nostalgia

The "community" we have been building for the last 50 years is fragile. It is fragile as a built form and is especially weak as a vehicle for strengthening social bonds. In fact the two, legible building forms and social cohesion, feed off one another. When these things are fragile, we're fragile. Designing the cityscape wisely is still possible when approached properly. It depends on how we measure success.

There are moments when it works; when it seems that there is a community out there, and that it is clearly described in the built environment. But too often places like that were built long ago, by a previous generation and an earlier culture. Their values and conditions were just different enough to create something that one could more easily relate to. This can cause a little bit of confusion, where we misplace our need for a clear and cohesive expression of our place in society with nostalgia. 

sentimentalism and false identity

We just may be different, now. We've become sentimentalists.

Identity has become more important than logic, and this identity is often times, one way or another, fabricated.  It is fabricated through imagined alliances and false sentiments. 

Sentimentalism is wishing for an emotion that you don’t really have. It is premeditated. Its motives vary, but it's always an affectation. We deceive ourselves and mistake it for something genuine. These false emotions grow in importance to become a large part of our personal story. They form our identity, become part of us, and because they are fabricated, we get angry when they are questioned.

So, sentimentalism, is the problem. We have all become sentimentalists, but this time, it’s a nasty kind of sentimentalism. It is sentimentalism at its worst.

longevity

In my neighborhood, on one short street, there are two buildings, each built 100 years apart. The first is a three story brick townhouse with a slate mansard roof, simple wooden portico, and stone foundation. It is on a corner lot. It is of precisely made federal style water struck brick. This is a high-quality brick, very dense, absorbs very little water, doesn't expand or contract or spall and therefore lasts. It dates from around the 1860s. 

Three or four doors down, there is a square box of an apartment building made with an inexpensive brick, rusting steel relieving angles and tired aluminum frame windows. It is four stories tall with horizontal picture windows placed within a vertical brick panel of a different color, recessed 4 inches to add drama. The roof is flat with aluminum flashing at its parapet. The entry is "protected" by a flat metal canopy supported by thin posts. It dates from the 1960s. It was built at a time when "more is less", which is a euphemism, in this particular building for "less is what you get". 

I think you know where I'm going with this, where the older building looks much younger and more refreshed. 

Indeed, the townhouse doesn't seem to have had any work done on it at all. It was built well and was built to last. For a long time it was said that you could not build buildings like that anymore, and granted it is a solid masonry wall with no insulation and would be considered, energywise, an inefficient building today. But how much heat is actually lost through a three or four wythe wall with plaster, compared to a veneer brick wall with cheap galvanized steel tiebacks and 2 inches of insulation, when added onto that is the cost of tearing down the newer building and rebuilding it with something that is similar. I don't know the answer to that. Though I can't imagine the cost of heating a brick building like the townhouse is so great that it would be more cost to keep and maintain than to maintain and then replace the cheaper mid-century building. 

This just raises the question, what is this sustainability thing? How do we build for the long-haul, energy wise, because my guess is that is the most cost-effective way to go. (Of course, land speculation is going to get in to the way of this).

On university campuses, it's not uncommon for an iconic building to last quite a few years and for it to assume different uses during that period. One that comes to mind is Massachusetts Hall at Harvard University. It was built initially as dorms and has low floor to floor heights. It is very narrow with multiple entries. It seems like a very rigid design not capable of accommodating any other uses but for what it was built, yet it has assumed multiple uses over its 275 year history.  

Has there ever been a cost-benefit analysis that has compared two situations such as this? One where the building lasts for many years and assumes many uses and the other were the building is simply torn down after a short period and replaced with something as inexpensive as the first? We should do the research to see just how they compare. 

spatial literacy

We are defined by the spaces we’re in. While our mental narratives may guide us, our feelings may drive us or our responsibilities may direct us, the spaces we are traveling through may have a stronger, though more silent effect.

That influence shouldn’t be ignored. Instead, it should be of primary importance in the formation of any built environment. Growing up in the city, I recognized the silent, energetic dialogue that can go on between the streetscape and us. This was in Boston’s Back Bay. These structures were so thoughtfully designed that they caught our attention. They spoke to us in their own language, through their proportions, rhythm, color and patterns. We felt a strong connection to the spaces that they created. When tuned in, we could sense how they spoke to us and how they spoke to each other. They cultivated a public dialogue.

