service by incorporating these methods?
If we consider sustainability, authenticity and human-ness to be important values, would architecture benefit from stepping away from the computer and going back to more hand-drawn design processes?
I am late to this very rich conversation.
I interpret your question broadly: What is the value of direct experience…of direct manipulation of materials…of seeing the people you serve, and whether your work makes a difference?
The twin poles of abstraction and direct-experience are present in my firm’s work. We struggle every day in the gulf in between them.
The realm of architecture like the realm of business grows increasingly abstract. We live in our heads.
Yet, the result of our work and our lives happen very presently in the physical world.
In our practice we are embracing new tools and digital means of thinking, while at the same time advocating for direct manipulation of materials, drawing by hand, and sketching the old fashioned way. Interestingly, when we work with CEOs and leadership teams it’s always the direct-manipulation work that breaks through: Ask a CEO to literally move cards of choices from one side of the table (“I agree”) to another side (“I disagree”) and she really needs to experience them. Take a CEO into the field to see what result and impact his company is having positive or negative on the people in the community, and you get a much more human response. Take a CEO on a seeing journey of the world’s trends, you get a so much more thoughtful approach to imagining the future.
All a long-winded way of saying: To me there is such value in digging in, with human hands and open hearts, to the real challenge of the design problem. It’s not technology that is the enemy, it’s that we too easily let ourselves live in thee abstract.
Thursday, May 12 at 12:03am
Agree 17 Replies
Disagree 6 Replies
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Co--founding Editor, Fast Company magazine, Author |
In his brilliant (some might say, magical) book, “Outside Lies Magic,” John R. Stilgoe writes, “Learning to look around sparks curiosity, encourages serendipity. Amazing connections get made that way; questions are raised—and sometimes answered—that would never be otherwise. Any explorer sees things that reward not just a bit of scrutiny but a bit of thought, sometimes a lot of thought over years. Put the things in spatial context or arrange them in time, and they acquire value immediately. Moreover, even the most ordinary of things help make sense of others, even of great historical movements.” He goes on to talk about the dates on cast-iron storm-drain grates and fire hydrants, and how you can use them to trace the shift of iron-founding from Worcester and Pittsburgh down to Chattanooga and Birmingham. Of these simple but powerful observations, he says, “History is on the wall, but only those willing to look up from the newspaper or laptop computer glimpse it and ponder.”
It’s an old truth (but nonetheless a truth) that “First we shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”
The question I’d like to explore is, as design and architecture assume more importance, as we embrace design thinking and design specs to solve all kinds of problems, whether we like the way our tools today are shaping us, as we then shape the world we live in.
Or don’t live in.
Because as Mr. Stilgoe writes, and as I’ve experienced in my own travels from Tanzania to New Zealand, there is great concern about whether the world we have built and continue to design and build is actually sustainable. Is it livable? And if so, in what manner, and for how long?
The attributes I saw with the tribespeople of Tanzania seem like lost and distant qualities in the world we design, build, and inhabit in the United States. They are closer to the ground, closer to the earth than we are. Closer to practicing the kind of awareness of history and constant observation and exploration that Mr. Stilgoe eloquently argues for. They see, they study, they learn. And because of those interactions with the world as it is, they adapt, they modify, they survive.
It may not be a life any of us would want; or a life that any of us could actually experience. That’s not the point.
The point has to do with the difference between direct experience and abstract interaction.
Our tools allow us to design and build whole environments that are purely fabrications of our wonderful sensibilities. We can bend exotic metals, mix dramatic-looking materials, heat, cool, and more, so much that it appears that we actually have learned how to control our environment. We’re so smart, we can use computers to show us how to build zero-energy. LEED certified, gorgeous buildings in the heart of the desert. Whether we should be building them there at all, however, is not a question that any computer can answer for us.
Of course, the computer isn’t the problem; technology is never the problem—it’s always a neutral agent, waiting for us to employ it.
But it is a tool that changes, not just how we design and build, but also how we think about designing and building. How we think about the issue of direct experience; how close we actually come to the human experience that is, ultimately, both the issue in the game and the stakes for which the game is being played.
What is being lost in design education when it is all expressed on computers, captured in the latest 3-D software?
What should never be sacrificed in order to make sure that the lessons of history and exploration that connect one generation to the next never get lost—or simply turned into a file saved only on a computer?
What do you think?
