garethace
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I boils down really to one simple thing. The traditional well-trodden path taken by Architect after Architect over the past 100 years has been this. (You referred to this in saying it is hard not to go with the flow) The natural flow is:
1. Architect meets with a client willing to build.
2. Architect builds a building for that client.
3. Architect then draws concept sketch for the building and proceeds to talk to other Architects and to post-rationalise what (s)he has done. That is when the cheques have all cleared and the Architect has some spare time to waffle and debate. Everything looks rather different in hindsight. The Architect doesn’t really discuss his/her work with the client, but with other Architects.
4. Architect then publishes their words, opinions and photographs of their work in a magazine.
5. Architect then becomes famous and a household name amongst circles of rich clients and other Architects.
6. Architect then perpetuates the myth, their very own celebrity status as a media creation. But the actual person is ultimately lost in the dog and pony show of meetings, pin-stripe suits, laptops, contracts and money earning.
7. Then Architect has to become a father figure to the whole profession, and digs deep into their souls for something really cool to describe what they actually do. How many lectures like this have I attended now?
Where is the need to interrupt the above process with a VIZualisation? If the system isn’t broken then why try to fix it. The most it can hope to achieve, is to simply interrupt the REALisation process. That is really why I invented this artificial client-driven idealistic fantasy world, where clients could just come into Architects and have a virtual home built online, and invite all their friends over etc. I am really tired of people describing architects like Louis Kahn, as late bloomers. That Kahn never built anything in his life, and then suddenly started building all of these buildings. Perhaps Kahn had just gotten to know himself and others better at that stage?
One person said to me recently, “Go and build something and then you might know what Architecture is all aboutâ€. I wonder is that the problem, that Architects are in a mad rush to build something? I think that Louis Kahn has left behind him, as many UNBUILT great projects as REALISED great projects. And what he actually built seems to have this timeless quality about it. It does not look like something built in the 20th century often, and I believe he actually liked it like that. Having attempted to do modern glass facades, and slim columnar 5 points stuff. Yet in the current profession something, which is un-realised is deemed to be inferior. As if most Architects actually got on planes and taxis to visit that much Architecture anyhow. As if looking at the real photography of a new building in a magazine, was any different from looking at a VIZualisation. You see the blatant hypocrisy? I am a bit of a Conrad Gallagher I suppose, an Irish chef who worked in plenty of PLAZA, four/five star Hotels in Manhattan, before returning to Dublin and eventually ending up broke to the sum of millions.
He still cannot see the problem with that, and most of the people who did work for him are now owning/running their own restaurants, while he is broke. Nothing moved fast enough for Conrad, and that is the problem with the Architectural profession too, if you are the Conrad Gallagher type. You will try to force it to change and ultimately fail I suppose. I should be a very respectable, professional, delegating Architect here in Ireland. But somehow, I managed to take all of my enthusiasm, training, ambition, skills and talent – and throw it all away for some kind of crazy ideal. I will be 29 years of age in November and I still haven’t a clue where the last ten years of my life actually went. So fighting against the system, and insulting/criticising other young/old professionals in the process is about the best recipe for a disaster I know of.
Text book example nowadays, Frank Gehry. (Even though I could have chosen Rem Koolhaas, but he is more the Urbanist/Architect and fills the shoes of Le Corbusier) I think Gehry fills the shoes of Mies nowadays. I really don’t know who fills the shoes of Kahn anymore, if anyone. Frank Gehry would have said, the Architect is the child in the process and the Builder is parential. If you straighten out this wall, it will cost you 1 million less. The Architect is NOT necessarily looking after the clients interests, the building contractor is. On the other hand, Frank employs a system of computerisation, which does a lot of the builders work. The builders trust, know and love Frank Gehry. Now the Architect is the one who is parental in the design process. But in the United States, the insurance companies, or the lawyers haven’t actually yet defined where Frank stands in relation to all of this – this brand new definition of the role the Architect plays in the building contract proceedure.
I would like to compare Frank Gehry to Mies van der Rohe, and the Master Builder concept. And Frank designs with cardboard models, etc and pencil sketches. He is always very proud to show his sketches for any project, and often how little they changed in the final CATIA model. Like Mies van der Rohe, sat down one day with a young student at MIT and just looked at a drawing for an hour without saying anything. Then went out of the room, and none of the students said anything either. But they knew exactly what he meant – to look at what you are drawing! I guess the Chicago School education style, and the one I received (Prepare to receive the true Lord, as in the film Gangs of New York) in Ireland, while at Bolton Street D.I.T. was like that.
No reading or discussion, only drawings and their perusal by myself and the staff. I think that the Chicago school, from what I understand of Werner Blaser’s books on the subject anyhow, was all about learning to feel the building through the weight of your pencil. To distinguish between a heavy line, or a light line and what have you. Even in the 1:20 detail profile, showing the steel sections for the builder to actually use. A lot like the way Gehry uses CATIA Technology nowadays to become parential to the client in the building fabrication process. I am sure the computer visualisation is a very good tool, because Mies allowed his students to make photorealistic models of all their thesis projects.
