PROGRAM, function, and value of usage, Part 2. I realized in my early twenties—following a discussion with professor Raimund Abraham during my studies at Cooper Union—that to be happy, I needed to accept that my life was going to be that of a nomad; thus my unconditional need to travel. Since then, traveling is to push myself into a vulnerable position intellectually in order to explore and understand unknown cultures both near and far. As home became the place where I temporarily live, I tended to seek through my adventures transient comfort that translates into discovering hotels that serve as a microcosm of well-being.
An example of Philip Stark
Many of my friends would shy away from splurging on a hotel, and in lieu of this experience find pleasure in a memorable dinner or an upgrade when flying. Not for me. Hotels are not simply about comfort or reassurance, they are more about a sense of place that offers a relaxing atmosphere while reflecting a region’s history and identity, be it a heritage hotel like the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur, India; a famous landmark such as the Pera Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey (where Agatha Christie wrote her novel Murder on the Orient Express); or a delightful southern bed and breakfast along the Natchez Trace in the United States.
One may call this attitude indulgence, but for me such distinguished hotels always know how to balance the familiar with the exotic. When alone, I like motels as they are part of the idiosyncratic American landscape of Hopper’s pictorial solitude that I so admire even after 30 plus years living on the New Continent.
At times, I enjoy staying at hotels conceived by either architects or designers. Philippe Stark (1949-) is my favorite French enfant terrible of controversial industrial and architectural product designs—with a persona similar to Jean-Paul Gauthier of the fashion world, Madonna and Lady Gaga in the music industry, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat of the East village art scene, or Jamie Oliver in the restaurant business.
Image 1: Google images- Citrus fruit squeezer, chair designed for the Café Costes in Paris, and terrace at the Mondrian hotel in Los Angeles, CA with its over-scaled flower pots.
What are Philip Stark’s contributions?
(above image 1) Stark is well known since emerging in the 80’s as a designer who understood how to leverage the zeitgeist of the late 20th century:
First, for his creation of beautifully designed but unnecessary daily objects that became staples of any household that considers itself chic and au-courant.
Second, his talent expanded to a range of cutting-edge furniture that became “undisputed symbols of elegance and comfort of contemporary design.”
Third, and perhaps for the topic of this blog, Stark completed some interesting and provocative designs ranging from interiors to hotels, the latter mostly commissioned by Ian Schrager.
Schrager, another enfant terrible, was the owner of the famed Studio54 dance club in the 70s, followed by The Palladium in the mid 80s, both located in New York City, before turning his creativity to real estate and co-creating a category of accommodations called “boutique hotels.” The Royalton, Paramount, Hudson, Mondrian and Delano hotels became the first iterations of a rage for this new lifestyle. They quickly became some of my favorite spots during design studio field trips to engage students around the idea of designing a hotel with a je ne sais quoi of outrageous innovation.
Philip Stark’s Hudson Hotel
Some years ago, I had the opportunity to stay at one of Stark’s hotels (Hudson Hotel) and learned an important lesson about program, function, and the value of usage. In an elegantly appointed bathroom, the sink and faucet were the cult objects of my interest. The shape of the oval sink reminded me of the universal gesture of crossing one’s hands to create a vessel from which to drink water. The elegance of the metaphor was what I considered the PROGRAM of the sink.
The faucet, also designed by Stark, was elegant and strikingly provocative in its metaphorical imagery (below image 1). Hot and cold water flowed perfectly and the FUNCTION of the faucet was achieved. Because of its unusual design principle, the faucet was difficult to handle and with wet hands it became an acrobatic feat to close the water, and I assure you that I am not known to be clumsy! (below image 2)
While the program was inspiring and the function easily accommodated, the VALUE OF USAGE failed miserably. This experience was disappointing and illuminating for me as an architect, and I decided that the extra cost that my host paid for the room must have included a thorough clean-up for the excess water left all over the bathroom floor.