Sunday, May 8 at 11:19pm
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Heminge & Condell |
Banksy’s observation– “All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?”– seems to me altogether apropos. In the end, I’m a bit of a propeller-head myself, so I’m not actually concerned whether the “hand” is manipulating a marker or a mouse. What seems to me important is (as your question suggests) shaping buildings in ways that honor the strengths and needs of their settings (both geographical and social).
An architectural education should surely include, as it does, history, theory, and an inculcation in models and “set” techniques.. But just as an architectural commission usually starts with a rigorous assessment of client needs, so it should start with an assessment of what the site– the environment and society into which it’s to be built– needs. In the best experiences I’ve seen/had with architects, it’s the marrying of those two (sometimes not so consonant) sets of imperatives that makes for success. In those instances, the architects haven’t arrived (as so many do) with preconceived “answers”; they have approached the assignments with what amounts to “beginner’s mind”; their educations (that history, theory, model, technique) are selectively, appropriately invoked in the service of a design solution that satisfies user and environment alike. (Sometimes, of course, these solutions are vulnerable to the pedant’s critique: “that may work in practice, but it doesn’t work in theory” :)
In the insurance business a “manuscript policy” is one that is individually-crafted for a specific set of circumstances, a one-of-a-kind arrangement, uniquely appropriate to the insurer and his/her risk… it is created “by hand,” as opposed to an off-the-shelf. Surely, the buildings in which we live and work and gather– and the settings in which those buildings will exist– deserve the same bespoke treatment.
FWIW, I think the same principles apply at the level of city/communication planning: c.f., e.g., Christopher Alexander’s “A New Theory of Urban Design.”
Monday, May 9 at 2:36am
Alan has amplified the question with the comment, “technology is never the problem—it’s always a neutral agent.” Or, as a publishing systems marketer named Gary Moore said, “Design exists entirely in the mind. Once pencil is put to paper, production begins.”
The mind of the architect is what we we need to worry about—his or her integrated understanding of art, ecology, and local culture.
Designers in all fields are often more concerned about confirmation from their peers—winning awards—than in connecting to the humans who use their work, or are affected by it.” Good design is not easily judged by photographs of buildings, or screen-grabs of digital design.
It’s a matter of a user’s experience. And it’s significant that we have to distinguish “user experience design” as somehow separate from just plain design.
Buckminster Fuller’s famous question also applies. “How much does your building weigh?” Google Earth now gives us a quick and sometimes frightening overview of the swath a building cuts onto its site. But now we should be thinking of a building’s impact on people, and nature.
Computers can help with this. But the thinking we have to do ourselves.
Monday, May 9 at 8:57am
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CEO, Perkins+Will |
No doubt that any personal experiences enrich design, and so designers should do everything possible to maximize personal experience. Hand drawing is a form of personal experience, a synthesis of seeing and thinking. Computer drawing is similar, but no doubt automation adds a cognition filter, risking making the experience less authentic. Likewise, any form of making enriches experience. Even better than hand drawing is physical modeling or direct building. Certainly, any design student (for that matter anyone period) would learn a tremendous amount by building a house in Africa out of mud and straw. I know because I spent 11 months doing this about 24 years ago, and this was one of the most life enriching experiences of my life.
But don’t step away from the computer. Rather add complexity of modes of thinking, seeing and learning into your design education and practice. Draw, build, travel, talk, read, write, tweet, blog, compute and more.
Authenticity comes out of richness and depth of experience.
For more on this, read John Dewey’s “Art As Experience.”
Monday, May 9 at 9:02am
I am looking out of the window. And I see that nature doesn’t do many straight lines, if at all. And as much as we try to convince ourselves how clever we ‘humans’ are, it’s good to remind ourselves that it took us over two thousand years to put wheels on luggage.
If we have some difficult problems to solve, you can be sure nature has worked it out at some point. We just need to look out of the window more.
The good thing is nature is copyright, trademark and patent free. So it won’t sue if you steal some of its best ideas.
I love computers, but switch them off more.Build some prototypes with your hands. Work out why they don’t work. And keep on prototyping. Once you have done the thinking, once you have solved the problem, switch the computer back on. Then you can make it look nice.
Monday, May 9 at 1:35pm
I consider “hand-drawn” to be literal–and metaphorical. My architectural hero is Christopher Alexander. (Mr. Not-Frank-Gehry.) Chris Alexander’s buildings themselves look hand-drawn AND the last word in livability. My design-usability hero is Don Norman; in “The Design of Everyday Things,” referring to architecture, he says “It won a prize” is the ultimate epithet–sounds like a hand-drawn comment to me. (NB: Chris Alexander’s “Pattern Language” is a gift from the Gods!)