But there is another kind of Architect too, the one who develops the client relationship a lot more. I talked a lot about how VIZ can teach you to see the world around you. Louis Kahn was very aware of how people experience and use his buildings. From all points of view, like how we use a room, a corridor (or sneak passages as he called the modern equivalent in high-schools etc), how natural daylight is the giver of all presences. Which does lead me to think if Louis were here today, he would expect to use Computer visualisation technology to see how a space might in fact work. Even though his many models and sketches are all excellent vechicles of his understanding about clients/sites/briefs etc.
Unlike the Medical industry becoming really client oriented, the Architecture profession treats those same well off clients very poorly in my view. I have seen company execs and rich house wives being practically shoved around by Architects. I mean the doctor is a professional, but that doesn’t prevent him showing courtesy to good clients. The doctor develops a real relationship to his/her client I think, and that helps him to diagnose the problems, notice mood changes etc.
Architecture might change some time in the future though, and become more of a fully-grown service to the client rather than a contract supervisory sort of thing. BTW, the architectural salon and cafe are just like the George Orwell 1984 fantasy, not really what I think will happen, but no one knows what could happen. Louis Kahn was an architect who showed us how to become deeply related to the client, rather than the building contractor. Without allowing the client to diagnose the illnesses for you that is. He managed to show us, how Modernism with a little help from Beaux Arts times could in fact be more than what Mies had shown us.
In the ‘How Designers Think’ book by Bryan Lawson, Michael Wilford who was a partner with James Stirling explains how difficult it is sometimes to deal with clients on larger master planning projects. Because sometimes the client is a large council or board, which can often change many times over the course of a longer design process. Indeed sometimes the Architect is the only remaining individual who began the process at the start. For a students final thesis here in Ireland, students are asked to develop a real relationship to a client.
I remember one young man who wanted to design an Airport and took his motorbicycle out to Aer Lingus, to get a brochure from a receptionist! (Crash helmet under his arm) But at least he made an effort! Most students bypass that stage of the ordeal completely and draw, draw, draw. Walking the site as opposed to looking at an OS Map of the site, is another point I would like to talk more about. But for the sake of simplicity at the moment I will omit this discussion.
The client isn’t always the user in Architecture either unlike medicine. At the very moment, the Architect is like the hired bulldog, who goes for the builders. A big hired artillery, a bit more like a lawyer I suppose in that respect. This temperament doesn’t quite suit the client relationship thing as well though. And I honestly do wonder, how much of the client/Architect relationship has indeed become watered down – through this insistence upon directing the builder’s operations from an office/contract. The reason I am just curious, is mainly owing to the fact, that my Bolton Street education has been so dogmatic about the building technology side of things.
I have at the very end of all of this, come up with one single lasting truth. It is simple, and was staring me in the face for years before I eventually saw it. Someone said to me the other day, not everything in life comes to you on a plate. It is funny I didn’t actually know what that person meant by that statement and I casually brushed it off initially. That is, until I was chatting to a very knowledgeable music type of individual. He asked me to explain Architecture to him, as best as I could. I proceeded into my normal long effort of what I think Architecture is/is not. But suddenly I drew back and said, lets wait a minute here – perhaps things don’t always come handed to you on a plate. So I suggested that I e-mail him a few hyperlinks, to some of my deeper discussions about the topic at Archiseek.
I mean, isn’t there something in the effort of reading? Isn’t there some sense of achievement when you have finished that page, and worked yourself to understand something relevant or important? I mean if I give it straight up on a plate in a pub/cafe, to some guy who thinks he knows everything (and possibly does too) about music, did that person have to work for that? No. So my question is precisely this, why isn’t Architecture education about students learning how to read AS WELL as learning how to draw? I mean to say, why does Architectural education teach young people to be like puppy dogs, lapping up just any old mess that is thrown in front of them, in the form of rhetoric, buzzwords, slang and drivel?
I think there is a triple wammy in Architecture, you have to walk quite a lot of ground to understand the site. To read quite a lot to develop skills of debate and criticism. And to draw a lot to understand what you draw is eventually read by the builder who fabricates what you draw. But is the reading part gone? Is information just tasty bite sized chunks now? A seudo, pre-processed version of the real thing, and are we all like puppies? Until the Architecture profession does learn to be a thinking, a probing, a questioning profession, it will perhaps never ask the right questions about itself. Not to mind find any of the right answers. And I go back to my friend Louis Kahn once more: “A good question is always much better than the best answersâ€.
