This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Residential Knowledge Community and Committee on Design .
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Michael Ytterberg AIA
Principal
BLT Architects
Philadelphia PA
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Whew! Originally this discussion was intiated by a question whether the Committee on Design could be concerned with knowledege creation as the other committees are. For me, the term that comes to mind is "Design Research." In the meantime most respondents seem to suggest that achitects know all they need to know, that talent is the most important thing, and that the Committee on Design should be concerned with PR - spreading the word in the larger community about the essential contrubution that architects have that will benefit all of society if only they were smart enough.
Other design disciplines are not so self satisfied as architects, but assume that the public - the consumer - might actually be worth studying in order to create products that serve humanity (and that people may want to spend their hard earned money on, by the way).
Donald Norman has written a series of books that architects would do well to read:
The Design of Everyday Things, and
Emotional Design: Why We Love or Hate Everyday Things. Virginia Posttrel has written about
The Substance of Style.
But architects are taught that they know what people
should want. Modernism has always been, and continues to be, following Marx, a critique of modernity. This ideology has been drilled into us in the academy for the past sixty plus years, and shows no sign of abating. We don't ask, we know how people should live their lives! And they won't listen!
What bull shit!!
We refuse to accept, as the authors mentioned above do accept, that
meaning is everywhere. Humans cannot live in the world without ascribing
meaning to every object, to every encounter with the physical world. Beauty is one of the words we use to describe a part of the emotional response we have to the world. Beyond mere function, architecture is consumed with the creation of meaning. People spend money for meaning. This is what separates us from the engineers. And it is not as if function can ever be separated from meaning!!
I'll leave it at that for now and continue later on what we might profitably study in order to make architect that seves society's needs and not just that of architects.