Monday, May 9 at 2:51pm
Seems like a false choice. We love to blame technology for an erosion of human values. It isn’t technology that prevents us from value-driven choices or human-centered design. It is us. If sustainability, authenticity, and human-ness are important values technology can enable us to live them more fully. It is a choice that is ours to make. Don’t blame technology for bad choices, lazy design, and the lack of creativity. Place the blame with humans where it belongs.
Monday, May 9 at 4:02pm
Things are changing so fast that it can be difficult to accept that the golden age is in the future, not the past.
Human-ness is a constantly evolving idea. The Masaai homes are a reminder that as first world countries stretch forward into the future, the past marches on in the third world. Homes made by hand from cow excrement versus the latest and greatest, and both being constructed at the same moment in history. The Masaai pass this admirable skill orally, and as for the latest and greatest, all you need is a software program and a team of designers.
On May Day I was out for a long jog through our nation’s capitol. I marveled down Embassy Row absorbing many cultures’ architectural ideas of power. I stopped in front of Japan’s embassy which resembled a squat fortress effectively carrying the past forward. I ran down Massachusetts Ave by the embassies of Greece, Turkey, India, Belize, South Africa, Bolivia, Brazil, and others. All of these buildings seemed to tie together their own unique cultural flair for architectural design with the time period they were born into.
But the building that most impressed itself upon me was still in new construction. Unfortunately, I only remember it as a South American embassy, not country specific. It was a giant blue glass building that lipped out 15 feet creating an overhang. The lobby was all glass, including the corners, and thinking back on it, there isn’t a support foundation visible at first glance. It just seemed to be a giant office building floating on a glass cube. It’s design was simply ‘state of the art’. Hopefully this building will still be standing in 2111 and someone will run by and think ‘there’s a seasoned building, probably erected in the early 21st century.’
And if that future runner wants to look up the architectural design and study it’s history, he will do it with the push of a button. Whereas today’s runner has to descend into some impossible to find basement and shake the mildew off the aging, yellowing blue print.
Monday, May 9 at 4:20pm
As someone who recently completed their Bachelors of Architecture, I can say the computer is hurting the students of most schools today more than it is helping them. I don’t think the computer is a bad tool for architecture and I use it daily. But as far as the education of architecture is concerned, a student needs to know what they are doing before they do it. The computer allows for radical form to be created, but is it the user of the tool driving the design or the tool itself that is in control?
Getting back to the question at hand, I think site specificity is key to a successful architecture. Otherwise we would all strive to live in tract homes in suburbia, right?
Site specificity can occur with help from digital tools but without the knowledge and know-how the site gets lost due to the driver (student) not actually driving.
I was on the cusp as far as digital tools being used in the education of architecture. With the foundation knowledge of drawing a plan, from that plan constructing an elevation and from that elevation drawing a perspective and a section, I learned the implications of drawing as architecture. Without that knowledge, when I draw and model in the computer I would be left with no understanding of what I am doing at all.
To make sure I am in control of what I am creating, I first diagram, 3d model and finally physically prototype. This method helps progress any design forward. Each step of the way adds to my understanding of a given task.
The beginning of an education in architecture, schools need to teach the basics first. Only after that point should the computer be added into an education. The architect’s strongest tool should be his brain, not a machine.
Monday, May 9 at 6:00pm
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Lecturer/tutor in design studies |
What a dubious premise. It smacks of Rousseauian r(om)a(nti)cism. Oh why oh why can’t we get back to our indigenous being? Why are we thrust so violently into our technological existence?
Please. The Masai are equally as alienated from “nature” as any culture is. That is the condition of having culture. What’s to say that their culture writ large, or in a different context, would be more sustainable than any other. We’re dreaming if we think that sustainability has anything to do with getting “in touch with nature”, of living “closer to the earth”. What, on earth, can building practices that are specific to the world of the Masai teach us about how to cope the already existing stock of industrially built housing, full of industrially built appliances being used by people who work far too industriously? Do the Masai have a way of dealing with the kind of political-economic conditions that drive the way we construct and use buildings? Is this all to be overcome simply through the “humanising” effect of “authentic(?)” hand drawing?