I don’t think for a second it was so sad how Louis Kahn died in a toilet cubicle in some foreign airport, on the way back from Pakistan to the United States. It just explains what a great affection the man really did have for his clients, his site and the whole rich process of designing Architecture. I imagine more young architects nowadays would just say to hell with that. E-mail me over some digital photos of the site, and a schedule of accommodation – I will have something for you by Friday. That is I suppose the biggest criticism I have of projects like the Egyptian Museum one in Cairo. At least the winning entrants actually flew over and drove around the dusty roads, in some Egyptian guys Taxi!
Brian O’ Hanlon.
Exactly what you have said there, i would certainly like to believe. And I think that the younger staff and practicioners in practice, have contributed a great deal to the debate about what architecture is. Otherwise, i probably would not be even having this conversation. And indeed perish the thought, of what would happen, had young lecturers NOT given me some stuff to think about, down through the ages.
I have enjoyed this chat alot, thanx.
Good come back, and your points make alot of sense. I just want to emphasise a few of my very own.
In my time as a student, believe me i had to endure more than one or two poncey AAI types being very dogmatic about whether the Architect was (A) A builder (B) A client liason officer (C) A Koolhaas type environmental urbanist. The only problem with that, is student life didn’t have the opportunity to talk to clients, see planners or build buildings. Doing Competitions has a similar problem. And yeah, i did in fact read the FKL essay on doing Competitions, and did find some good points in that.
But you read, Sinead Bourke’s ‘Tracings 2’ intro article in BM no. 10. What do i see? A Koolhaas discussion about the Pheripherique etc, etc, etc. No to mention the fact, that no proper 5-year course exists in Ireland presently, to develop planners to equal sophistication with 5-year trained Architects – Are the Architects poncing around as fully qualified urbanists, and fully qualified Architects.
Or are all these AAI types just poncing around in general, with some bee in their bonnets about either (A) Master Building (B) Urban Planning or (C) Great Kahn types of relationships with their clients? Unfortunately, it is the same guys who write the BM magazine, who decide to go up and work in Bolton Street and manage to deliver a very destructive payload of thinking about what interests them personally, to another generation of young innocent student individuals. The worst i ever heard, was that the Government was responsible for screwing up LUAS. So now 21-year old Arch Students, having listened to the ramblings on BM and elsewhere, have become total anarchists, and revolutionaries, instead of just trying/hoping to be better Architects. I mean, this argument in relation to LUAS is very intriguing and one, i would enjoy following personally – but do you consider it very relevant material for student consumption?
P.S. A student friend of mine once said, “I can’t wait to get out there and talk complete and total b****!” I mean, is that what you want 21-year old Architecture students in Ireland to aspire to? Or as James argument, which holds alot of water, are we better off sticking to that which we know, which we can do, . . . not escaping the very valid/strong argument you have countered with in your original post. But I think too many AAI types who read a few books, and write a couple of articles etc, think they can just swan in Bolton Street or someplace and burden a brand new generation of young people with thoughts about all sorts. Is there a better way to teach? I used the examples of Mies and Kahn, since they both had strong influences upon teaching emphasis in schools.
I think you are wrong in accusing James of ridiculing the idea of BM writing. But what he did mention was that as an employer of young graduates from our schools in Ireland, he is concerned with the types of young architects, who have been way-lead too much by the ponces in the AAI. I supported and attended AAI btw, for years, and have nothing but the height of admiration for what they do. But you probably do know what i mean, when i speak of this (too) strong connection between what is going on in the AAI, and what goes on in Bolton Street. (Speaking from my own personal experience)
I remember for instance when Foreign Office Architects were due to speak in Dublin, having to suffer a staple diet of FOA for a whole entire year 1997-98. Next year, there is a new flavour,… and so forth, but mostly revolving around obsessions by young AAI members employed as tutors. I cannot be more honest than that. It is not a problem of what BM writers do, but that more often than not BM writers influence the younger generation coming up, either as tutors, or in work experience practice. It is about giving the next generation the best possible springboard, to make this profession what it really deserves to be. A bit more than a miserable bunch of waffling old women, obsessed with some Holy Spirit of Rem Koolhaas picture in some magazine.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
Now that is deep! 🙂
we are the people who have chosen to design the built environment for others and have a duty to understand the issues and deal with them to the best of our knowledge and ability.
That is where you are wrong, we are a profession that has chosen to specialise on behalf of the client, to accept responsibility for the guarantee of timely and economical completion of a building works project. That is foremost. We haven’t chosen to DESIGN the built environment but we have chosen to HELP BUILD the built environment. The part about designing is really only something you wrote into the agreement yourself, and doesn’t carry that much weight generally speaking. Only that as a result of (A) Competitions and (B) Pretencious Architectural School College professors, believing themselves to be really important in the real world – you have this mis-conception that the Architect is doing anything else other than supervising/overseeing/coordinating a building fabrication proceedure/activity.