Buildings could also facilitate a deep interaction between people, strengthening our sense of community. Through the creation of great spaces, we could foster an intimate, personal conversation between us and the space we were in. While this is happening, others around us might be simultaneously experiencing the same sentiment. The result of connectivity to a special space may be both an intimate, private experience while also a very public, shared phenomenon. Architecture has not only the power to speak to individuals, it can also create a strong community through a shared appreciation for a space. 

stewardship and liberty

Is there an inherent conflict between stewardship and personal liberty? Does stewardship imply a top down approach - a concentration of power - and does that then limit our personal liberty? 

Or to ask more directly, is it at all possible, in this culture, to have any respect for the land and still be able to make a buck? It seems tough. 

The ironic thing, it seems to me, is that It's easy to get to the part about the concentration of power. That seems to happen quite naturally. What's hard is having that power applied properly to stewardship.

We've had the debate over global warming and the need for a more ecologically sustainable development for most of my lifetime. Yet political forces have tenaciously obstructed any rational discussion of these issues.  Why this rage and antipathy against what seems like a very practical idea? Don't you want to maintain a clean environment for future generations? What sort of self-respecting person would not?

I can imagine that there are some circumstances where personal liberty trumps responsible stewardship, but not always.

I would assume that someone like representative Stephen King, a "pro-growth" congressman and global warming denier, has a real strong moral compass, that he is looking out for the liberties of the common man. But why can't he do that and also consider the evidence? Is it wise to take such a fixed position towards liberty, if that "liberty" leads to a diseased environment?  Is such a position practical? 

I haven't the slightest idea how he, or anyone else, can justify it while still claiming to be working for the good of all the people. Let's be honest, the real reason behind this is the concentration of power. The congressmen is only a professional who is servicing a client more powerful than himself. 

Stewardship is tough to work through, if not impossible, in such a setting.

stewardship British Style

There is something pleasantly quant and old fashion about the term “stewardship”.

Images of Downton Abby (which I refused to watch, by the way) and Capability Jones are conjured up. The brilliance of 18th Century landscape design and Georgian Architecture display that calm confidence that speaks to the conceit of the English Aristocracy while stoking the common man’s romantic need to be dominated by a benevolent ruler.

In the British model, it was quite purposeful and shrewdly self serving. Land, always a limited commodity, can also be a very generous cash-cow, providing a large and steady return. It was prudent to maintain an investment such as this, as wisely as possible. 

The system worked for many generations. Indeed, it was so successful, it became a burden to the British economy. The stewardship of the manor house was just another way of maintaining a stifling concentration of power and wealth. Up until the beginning of the First World War, approximately 80% of all English lands was held by less than 3000 families. By then, that it collapsed under its own weight.

On the bright side, it recognized the value of taking seriously one's responsibility to the land and to wisely provide for their distant offspring. 

The only problem with this British model is, their definition of ‘offspring’ was too limited.

american cheesy

There are lots of different cultures in this country, and they tend to show up in the forms we build. The showman represents one kind. He makes carnivals. Carnivals are usually short term events, meant to distract, often with the vulgar and are with us for some good and obvious reasons, we enjoy the vulgar and we need to be distracted. We know its crap and we want it. 

It's no longer as prevalent as it used to be. Traveling events like this are just too expensive. Maybe more importantly, it's not as bizarre as some of the other distractions we are now capable of creating. Those slippery people still exist and there maybe even more of them because the carnival now is everywhere; through the Internet, at the movies, and especially, on the news. 

One of the first showman of this kind to appear on TV was Liberace. He was a showman posing as a pianist. Here was an affected Louise the 14th style sycophantic male surrounded by faux-gold, bangles and badly played music, representing high culture. It was a parody that most people did not 'get', like they didn't 'get' Wally Cox or Mr. Peepers. Luckily, he played Chopin so badly that there was never a poisonous connection established between the two. Memories of Liberace never come to the surface when I hear Chopin today. 