If an oil company is as equally capable of coordinating a drill project from within a building that was drawn by hand as any other building, then forget about it. You may as well use a computer. However nice the architecture might look, if it still houses unsustainable behaviour then amongst all our hypervisuality something very significant has been overlooked.
In hindsight it is no surprise that a discipline which insists on treating form as Cartesian extension has become overridden by CAD. The medium is not neutral, and it is not distinct from what we are. CAD is the projection of a mode of thinking that projects back a certain world of possibilities. But the design of sustainability has to be about the way people use and misrecognise the stuff that populates their world. Forget the Masai. Forget nature. Forget the hubris of building anew. A CAD drawing starts with a blank, abstract space, but so does ordinary physical paper. Drawing in itself is not enough. What we need are mediums and imaginations that think in terms of what already exists. We need to learn to cope with being indivisible from what we use. If the discipline is incapable of imaging a way to do this then it becomes imperative that we forget (or at least unlearn) architecture as well.
Monday, May 9 at 10:31pm
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Co--founding Editor, Fast Company magazine, Author |
Thanks to the “first responders”–the first batch of thoughtful folks to weigh in on the topic.
Let me add another log to the fire (or pane of glass to the house, to pay respects to our host).
In “The Medium is the Massage,” Marshall McLuhan wrote, “Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible.”
That’s one of the thoughts I’m trying to explore with my question about the interplay of design and technology.
If you look at the influence of technology on design, what kinds of invisible, active processes do you detect?
Do you see design that reflects an awareness of our interdependence with the natural world? Do you see design that emphasizes sustainability? Authenticity? Human-to-human interaction?
Or somehow, does our growing dependence on technology to produce design solutions lead us toward a kind of techno-arrogance? Do we end up missing the active processes of life that, in fact, make life richer?
No, I am not here suggesting that we all go live like the Masai. No, I am not “blaming” technology. No, I am not some back-to-nature romantic.
I’m looking for a greater awareness of the invisible design specs that are producing the culture and environment of today–and tomorrow.
And I’m asking architects, designers, and educators (as well as consumers of design) to reflect on whether what those invisible design specs are producing, aided by the power of technology, is really the world that we want.
Or the world that we can afford.
Tuesday, May 10 at 11:15am
My fear is that we are becoming increasingly detached from our environment and architecture. I see too many people walking down the street (at least in New York City) looking down at their I-phones or BlackBerrys or reading from their Kindles, missing the beauty around them. Pitty.
Tuesday, May 10 at 2:53pm
This isn’t an either/or situation. It’s a both/and kind of problem best solved by using whatever tools we have available. Yes, we need to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty with graphite. But, no, we don’t need to forsake the mouse and monitor. Why ask a builder to use just a hammer when she has a screwdriver, a wrench, and a bunch of other tools on her belt?
Tuesday, May 10 at 9:54pm
All good ideas are out there. We don’t need to invent anything other than better ways of seeing the solutions, beauty and resourcefulness of what is in place. If computers can help there, fine, but they don’t walk, they don’t converse, they don’t marvel, and they don’t dream.
Wednesday, May 11 at 8:21am
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Co--founding Editor, Fast Company magazine, Author |
I’d like to go back to a comment made by William Meeker regarding the education of young architects, and put a question out to young people who are now in school or just out of school.
What did you learn in architecture school?
Seriously.
What did you actually learn?
What skills did you develop?
What capabilities?
Did you learn how to see? Not just to look, but to see?
Did you learn about people, how they actually live and work and interact?
Did you develop an understanding of social systems?
Did you develop an appreciation for what really works?
Not what looks cool, not what software enables you to whip up?
But doing something with your design skills and imagination and appreciation for beauty and grace that adds to the human experience?
What was the balance between the capabilities of technology and the requirements of society?
What did you really learn?
Wednesday, May 11 at 9:19am
Always tricky to comment on an area one knows little about…
Anyway, I saw a clip with Russell Ackoff recently and he argued that Architecture is the only education that trains systems thinking or “thinking about the whole”. I don’t know if this is true, but it does make a lot of sense. Obviously there’ll be a lot of architects that don’t excel in systems thinking and my worry is that the computer aided tools makes it more difficult to detect flawed systems thinking – and thereby missing out on the kind of long term and timeless value you pose in your question. This simply because 3D computer models, etc are so stunning (when well done) that they potentially blind us from seeing flawed thinking.