I mean, why does the Architect get paid at all. The only place where the Architect might get any brownie points at all for decent design, is where deeply insightful clients notice the work, of a certain Architect Master Builder. And like discovering a new up and coming painter or fashion designer, commission them to do works. The established Architect ‘Names’ don’t have to worry, and quite regularly lend ‘weight’ to very dodgy developer activities, by putting their professional name on the building sign. That doesn’t necessarily MEAN for a minute, they every ‘sweated’ it out with the eventual client/user.
Well at least follow that link i gave to Frank, and compare how Mies van der Rohe treated/related to his clients. To how Louis Kahn worked with them. Louis Kahn wouldn’t slash a budget/design down to fit into a budget. He made out that was the Architects duty – to hold off, in order to make sure that Architecture was introduced into peoples lives.
Mies built great buildings, but he didn’t care what the client/user thought of them. He did expect the client/user to come up to his level of classical excelence, in order to appreciate his designs. And they are wonderful, if you are into oriental Zen space etc. I think Steven Siegal who be in his element in the Farnsworth temple of meditation. But Louis Kahn designed little houses that were ‘home’ to people.
I guess Van Eyck, Hertzberger etc are like that today. I remember one story of Kahn designing a dorm for girls in a private school in the states. Kahn thought about this design problem and decided that girls on their own together was a bit unnatural. So to combat that sterile situation he put a fireplace at the corner of the main social rooms. Indicating that young women associated a fireplace, with their Dads at home. So you need to define very carefully, in precedent how different architects have tried/refuse to accept the eventual client/user.
But all the traditional building agreement between the client, architect and builder stipulates is that the Architect should be responsible for whatever is BUILT. While Architecture is very responsible to building/construction – its relationship to client/user has been upheld and sullied by equally talented design minds – van der Rohe or Kahn. I have tried to discuss that notion of UNBUILT projects as a way to alleviate the often severed ‘relationship’ between the Architect/client/user, in modern day practice.
Think about it.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
Furthermore.
(Apologises What?)
We are a profession that has chosen to specialise on behalf of the client, to accept responsibility for the guarantee of timely and economical completion of a building works project. That is foremost. Architect specialises in one specific task – (s)he is not a generalist in this sense. The Architect as generalist is just some urban legend that professors in colleges invented for their own purposes. With little better to do than think up really interesting thoughts of how Architecture can be more than it is.
Think of a DELL computer, it is a mish-mash of many different products, brand names, devices, components – all gathered together under one warrantee or agreement/contract between buyer/DELL corp, instead of dozens, if you were to ‘make’ that system by yourself. A client/Architect agreement is something similar. The fact that some Architects managed to take the client/architect relationship to a new level, is simply beyond the whole point to begin with.
Louis Kahn I think was the original ‘bastard’ professor in Philadelphia Architectural School. He even had a ‘bash-up’ with Rudolph and pissed off to Yale instead. Apparently Rudolph without consulting Kahn, enacted a design brief in the Studio to design a ‘Roadside Frozen Custard Stand’. And Kahn later went crazy over this, preferring his students to do stuff like ‘Re-design Chandigarh’ better than how Le Corbusier would have done it.
Kahn was perhaps your normal everyday dangerous Architectural college professor. But Kahn’s legacy to the profession around the world, was to bring it out of a period of ‘Miesian Grids and Master Builders’, into an era that was at least somewhat sympathetic to clients/users needs and dignity as human beings. For that, I am prepared to ‘put up with’ an awful lot of waffling and material from professors in college, or Architects in the AAI, who are dealing with issues that are important.
Someone like Merrit Bucholtz today is a masterly builder of buildings. And I suppose to be fair, Mies van der Rohe did turn the Architectural professions attention back to its origins – to when Architects were out on the Parthenon supervising and cutting blocks of stone, or the great Gothic nameless Architects of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. So I guess, you cannot really be too judgemental of either camp.
Perhaps if Frank really wanted to advertise the notion of marketing good design, and design awareness, then perhaps he should read my suggestions over here:
Architects merely providing a visualisation service would become a risky business indeed. If the client was satisfied with his/her visualisation, or virtual building model design (whatever the format, technology is improving in this area all of the time) – what is to stop him/her/they then going directly to a very sophisticated contractor and saying, “Here you go, have your draughtsman detail this up because I want you to build itâ€. The real bad omen is when the Architect severs this ancient umbilical chord between him/herself and the building contractor.
Kenneth Frampton has explored this notion in a very weighty tomb he wrote, tracing the connection between various Architects and construction. Mies van der Rohe said “God is in the Detailsâ€. Whereas Mies was indeed a wonderful builder of buildings, and great Architecture. His relationship to his client was different to that of Louis Kahn. He told Mrs. Farnsworth basically to go bugger off, when she was unpleased with his efforts. Then you have his young student at MIT, Philip Johnson who managed to compromise the purity of the Farnsworth design solution, and build the Glass house and other little houses. Which gave more back to the participant, but which also followed up the strict Miesian belief in ‘Master Builder’. Johnson didn’t obsess as much over, ‘What is a brick’. Louis Kahn designed Yale, and other early projects against a backdrop in America of very Miesian puritanical design values. They were like a portable ‘Lego kit’ the architect was given to make Miesian solutions.