Liberace was a cheesy phenomena and a joke at the same time. It's happened before and it is happening again. Now, without the humor. 

the parking lot

If there is a single form that insults us the most, I’d say it’s the parking lot. It is that storage area that is formless, yet vast. While invisible, it is highly intrusive. It has been with us for over half a century, yet we can't recall how it came about, or exactly where it came from, or who thought of it first. It just showed up. It just placed itself on the scene, naturally. Like a bad seed, it fixed itself to the landscape. We had no idea that it would be with us for so long, what felt like forever. We had no idea that it would take on such a large role.

How did it get here? 

Maybe it came with an excess of land. I can imagine the first parking lot as an open farm field for a Fourth of July bonfire. Or maybe, it was that other open field next to the state fair. Perhaps there was a church meeting on a plateau in Wyoming. Or maybe it came at some semi-open flatland, in a field of scattered Southern Pines, for some vile or clandestine gathering. However, my gut tells me that it came with special events. 

Those special events then stretched out into destination points. That final destination point that required the car to make its way through the dirt road to the general store, the cornfield, the swimming hole, the town meeting, or some other benign or insidious event. Any open flat field on the side of the road will do. Land is cheap. 

Habits then developed. Things expanded and the parking lot was born. 

It was innocuous. We had no idea what we had created. But by then the bad seed merged, morphed, crawled on its belly, into the city fabric. It taught some cities hopelessness. There was no sense of place.***

We are past that point now. Cities have become too important to accommodate such cheap storage space for the automobile. This is not just a great advancement in the development of urban living but in the spatial quality of the life that we live in.

The theater of the vulgar has now moved to the suburbs.

***Please refer to Stan Freeberg's the United States of America, for an insightful view on this subject.

monumental sheetrock

The typical suburban office building is designed to last about 25 to 50 years. After that, the caulking goes, the window gaskets leak, the plywood delaminates, the relieving angles rust out, and then, the concrete begins to spall. And that's just on the outside. Much of the mechanical system often has to be completely replaced after half a century of wear and tear.

Weak construction practices occur for a number of reasons, such as poverty, or social disruption, or when there is a need to expand quickly but with limited resources. Examples may be China in the 1940s, or China today.

But even when the resources are available, as is the case of the United States today, an impermanent, deliberately short-lived, sort of construction still gets built. The forces behind the project demand it. It is a strategic decision, responding to short-term investment mechanisms and land speculation. It is a pragmatic design solution to a dynamic market. 

The stripped down aesthetic of the typical office building, especially in the suburbs, where the market is the most tenuous, makes a lot of sense. It merges the market with the style - the corporate style.

This approach has a couple of problems. Both have strong social implications. One concern is the wisdom, or foolishness, of applying our limited natural resources to a short-term use (not to mention the collateral damage that occurs from the out pouring of construction waste into the atmosphere). The second has to do with the potential damage it may cause to the depth of our social memory and to the richness of our building tradition. Under these conditions, energy efficient and long lasting buildings work best.

The Romans built to last. The quality and durability of their construction has yet to be matched. Their motives were straightforward, to perpetuate their power. It was the military’s responsibility to expand and maintain this power; through conquest, and then by building the infrastructure of roadways, bridges and public buildings, that supported it. They built it to last because they had to. It represented the long-term commitment to an empire that was to exist for ever. 

Buildings of that quality have not been built since, including the Romanesque period, the Renaissance, or the superior buildings of the 19th century.  Yet, people still emulate them, hoping to create some legacy for themselves. There is a natural urge, perhaps, to speak to future generations and a long lasting edifice would do just that.

But the market does not accommodate. Under current conditions, one is as likely to be thinking of what can come next on a site as to how to maintain what they have. A joke in the New Yorker from the 1960’s, touched on this, showing an architect presenting a design for a skyscraper to a client. “The beauty of this design," he says, "is that, at the push of a button, the whole thing comes down.” ***

Speculation can be a thrilling thing.

This predicament can leave some cold, and I can understand that, but that does not mean we should try to make these buildings into something that they are not. Pedestrian motives should produce more simple things.

An owner may fool himself into wishing for something that's more “substantial” than what his own market will allow. The architect can fall into this sort of trap even faster.  An attitude like this can produce a particularly embarrassing kind of design, one that tries to look more important than it really is. It either doesn’t understand the driving forces behind its design, or it is, in some way, ashamed of them, and responds with something that takes itself much too seriously. 