I would imagine that these modern tools could “force” architects to consider a lot more details early in the projects at the expense of developing strong concepts.
Also I understand – at least from a Swedish point of view – that a lot of good of architecture gets lost in the transfer from architect to builder and/or property owner. They have the last say and good long term value is lost because it can’t be fitted into economic models that drive the property business.
An architect has to be very very good and experienced in order to stand up against forces like these. My bet is we’ll see the very best using more hand drawing as a way of differentiating themselves from the mediocre. If it hasn’t already happened…
Wednesday, May 11 at 9:36am
Keith gave the Final Word
I am late to this very rich conversation.
I interpret your question broadly: What is the value of direct experience…of direct manipulation of materials…of seeing the people you serve, and whether your work makes a difference?
The twin poles of abstraction and direct-experience are present in my firm’s work. We struggle every day in the gulf in between them.
The realm of architecture like the realm of business grows increasingly abstract. We live in our heads.
Yet, the result of our work and our lives happen very presently in the physical world.
In our practice we are embracing new tools and digital means of thinking, while at the same time advocating for direct manipulation of materials, drawing by hand, and sketching the old fashioned way. Interestingly, when we work with CEOs and leadership teams it’s always the direct-manipulation work that breaks through: Ask a CEO to literally move cards of choices from one side of the table (“I agree”) to another side (“I disagree”) and she really needs to experience them. Take a CEO into the field to see what result and impact his company is having positive or negative on the people in the community, and you get a much more human response. Take a CEO on a seeing journey of the world’s trends, you get a so much more thoughtful approach to imagining the future.
All a long-winded way of saying: To me there is such value in digging in, with human hands and open hearts, to the real challenge of the design problem. It’s not technology that is the enemy, it’s that we too easily let ourselves live in thee abstract.
Thursday, May 12 at 12:03am
Sorry for the thread gap in this post. I wrote it (too slowly) in response to the original question:
All experience is direct. Sometimes surprising so. Take the example of driving a nail with a hammer. We attend to the hammer striking the nail head and according to Michael Polanyi the English chemist/philosopher do so with such “focal awareness” as to suppress the fact that the hammer hits back our hand until after a while we notice its aching. To use a systems metaphor we become hammer-hand in our use of the tool. He cites an even more compelling example of how a blind person “sees” through touch in the use of a cane. Is this us being shaped by our tools or a demonstration of the flexibility of our perceptions to be extended through tools and things? Making tools has been used to define our species, monkeys and anteaters not withstanding. Making tools, like making technology is water to fish for us. It’s touching really. “Things are not as they are but as we are.”
Buildings are particularly interesting things because they presuppose and sometimes attempt to predict experience. They also, as the father of American landscape architecture Frederick Law Olmstead said about environments over 120 years ago, affect us. Buildings separate us from our environment. It’s what makes them useful. Buildings then strategically readmit the environment in anticipation of our perception. It’s what makes them beautiful. It is said that standing under the oculus of the dome of the Pantheon you can see the earth move. They also improve the weather and more recently have contributed to changing it.
In the film the Mystery of Picasso by Henri-Georges Clouzot we see the artist through the glass plane of his painting as the painting unfolds before us. I believe most would agree that a drawing [painting] could be considered a record of perception. “We live in front of our memories and behind our perceptions.” If this is true then looking at another persons drawing is a way to share another person’s perception that is direct. Experiencing a building could be described as remembering the architect’s anticipation of your perception through her drawing. Is this abstract?
We made a mistake when we correlated working with CAD programs in the computer with drawing. It is more like building. A line can be picked up and moved in the computer. While copying and pasting a brick is different then laying one. It is also different then drawing them. I see students everyday building buildings in the computer as surely as my brother-in-law built them by laying bricks. Most criticisms of this practice of building come from those who can’t do it. This reminds me of a post card left tacked to my garage wall: “those that criticize the band don’t dance.” Don’t get me wrong. You learn something when you listen to, and lay bricks. I’m just saying, blaming the computer for bad buildings is like blaming the bent nail on the hammer.
Thursday, May 12 at 12:59am
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President, The Grove Consultants International |
I agree with “stepping away” if this implies that “stepping back” is also possible. For many year’s I’ve been facilitating a Dean’s Forum for the AIA Large Firm Roundtable–with 15 deans from large architecture schools and 15 large firm partners. This discussion about drawing or not drawing has surfaced many times, with the same mixture of responses that is on this dialogue.