Whereas Kahn, Shroder etc gave you light, space, views – much more. Mrs. Schroder was apparently quite instrumental in keeping Mr. Schroder ‘on track’ to design something way ahead of its time in Holland. Some Architectural Journals do come with good details of the construction, and possibly a rough breakdown of costing and procedures for fabrication. Personally I like the idea of breaking a design down into costs in an Excel spreadsheet. It does bring an air of reality to whole process.
On the other hand, Kahn could have built a lot more works than he did, but would often refuse to design a project, which was half the cost than what he had envisioned. Louis Kahn was trained in the classical system of drawing esquisse designs, to get ones head around the brief/client/user. This aspect of Architectural design travelling into Modern Architecture via Louis Kahn by strange coincidence. Since there is alot of evidence to suggest Kahn, did at first attempt to copy some Pilotis plans, a la Le Corbusier – but seeing them now, the columns etc just look like tree trunks than pilotis. So this whole Miesian business of slenderness of proportions, just didn’t work at any level for the young Louis Kahn.
Frank Gehry doesn’t design/envision using a computer, but with more traditional physical scale models and Architectural drawings. Only inputting that information into the computer, via 3D digitising methods, to later become very accurate construction documentation given to a builder. He doesn’t actually conceive Architecture in the computer, as some people often think – when they see those very nice CATIA visualisations. So at the end of the day, you are still getting a real Frank Gehry design, not some binary solution made by CATIA Inc.
Yet I do question why the Computer Visualisation happens at the end of the design process. When the Architect is practically ready to go and compile tender documentation. There is this nervous anticipation on the part of the Architect, will his/her client like the visuals, having gone to so much trouble in preparing a design. Months of hard work can just go down the toilet, if the client sees a problem with the 3D visuals. I have asked several really excellent young Architects you use 3D modelling software, if they would show a client their 3D Visuals. They said no, only the standard 2D documentation – rather than confusing the client or give them an opportunity to get ‘cold feet about actually building the project’.
But on the other hand, take for example, the client with 1 million to spend on a house, four times the size of a normal dwelling. This type of client, and many other clients on government boards, with high-powered lifestyles and jobs are used to being pampered and treated to a very lavish array of services. Don’t tell me they cannot afford to have visualisations done of their project/house/Master Plan. Whether they ever build these grand visions is beside the point. Already a lot of Architecture firms, do drawings, visuals and physical models for clients/projects that will never be realised. But you can ‘never say never’, not in this game.
Architects normally contract to take responsibility for the construction documentation – not visualisation. They administer the timely, and economical completion of the building works and fabrication. But clients often do worry and become very apprehensive. This is always eased by a few good visuals. When I did 3D visuals for the clients, I felt a bit like an in-house counselling service to the client. On large government jobs, a nice physical model can soothe the client’s conscience and allow them to feel like an important part of the whole great merry-go-round. Without understanding what a foundation, a bill of quantities or what scaffolding is like. Instead of being invisible beings, in this drawing office of busy secretaries, noisy telephones and busy Architects.
Some clients are developers, but were previously building contractors, or Planners, or one thing or another. Born and raised in the trade, and used to looking at building plans. But some clients aren’t, and I think the beauty of Louis Kahn, Robert Venturi and these kinds of Architects, was being able to design such wonderful little buildings for very simple but nonetheless dignified everyday people. Without being very patronising to them, that is. I find this whole ‘Ken Stark’ designer culture to be very patronising. But still house wives and a lot of men nowadays seem to buy it wholesale.
They can spend hours strolling around stores, imagining what the new living room could be like, while stopping to have coffee and discuss purchases from a catalogue. When they come to an Architectural firm, they are lucky to get a mug of coffee. Not to mind a computer visual. While they have to listen to everything their Architect often talking in a completely foreign language.
I would ultimately see this pre-visualisation contract/process as satisfying a growing hunger amongst affluent, trendy younger people for habitat types of leisure activities. Something a person and their potential partner could do on Sunday mornings.
I would ultimately see the service being primarily web-enable. Meaning that anyone, their family, friends, neighbours etc could visit the design visualisation, and offer opinions or suggestions to the young trendy web-savy couple, on a message board. The young couple might then be able to respond to their friends suggestions, and learn to think more about what they are designing, paying for ultimately. Gradually making the final decision to go ahead and build/decorate more real, but not too real. I can imagine even a few younger practicising Architects taking advantage of such a service too. Rather than have their partner constantly bicker them about ‘drawing up some ideas’.
