Committee on Design

Regarding design excellence, I stated on this forum that I recognize it when I see it, and was challenged to provide some examples. Here are a few:

• Attentiveness to definition of exterior space on the part of a building or buildings.
• Confident and informed use of color, which many architects fear and avoid.
• A middle ground for a formative approach, whether outside or in, between extremes of hyperarticulation and hypersimplification.
• Eschewing the Big Effect used demonstrably for its own sake.
• If there must be a Big Idea, give it some complementary relationships. A well-chosen parti, which is not the same thing, would be a more mature overall guide through a design process.
• An entrance that is not the most impressive element in the project.
• Tempering whatever special gestures there may be with scrupulous attention to issues of context.
• The right material for the application: tensile if the goal is evanescent shelter, rather than a glulam grid.
• A Center: a sense of focus, whether within the building or among a precinct it partakes of.

 

The schools and the profession don't utilize very much demonstrated knowledge (call it architectural psychology, environmental science, evidence-based design, whatever).  It is true that "programmer" and "creative" aptitudes tend to be distant, but an education and a career of merit will regard a significant degree of synthesis between them as essential. Fine musicians must, simultaneously, be both scrupulous theorists and imaginative creators/interpreters.

Regarding software magic: Having the software doesn't oblige us to use its capabilities to devise bizarre extremes for their own sake, just because we can. And the atrophy of hand-eye drawing skills is a loss to the pursuit of design excellence.

A fair amount of Starchitecture is enabled by the ignorance of the public, which doesn't know which way to turn in our lawless age.  What of these heroes, many of whom have been mentioned on this egroup with evident admiration? Gehry has had a wide range and one can't generalize, but much work is demonstrably clumsy. Calatrava's is ingenious, but his bleached, context-free bones seem not conceived for habitation. Hadid's work strives for disorienting sci-fi effect. The appeal of Libeskind's falling-over broken boxes escapes me. Eisenman loves his ingenuity, superimposing abstract constructs and figuring out how to fit the program in, but ultimately this is his only Big Idea, and the program seldom fits well: results may be eye-catching but fail the test of time.

The academy must shoulder some blame for the paucity of excellence produced by graduates. The studio system hasn't materially evolved in 100 years. Historicism is regarded with contempt. (Everything embodies Style; this is inescapable. Modernism, or whatever we choose to call its currently fashionable version, is simply the most recent Style. Style is value free. Inept use of Style is not.) Inadequate provision or requirement is made for a liberal education, that should include experience in writing, speaking, thinking, art and architectural history, aesthetics and art itself.  It's clear from what we see around us that the bar is set too low by the degree programs. And we can't depend on society to help raise the bar because all share in a lack of exposure to creative experience and artistic knowledge in the public schools. None is so blind as those who will not see.

My spouse cautions that much of the above is negative, and we all know it's easier to find fault than to praise. I'll note a few designers, firms, buildings and places that embody design excellence for me:

• Paimio Sanatorium
• Polshek
• Sea Ranch
• Koetter Kim
• Villa Savoye
• Bohlin
• Monticello
• Elliott
• The souks of Morocco
• Neutra
• The Usonian houses
• Lutyens
• Venice's neighborhood squares

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Kenneth Moffett AIA
Bullock Smith & Partners
Knoxville TN
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I can't wait to respond to this one after I get past a deadline I'm on. I would like to debate some of these points.  But more importantly, this is the kind of response I have been hoping to see more of in the Committee on Design.  Here we have an architect with a developed belief system. He has given it some sincere thought, obviously years of thought, and he is prepared to lay it out there for others to see.

I would really hope to see dozens of architects providing statements like Mr. Moffett's to this forum. This is the Committee and Design, and finally, somebody is actually talking about design. This is getting into a fair amount of detail, where we can debate issues at a much more refined level.

Mr. Moffett brings up the point about color, which is something I definitely would like to write an entire article  on here shortly - just color alone. But again, we need to encourage more architects with an in-depth belief system about design to share those beliefs, so we can build meaningful, public discussions on each other's ideas, and get past the elementary stuff.

Thank you for your post. That was most appetizing.

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Rich Farris, AIA
Architect
Dallas, Texas
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Mr. Moffet makes several interesting points.  A few where I would disagree, and a few others I would add to.

As to modernism, I would argue that modernism is not a style, at least not when practiced by a real modernist.  The moment a designer makes modernism a style, they are no longer a modernist. For me, modernism is nothing more than a moral committment to innovate and push the boundaries. So long as you are doing that in some way, then you are a modernist of some sort.

I find myself defending most of the starchitects, as you call them, most of the time. They are each trying to push boundaries and expand architecture into new areas. In effect they take the biggest risks. Some of our most cutting edge modern architects used to have trouble getting their clients to accept their innovations because their ideas sounded "too crazy." Michael Rotondi told me that after Gehry came along, that problem eased up quite a bit, because Gehry pushed the envelope way out there, clearing the way for others.  In other words, if the client were to say, "that's too crazy," Morphosis could respond, "Oh yeah? You think I'm crazy? Well look at what Gehry is doing." We owe a lot to Gehry for loosening up the conservatism out there, so real innovation could proceed. If you not at least a little crazy, you probably are not innovating.

A lot of our great modernists believe that their architecture should carry some personal expression in order to be artistically valid. Otherwise, if you don't succeed in personalizing your design in some way, you probably have a mechanized product that looks like it could have been cranked out by anybody, or any machine. The same would be true for context. If you don't find a way to tie down your design to specific context, then your building floats.  It becomes something unspecific to any location, like a fast food restaurant or gas station. It could be put anywhere and it wouldn't matter. I think we all would agree we have more than enough "anywhere USA" buildings in this country. Restaurant chains don't even call themselves restaurants anymore, because the architecture has become only a logo. They refer to their dining businesses as a "food concepts."

As to use of color, I would prefer if more architects would fear and avoid it. I swear to God, I groan every time I see a blue corrugated roof on a building. Some colors on some materials are nothing more than logo art, which is so demeaning to the environment. I wouldn't mind it if we just outlawed blue completely from exterior materials. Blue lighting or blue glass is ok. They can wear blue with a fair amount of dignity.  But not on metal, window frames, roofs, or walls. I would prefer materials try to wear a color found in nature that is becoming of them. Otherwise, the color becomes a two dimensional postage stamp graphic in most cases.

I encourage everybody to try this test when driving down a freeway. Look at every building you see through a Coke-bottle type lens mindset. Check the colors to see if the masonry, metal, and mineral products are all colored in some natural way. White, gray, brown, tan, or something reasonably neutral earthy tone found in nature. Any sharp color is hopefully nothing more than the sign on the building. If you see stripes of color in the wall system, notice how graphic and artificial it looks. Notice how it takes away from defining what the building is actually made of. There are occasionally brilliant uses of color, on the right materials. But more often than not, color is mostly being used on our buildings as if it were some football team color. 

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Rich Farris, AIA
Architect
Dallas, Texas
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