*** I hate it when people talk about jokes from the New Yorker.

nature

We search for freedom, serenity and solace in nature. We trust it as a force larger and wiser than ourselves. It’s logic is righter than anything we could conceive, its forms, better than anything we could create on our own. It is rejuvenating and we want to lose ourselves in it. It is primeval and we want to escape into it. We go there to heal. 

I get all that.

But the truth is, we spend most of our time in urban areas. What do we do with ourselves then? Suspended animation? Do we drag our knuckles on the ground and keep our heads down? Maybe we just take it out on the people around us. Or do we all go live in the woods and muck-up that environment as well? In any event, we can’t just live for vacations. 

Perhaps, we can aim to design our cities so we can still be alive while in them. As with nature, we want something we can engage with. We should emulate nature - in the city. We should be learning from nature. It has a lot to teach us, about balance, sustainability and rejuvenation, of how we reap what we sow, that if we treat it well, it will treat us well. 

Wouldn't it be great if every place we went, nature or city, we found equal solace? It’s a lot to ask for, but we can get there step-by-step if we know what we're looking for.

understanding volume

We auditioned for the local choir when we were kids. It was a very foreign notion but someone in the group thought it was a good idea, so we went, as a group.

The organist assembled us in the choir of the church, over the narthex, He talked to us about the importance of what we were doing and what he expected of us. He had a deep respect for his music, and that impressed me. I can still remember it because it showed me a richness in my neighborhood culture that was, for the most part, invisible to me.

He had each of us sing a few notes of the scale so he could get a sense of how we could fit into the group. He then gave us a couple of days to learn the words and music. I have to say, I had a pretty good voice, back then, before adolescence.

We were assigned a short Gregorian piece, to test our memories more than anything else, perhaps. The Latin had something to do with my reaction to this whole thing because I didn’t know the language. I had to memorize the sounds and the music together. It changed how I reacted to the ‘meaning’ of the song. There was no meaning. It was all about the sounds. 

When my time came, like the others before me, I stood at the outside edge of the choir and faced the full length of the narthex. The choir master was down below at the back of the church and I sang my part, alone and a cappella. 

I could feel the volume. My voice went out into the space and it came back. I understood space in a new way. The power of it was greater than I expected. It was about my voice, in space. It was all about me and the space I was in.

aesthetics and construction

The quality of construction becomes an important aesthetic issue.

A strong commitment to the quality of construction expresses a commitment to the mission of the institution. It can then, in turn, strengthen the community fabric.

By maintaining the highest standards of construction, the structure can become an important driver in the formation of place. It's at this point that the building design comes together; where its method of construction, the technical requirements behind a particular style and the skill and talent of each individual laborer meet to create something powerful. 

The method of construction expresses a commitment to mission and community as well. The Gothic building allows for the signature of the individual craftsmen to come through. It is more than the work of a single designer. It is an interweaving of many skills, of all who have touched the project, both physical and intellectual. Here the individual craftsman plays a role in the building’s authorship, more so than with a more contemporary building.

With most modern designs and construction methods, the laborer’s role is limited, and an honest reliance on the strength of materials may be secondary. In a modern process, building components are often factory made, pre-fabricated and assembled in the field, and hung as pre-cast panels on a structural frame. Technology of this kind diminishes the importance of an individual laborer’s contribution. In a Collegiate Gothic building, however, the construction methodology becomes an essential element in the quality of design. And by so doing, contributes to building a strong sense of community. 

taking ownership

Sophie is about 6 1/2 pounds. She's an outdoor cat and spends all of the afternoon in the neighborhood, on her own. Our street is quiet but still urban. There are a lot of people who come down our street, because it's a little bit more gentle than some of the other areas. Except for the vulgar utility poles, there is nothing wrong with it. Since there are only six houses on our street, Sophie is one of the main attractions. 

She is sort of an urban icon. What I mean by that, is that there are a number of people in the neighborhood, strangers actually, who have a strong relationship with our cat. They come by often to touch base with her. They reach out to Sophie, even if it's only for a second. They look out for her safety. 

At one time Sophie had a brother, Leo. Leo died but his name tag is still with us. Sophie lost her name tag years ago, so we replaced it with Leo's. It has our telephone number on it and that's the only reason we gave it to her. 