I am reminded primarily of that film starring Michael Douglas called, “The Gameâ€. But also the current crop of reality TV shows – the line between reality and fiction is very blurry indeed nowadays.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
I wonder if any of the BM writers would leave their material open for discussion here. I mean, so that people could exchange opinions of what has been written. I may not accomplish very much. But it may provide the writers of the BM journal with a live feedback. Rather like the Steven Spielbergs etc, use a live audience to repond to their films first cuts. It might make the writers of BM see their own ideas, way of expressing themselves from a different angle. A dedicated section of Archiseek message board to just talk about BM journal type of stuff perhaps.
I mean that is really the crux of the whole matter, since Architects NEVER do get much audience for their meanderings in the first place. Especially not in college/practice, where there are just too many deadlines to meet. I have been scolded so many times i can tell you, and with very good reason too.
I was personally very surprised about Frank McDonalds comment about Archiseek. For someone who has made a good living out of talking about the built environment, he criticises an independent establishment like Archiseek. Frank has had a totally captive audience, from a huge range of livestyles and professions/occupations for the last 20 odd years.
I don’t think he must yet understand what message boards are all about. It is mainly about learning the skills of debating/discussing and talking. Because those things are often completely shut out of our normal lives today. Everyone is so busy, texting etc, that very little real discussion has an opportunity to arise. Look at dinner tables around the country at the moment, a radio playing, a playstation, a television, a VCR, a computer with e-mails/web in the living room… noone wants to talk any more.
I view Archiseek as a positive development for the profession – it allows the members to develop their debating skills – very valuble. That is all the U2 thread was about, the subject of conversation, is very more ‘secondary’ to the actual practice of debating/talking/expressing.
I am just amazed that someone like Frank McDonald cannot deal with that. But i guess having been the sole mouthpiece for a nation of designers/urbanists/conservationists
/architects/planners/government officials and government environmental departments for the last 20 odd years, he treats Archiseek as a maissive oponent! Just like Architects often treat the arrival of IT, as taking the limelight from them.Please at least try to work with it people, not against it. I mean, you are going to get strange opinions etc on a message board, that goes without saying really. But I think people are alot more intelligently than Frank suspects, than to react to just every old crap they see posted at a message board.
They obviously don’t like his type around here! Anyhow, we have to ask ourselves a global question as architects. Do we wish to continue collecting named architects around the world like Rem Koolhaas, or Gehry now. So we can just say, that is our duty to the city done and dusted. . . A Calatrava at one end, and a Gehry at the other, with an Ian Ritchie in between. This has happened in Europe and the United States, all too often. To the detriment of architecture in general.
The major impulse of the architectural profession seems to be quite similar to the dynamics of media-hyped ‘stars’ now. Like the David Beckam needing the media, and the media needing him.
I treat this forum, a bit like how Movie Directors test a movie on a live audience to observe how they respond. Much the same way as an architect can bounce off a real client. I am the first one, to observe how people react to my opinions, and I learn a good deal more here at Archiseek, than just thinking/working completely in isolation. I do have to learn to accept however, that posters for one reason or another will simply avoid having to deal with certain issues. In other words, they are purposely ‘choosing’ the battle field on which to debate, which is just another part of the whole skill of debating. But improving/exercising the skill of discussion can only be a positive one for working as an architect, or an engineer, or most other jobs for that matter – but especially an architect. There again, i think that Bolton Street fell down a bit, you always were afraid that you might say something stupid, or offend the status quo. But in general, the response here at Archiseek, even if you haven’t said anything earth-shattering, the comments have all been very, very valuble as feedback/response indeed.
I felt that opportunity was missing in Bolton Street sometimes – to test out your bad/good/indifferent ideas – the fear of being shot down, especially where computer graphics or anything too left of field was concerned. I had a very similar battle with them in the mid nineties to accept physical scale models as possible design generators. One member of staff quite honestly admitted, he couldn’t build physical models himself, and hadn’t a clue how to judge a concept from a model either. But nowadays, that attitude to physical scale models has transformed for the better. The debate going on over computer models – in both practice and in college is cronic currently, with architects saying one thing one year and contradicting themselves the second. I believe the computer model still requires alot more scrutiny, evaluation and stress-testing to prove itself valuable to the profession. There is noone i loathe more, than the guys who applaud computers, and hearld them as God-like tools – both them and the Information Technology have alot of growing up to do.
All I have been doing really at Archiseek is thinking about a set of criteria, the profession might in future develop to test the validity of computer technological methods.
I printed out the AAI site visit review of Limerick County Council new offices design by Merrit Bucholtz and a little housing scheme by O’Donnell and Tuomey for my Dad to read, who is easily one of the foremost literary critics i have ever had to pleasure to know. Seriously. He has spent his whole 60+ years of his life, reading. His response to some of the BM writing was exactly like yours. So you are not far at all from the ballpark.