Many designers swear by the value of making models, working with flimsy, and being immersed in context and content on site. I agree with Keith Yamashita about the ubiquity of abstracting in our culture. We need more connecting.
But I also have experienced the power of the new business information modeling (BIM) software to let designers explore whole new levels of interdependency in their designs, not only with building elements but with other professions like engineering. It’s difficult to learn, but extraordinary in what it can teach about energy utilization, acoustic response, cost effectiveness and the like. It also, like many technologies, biases toward libraries of pre-designed modules. But all of nature works with this kind of subsumption architecture, incorporating the working small bits into the bigger whole.So I think the computer has an important role that hands-on modeling can’t provide.
In my own practice I work hands on with many executive teams and change teams that want to communication their vision and plans for change with well designed infographic displays. They are most effective when they are co-created, with execs. working large and hands on.
I might recast the question you asked by asking “would architecture benefit from being more engaged with site, communities, and contexts as an integral part of the design process?” I would side 100% agree on this question. The new tools don’t have agentry unless we cede it to them.
Thursday, May 12 at 5:34pm
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Educator and social entrepreneur |
My professional field is learning. And what I have noticed is that the way we learn determines how we think.
I work with The KaosPilots, an alternative and highly creative business school in Denmark. An important principle in the learning philosophy of The KaosPilots is that we learn using head, heart and hands.
In very simple terms this means that we create a learning space where the domains of “thinking”, “feeling” and “doing” are balanced. And what we have experienced is that it helps our students to learn on a more personal level, to build competences for using their skills in real life situations but also that they learn to operate in contexts with very high complexity.
I am certain that this has to do with the fact that “doing” is also “sensing”. And that “sensing” in strange ways activates powerful connections between “thinking” and “feeling”.
We have experienced that the body holds a lot of wisdom. And by shutting down the mind for a little while and opening up the senses we become more connected – to ourselves and to what is going on around us. By saying “no” to the computer we also let go of being too fast, we break our habits and open up to poetry, beauty and fantastic surprises. So it is a powerful way of activating new levels of our sensemaking apparatus and staying open to the gifts that are all around us.
And if we are trained to do this, all the information we gain from making sense through our senses is received as a precious gift by the mind that will recognize new patterns, see new possibilities and get wonderful ideas.
For this to happen we need to use our bodies in the learning process. And that is why I believe that hand drawing in design processes is a good thing.
Friday, May 13 at 6:18am
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Co--founding Editor, Fast Company magazine, Author |
I’d like to take this another step, maybe a step backward, toward a question I’ve been thinking about since I made a couple of back-to-back trips to St. Louis, and gave some architecture-related talks there.
The question is: What is going on with architecture today?
A facile answer might be, “Not much.” Since something like 30% of America’s architects are looking for jobs and the market for new construction in the U.S. seems to be at a virtual standstill. From the presentations I’ve seen, if you’re an American-based architecture firm, and you’re not working in the Middle East or the Far East, you’re not working.
And yet.
And yet the demand for serious design work, repair work to public infrastructure, re-thinking transportation investments, re-developing downtowns across the country, and promoting and designing a sustainable way of life represents a huge opportunity and a huge responsibility.
I would love to see the architecture community become a loud and powerful voice for re-directing America’s sense of its own future.
But the real question is this: what do architects think the ultimate purpose of their discipline is?
What’s the point of the exercise?
What larger purpose is architecture supposed to serve?
I’d love to hear what some wise hands in the field have to say.
Friday, May 13 at 6:00pm
Architecture should enable us and should contribute to our environments enabling capacity. [Architecture] Students are leading this charge. Schools are trying to keep up. As always, education is to blame, and our best hope.
There is a difference between the discipline and the profession of architecture. There shouldn’t be. Schools have shirked their responsibility of engaging this difference. So has the profession.
In the United States architecture has been in foreclosure for quite a while. Architecture is a derivative, it’s inevitable value deferred, or so the story goes. We need new stories.
here’s one:
“Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and in its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.” Annie Dillard
Friday, May 13 at 10:44pm
Keywords
Selected list of words appearing in this and other conversations.
Carol Coletta
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CAD is not the problem. The problem is plans that are used repeatedly in all climates and rote, cheap construction. The value of the computer is that you can speed the drawing and spend more time (if the client will allow it) on sustainability practices, particularly through integrated design that take into account the constraints of the site on which you are actually building.
Sunday, May 8 at 9:54pm