Now my wife and I get calls from people on cell phones telling us our cat, Leo, is lost.  "Do you realize this?” they tell us.  A lot of the time, we can just look out our living room window, which is only about 7 feet from the sidewalk, and see who is making the call. We tell them it's OK, she's an outdoor cat, and she's not lost. 

We have people knocking on our door telling us our cat wants to come in. I get the sense that these people believe we are abusing our animal.

In any event, someone is now feeding our cat. They have taken it upon themselves to take care of our animal. They leave cat food on the sidewalk. I saw this for the first time just last week. Sophie was eating it. She looked a little embarrassed, though it's hard to tell. Again in any event, someone now feels they own our cat. Maybe even a whole group of people have taken ownership of our cat. 

This happens a lot in public spaces. 

I've made presentations to community groups, presenting design ideas for buildings in their neighborhood and it's obvious to all of us that I don't own the property - and I'm fine with that - but then, the owner doesn't even own the property. The neighbors own the property and they're going to tell us exactly what to do with it.

I don't blame them at all. This is about their respect for the Public Realm. And that's my job, too, by the way, to strengthen the Public Realm. 

But to get back to the cat. I'm concerned that she may gain weight. I have to keep a lookout in the neighborhood for extra cans of food on the sidewalk. These people have no right to interfere with how I care for my cat.

vacuum

There was a time when the supermarket was something new. It was a sort of marker in the then cautiously optimistic, shell-shocked American culture. It was just after World War Two, the Federal Aid Highway Act, the expanded development of the refrigerated truck, stainless steel, linoleum, florescent lighting and manufactured food. To make a new building type, you have to have the proper ingredients. 

Blindingly bright fluorescent lighting was used throughout the building. The ceilings seemed invisible. The floors were brilliant white. This even, blanket of light created a flatness to the space. I think you could argue that there didn't appear to be any space at all, only the packaged products that were surrounding you. It facilitated in the purchase of these goods. 

It also created a new kind of environment. Comfort, as in warm and cosy, was not part of it. Comfort was found in convenience.

And with the new building type came a new type of environment - the Spaceless Space - where the focus was on the objects and there was nothing in between. The space was more like a vacume. It is crisp, flat, cold and dead.  

People loved it.

It evolves into its own, amazing aesthetic, in Stanley Kubrick's "2001". As is often the case, the best architecture takes place in the movies, and here, I think, the image of Keir Dullea drifting through the white lit pod-channels on his way to talk to HAL, set a new high standard that the originator of these forms didn't even understand, let alone anticipate. The even blanket of light smothers the space. Dave is the only object. It's a hostile place because this time the vacuum is real. 

Others caught on and ripped it off. Kubrick's ingenious vision can now be found at your local Apple Store. 

on style

question of style

The ability to work in more than one style evolved over the years. It was driven by the needs of the different clients that came to us. By being involved with both commercial and academic clients, each of whom had their own message and approach, the need to move from one attitude to the other created its own opportunities. With this wide range of requirements came a chance to investigate what, I felt, made each style special. Sorting out the message that’s buried within each style helped me, I believed, to strengthen the logic of the design. The goal was to develop each design in a way that would be true, as strictly as possible, to the meaning and grammar of the style I was using. To get there, we have to see style as a language. Prose or poetry is either good or bad because of how the writer uses it, not because of the language they speak.

The Gothic language is still very much alive on many historic academic campuses. It is important to the institution when it speaks to their mission. It is a language steeped in associations. It can strengthen the university community by its shared associations. Its vocabulary is large and can be quite poetic. It is not neutral about what it may see as proper social values. To work in this style, all aspects of it must be mastered. And if the client requires it, it must be done as honestly as possible.

The Modern language also has its very strong logic and grammar. Pragmatism drives it. If it works efficiently, it is right. To rely on associations is to be dealing in false hopes and sentimental fantasies. It’s these fantasies that backfire and lead to disappointment at best and hypocrisy at worst. The community is held together through open access to commercial opportunities, through the excitement that comes from seeing something new, for the first time. It is not through shared romantic notions.

the client is king

The market drives the design. It has its own set logic. We need to understand that and to learn to live within its rules.

But who writes these rules? 