However, this lack of command of the english language doesn’t quite excuse the entire profession from exploiting the avenue of language and speech. As you have said, they just need to find clarity rather than complexity for the sake of it. This in time will come, as currently the young architects believe that their overly flowery texts are masterly written.
As to architecture being shelter, i think Nicholas Pevsner, has a good introduction in his book Outline of European Architecture, dealing with that very issue – if you are near any college libraries soon. I have been ploughing my way through Kevin Lynch for the last couple of years, and my lack of experience in planning matters really prevented me from understanding what Kevin was really on about.
I have sat in front of a computer monitor for the last 5 years, and have square eyes to show for it. Now i read more County Council Local Area Master Plans, and familiarise myself with more reality and environmental stuff, before tackling Kevin Lynch. That would be my biggest criticism of architects and writing. If you want to write about planning scales, and cities, and civilisation – then read the simple texts written on the subject by Dublin Corporation, get away from your reading chairs/computer monitors every once now and again, walk/cycle/bus/drive around the city – before reading Rem Koolhaas on about ‘La Peripherique’.
It seems so damn obvious, but very few of the people who write/read this stuff, do get out very often. In Bolton Street College this year, i was forced to walk around alot – I made me decide to start with my reading about planning/urbanism etc, from a reality first of all. I had to design a certain Cultural Centre in Bray last winter, and was advised to walk the entire town of Bray itself, to get to know the place itself. Do you think i did that? Well, yes, i did eventually take the Dart down there for a day in June, and walked it all.
I came from a rural upbringing, and was never greatly encouraged to develop my investigative, curious instincts growing up, about places i came from, different classes/types of people. Basically because mosts of my family work as civil servants, and sucessfully manage to ‘shut’ alot of that out. This is dreadfully bad as an architect, who needs to be open minded.
So through the discussions by Kevin Lynch, about his observations of the society world, he saw around him in America, i began to gain much greater confidence, and become more observant about what i see around me in Ireland. My folks, or my relations cannot comprehend this – they think Architecture is like a job with the Civil Service! Weird! Anyhow, i would buy a copy of Tracings 2, with is introduced by Sinead Bourke on BM no.10. And see if the writings are any good – i am going to. I know that the Herbert Park apartments architect quotes Jane Jacobs alot – a very common reference in the American Planning profession booklist in courses.
Basically we are a very middle class kind of profession, and unfortunately that runs contradictory, to our supposed concern for all people, and all situations. I know a middle aged lady here in Dublin, who spent her whole life as a single mother, in places like Crumlin, Clondakin, Walkinstown, Rathmines, Ballymun flats, Raheeny, Tallaght, Kimmage…. she is a gold mine of information for me. A veritable fountain of knowledge about peoples’ relationship with environment/design/architecture. It was reading Kevin Lynch really, who made that person an open book whom i could read and study from a design perspective.
I think you have made a decent enough argument what. Well done. I have to admit personally hating certain Irish Calvin Klein wearing designer glasses pretending to be Rem Koolhaas from time to time. But i have to admit, the older i get, the more i find opportunities to do stuff in writing which i couldn’t explore in practice.
Basically everything you have said now these past couple of weeks has been great. I have learned a few new slants, i must admit i lacked before. Namely the idea of an architect as a generalist and delegater. I am still trying to come to terms with that. Thankyou.
Ah that is wonderful, i am quite deeply engrossed in the exact same issues described by Sinead Bourke’s intro myself. But it would be nice to see if they have anything new to offer, or what types of terms/vocabulary they like to use.
I do find the vocab a bit overly flowery at times by Irish archs but however….
Thankyou Paul, is it something to do with UCD, is it digital or print? Is is available in bookstores or from the UCD campus? The introduction by Sinead, seems to indicate a few articles i would love to read.
Well i am 29, and by the time, you reach that age – you will learn that noone wants to hear about how bad the government is, it just will not get you anywhere, even if there was a glimmer of hope. And this supposition that Clients are unsophisticated nowadays in Ireland doesn’t wash either. I mean, i did visuals for a 1 million pound house built by a big American exec in an Irish Tech company. The only problem was, by the time, i was brought in on the project, the house was at eves level.
ANyhow, i gave my visuals on CDROM to the clients wife, who by herself was able to send the lot over the husband in America. He was surprised to see such late arrival of computer visuals for a house that was already at eaves level on site in Ireland. If the clients (wife/husband) had got the visuals 6-months earlier, or a year earlier, they would have been much happier clients. So we as architects need to become a little bit more sophisticated than we are at the moment in Ireland. Or else pay people to come in, as you have suggested, WISELY in previous posts.
Anyhow, the wife came in with a very valid criticism that the visuals would have helped earlier on. The architect had got a number of trained visualists outside the firm, he could have employed, but opted not to. So instead of agreeing with the client, saying yeah, we should have had visuals, what did the old b**** of an architect do? Adopted an indignant pose, told the client to F off, and in the process became totally negative and resentful of all computer technology.