The weak client says that the role of the designer is to create excellence within the limited resources that's available. It's to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  It’s the role of the architect to creatively respond to these constraints and to develop something that is unexpected, and pleasantly so. If you can't come up with a great design response, it is your fault as a designer. You lack imagination.

Too often, under this script, the design process is not much more than a series of shallow, quick reactions to what is economically expedient. It’s a means to get to a maximum return on the investment.

I have had a client tell me, “Take your design and strip it down to 90% of what you have. The essence of it will still be there and that's all I want.” His motivation was simple; to make his project looked "designed" while extracting as much profit as possible out of it. My motivation was to create a humane environment within a reasonable budget. We pretend we were not in conflict, but we were.

You can't blame the client for not doing anymore than what is economically viable. Design projects start with feasibility studies. If it's not feasible, it doesn't happen. But within these limits is a great variety of client motivations. If the client and the designer share a wish for excellence, magic can happen. To get there, the client needs courage and the architect needs talent. 

hierarchy and form-making

All our work should be in response to the human being, the scale of the individual person, on the street, within the city fabric. The building is less important than the environment in which it is placed. The spaces between buildings are more magical than the buildings themselves. Each building has a role in building community, and the architect should respond to that role honestly, not embellishing it into something that it is not. A building is a part of its fabric, it is a member of the family, within the fabric of the city. There is a hierarchy that should be respected. The city comes first, the street is second, and buildings come third.

By recognizing the power of place, we can use it to our own advantage, and create a design that is special to its place, drawing from it and adding to it.

the story of a place

The power of a space grows when it is skillfully described as an evolving story. It should be a carefully composed narrative. We follow this story, whether consciously or not, when we make our way to or through the space. It can bring us in or repel us. It signals what’s to come and recalls out important notions along the way. It has a rhythm, a beginning, a middle and an end. It should unfold, flow, twist, speed up, slow down, and surprise. It can’t be missing any threads. It has to be clear. It's a lot like a joke: how we get there defines the punchline.

Again, we want to be a part of both the motives of a space and of how it unfolds, but can’t always. If the motives are foul or if the telling is confusing, we become disengaged.

motive of a place

Places come with a motive. 

The motive is the reason it exists. If the motives seem benevolent, we join in. There are places that welcome - a park, a museum, the waters edge. And others, such as prisons, waste treatment plants or electrical substations that may repel. 

On a more subtle level, the motives of a place may be what we feel are the true but hidden motives - good or bad - behind the space, such as greed, fear, contempt, grandioseness, conceit, deceit, compassion, empathy, generosity, etc. 

The motives have to feel positive and genuine before we will engage freely with a place. It should have our interest at heart and speak to us honestly. We tend to search out and connect with those places who’s motives we trust, completely. 

We want to be a part of both the motives of a space and of how it unfolds, but can’t always. If the motives are foul or if the telling is confusing, we become disengaged.

heritage

I knew my grandmother well. Her characteristics and mannerisms were known to all us children. She hated children. She was dangerous and she needed to be studied.

Who was she and what was it that caused her to be who she was?  We would study and analyze her carefully and remember what we learned. 

The family owned a brownstone in the city and we spent a lot of our time there. The home was big. It had five stories and a basement. Auntie Annie lived in the attic. Her daughter was there. Joe, an uncle, was somewhere in the house. My grandmother occupied the rest of the building and spent most of her time on the first floor, the piano nobile. Our grandfather was in the cellar. It was a maze of brick rooms and housed the kitchen, the boiler room, the coal room and a sitting room. This is where we spent most of our time. It was warm and smelt great and Pa was a gentle, hapless, guy. (or was he feckless, I can't remember) and Mamie, the grandmother was with friends upstairs. She was connected to the Church, the newspaper and local politics, in that order.

She was affected and a bit of a social climber. She was very proud and accomplished, I think, with a touch of desperation. She was a professional in a male dominated world. She was tall and serious, with a round face and gray hair. She looked a lot like George Washington, to me.

My mother grew up in the house and she would tell us stories about her time there. It was almost as if we could gain a sense of what my grandmother's childhood was like, through my mother's stories and Mamie's allegiances. I carry those with me and, through my habit of thought, characteristics and mannerisms, relay them, unintentionally, to my kids. Who knows, maybe something of Mamie, good or bad, is still around.