I couldn’t work much longer i can tell you under these kinds of conditions, and leave a year after. This is the mentors we have in the profession – sure, he is very articulate in describing the big battles he would like to win against government/planning authorities – he loves that shit, big stuff. But what about the small little battles everyday, that we do have some hope of winning. Are those simply not worthy?
I have learned over the years to pick fights you are meant to fight, pick battles you can win. Basic common everyday sense. If the profession continues the way it is going, it will fight itself back into a corner. And there will be noone left to pick up the pieces.
I am not sure who is being bitter actually. I didn’t mention anything about building good architecture – i only meant the TRAINING of good Architects, who don’t have to grow up all twisted, warped and full of bile because Dad and Mom are bitter over the Government and Planning situation.
I have listened to a very talented public speaker from Group ’91 harp on for a whole hour about how Dublin Corporation sabotaged their pedestrian bridge. Does it not strike you as strange that everything is always defensive and negative? I mean, in my own book, attack has always been the best form of defense. That is the only reason why i believe in using new tools, remaining positive and approaching the future with enthuasiasm.
Unfortunately, in architectural schools in Dublin, it is like the TV commercial about the guy fixing his car, and having bits left over in a jar having finished. I wonder what are those bits left in a jar, after Irish Architecture schools have finished with you? Those parts that prevent the engine from starting? If you want to believe all the bitterness and resentment of government you have – why do you so insist upon indoctrinating a whole new generation with the same – before their lives have even started?
Well, the simple point i had to make, was that while Americans come to see our fair land, full of castles from the 12th century, and old manuscripts. We tend to forget, that America has probably got more self-governing history under its own belt than we do. I find it particularly strange for instance, how no proper bone-fide planning course yet exists in this country. And the Architectural profession in this country have taken it upon themselves to get really angry over issues completely outside the remit of architecture – that of urbanisation and eGovernment etc. This has destroyed the hopes of the Irish Architectural profession ever defining itself properly as Architects. Since this tag-on ‘Town Planning’ label, is always like a dead weight carried around by the ‘Architecture’ part. This country will never produce one Architect worth his/her salt, without ‘dropping’ the Town Planning part, in the ‘Department of Architecture and Town Planning’ in Bolton Street. Likewise out in Richview.
I consider this to be an insult to me as a young Architect trying to grow up and learn in this country. Since i would love to have grown up with good mentors/professors who were focussed firmly upon Architecture. Rather than been totally distracted in picking fights with a couple of suit-wearing civil servants down in the Planning Authority, who wouldn’t know either Ville Moderne or New Urbanism if it hit them with a barge pole. Thankyou Architectural professionals of Ireland, you have all been a f****** treat to work with.
Did you know that many of the politians you are referring to actaully owned fleets of taxi plates? Like that famous clip of the Taxi drivers on O’Connell bridge – don’t push the Ush. I suggest sitting down this evening and renting the DVD edition of Gangs of New York. Then watching the special features, where it describes the growth of Fire departments, police forces and so on, in the early Nineteenth century New York. Just because we inherited a splendid example of Georgian city building, doesn’t imply that we have the required evolution in government as yet to keep it running as it should do. Hell we cannot even govern what is going on in small architectural practices not to mind a whole country – its a free for all. So why exactly do American companies investing here in factories etc, insist upon flying in special Project Managers from London on monthly visits, to ensure the design process is kept on schedule?
We are a nation of writers, speakers, converstationlist, deep thinkers and poets – so why not explore that avenue to our advantage? I mean we have spent long enough being ‘beaten down’ by the whole world, and having to go and scrap for a living. Why not enjoy that ray of sunshine and fresh air for a change.
Noel Jonathan Brady’s Strategic cities essay, is a bit advanced, but for a senior in college or a young architect in practice, it does manage to cobble together alot of issues (sometimes presented in a bs fashion) into a quite comprehensible document. Noel is also a VERY accomplished public orator – deceptively good in fact, because they make it look so simple, you don’t notice it.
I remember one girl in particular in college in Bolton Street, who had simply the most beautiful female speaking vocal cords, i have ever heard. (I envied that alot, with my thick Limerick acent) You just wanted to believe what she came out with, but most of the time i must admit the intellectual content did not live up to the elecution. 🙂 Sadly.
Ross Cahill O’Brien, Sean O’Laoire, Shane O’Toole, and one guy from FLK are accomplished public speakers. Some Irish Architects are much, much, much better speakers, than actually having that much to say. I think the Irish profession has been blessed with some really top-notch public speaking talents, but the reality is, not everyone is as skilled as those in the ways of language. Its okay, to be a good B public speaker, besides those giants i think.
But it can be entertaining to watch people try from time to time too! 🙂
Brian O’ Hanlon.