Image 2: Bathroom faucet by Philipp Stark (Author’s collection)
The idea of program
“… A few months after the death of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, for example, Jellicoe [Geoffrey] was commissioned to landscape an acre of land beside the River Thames at Runnymede which had been donated by Parliament on the part of the British nation to the United States as a commemorative monument to the late President (Jellicoe, 1966). This now matured landscape is less than a mile from where I presently work. Jellicoe’s design incorporates a serpentine path of uneven stone sets climbing away from the river terrace, forming a Pilgrim’s Progress which leads uphill through a tangle of second-growth woodland to end at a great block of white limestone inscribed with the dead President’s name, his dates and words taken from his inauguration speech. Each November a New England maple sheds its red leaves over the monument, recalling both Kennedy’s native Massachusetts and the date of his blood sacrifice…”
Denis E. Cosgrove
Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape p. xii (1998)
Let us return to the education of an architect. Within most architecture design studios, the word program is often interchangeable with brief, prompt, or even function. While these choices remain a matter of faculty interpretation, I favor the simple nomenclature of project description that sets in place minimal requirements including the topic of the project (i.e., house, cafe, institute for sustainability), site location, and basic required spaces that serve the design. So how do I define the term program when discussing this topic with students?
Typically, when program is equated to a brief, it is written and supplied by a client (the professor in the classroom) and consists generally of a series of directives that outline a list of the main building requirements. These are often functional requirements and are generally set forth in terms of the elements of the plan, the size and form of each element by emphasizing main and secondary room assignments and, if stated as part of the program, their spatial relationship to each other (eat-in kitchen, bathroom specific to a bedroom, etc.).
What is program?
Program is NOT the purpose or use of the project, nor a list of functions. It is what inspires the architect to interpret the client’s needs by engaging them with a vision, a thesis, or a model of life for how a project should develop. The program(s), when thought as the highest order of creativity, should engage in the substantive material of the work of art; in other words, how to set in place the destiny or calling (nature of being) of the project.
In doing so, the program carries and illustrates the various choices the architect has at his/her disposal to establish certain spatial characteristics that subsequently carry functions and provide a value of usage (i.e. Stark’s example). This position is critical for the project, as the program leaves indelible marks on how the architecture is envisioned, thus expressing elements of permanence that form the fundamentals of the project. This position, is contrary to the notion of function, which is transitory and often circumstantial.
Finally, it is the program that allows the architect to exercise an autobiographical approach to the work of art; to be interpretative, subjective, and unique. This standpoint remains the place par excellence where the author (i.e., architect) distinguishes him/herself by their approach and the manner in representing the essence of the project. It is here that all the spatial freedom and legitimacy of the rights of an architect come into place. To a certain degree, this is the place and moment that is closest to the notion of the autonomy of architecture that goes beyond its disciplinary attribute of language, syntax, grammar, and vocabulary.
On an important side note, the notion of program can be hierarchically found throughout the design process, as a theme for the project (i.e., John Hejduk’s program for the renovation of the Foundation Building of Cooper Union was to provide students with a place of self-education where they could learn from experiencing the building and understanding key spatial moments). At a smaller scale, one may consider a program for a bathroom as a place where the human being exercises three positions within a confined room: standing, sitting, and being horizontal.
The idea of Function
“The word ‘function,’ when used in connection with architecture, has two senses. First, it simply means the way in which a building satisfies a set of pragmatically determined uses. Secondly, it means a certain architectural language, a language which represents a certain relation held to exist between human society and the mechanical and material basis of its culture. The relation between these two senses is not symmetrical, for the second sense presupposes that a new value is placed on the first. Therefore, any discussion of function is difficult, because it entails the constant oscillation between two different levels of logical thought. When buildings are described as ‘functional,’ the work is often used in the first sense, but given the moral force of the second, without realizing that the very act of reduction involved in using functional terms of reference implies the existence of what is being reduced – that is, the ‘values’ represented by artistic production.”
Alan Colquhoun
Architectural Design/2/77
If the program is about a theme, a thesis, or an idea, then the term function is part of the reality of a clients’ needs and are thus considered to be established through exterior forces. Function is the opposite of the interior freedom that allows the establishment of a program, because the function sets in place a number of requirements that the architect must assume, all the while incorporating and exploring these necessities through the larger idea of program.
Function is best interpreted at the intersection of program and value of usage.
The idea of the Value of usage
“I don’t believe on can casually talk about “use.” I believe it is a crucial phenomenon and a crucial philosophical issue in architecture. Architecture cannot carry any narrative messages, but it can be identified by use. The sculptor is not obliged to confront his formal manifestations with use, the architect does. When I say “confrontation,” that means the architect can also deny use, but this denial has to be manifested in his architecture. If the form arrives at the level of universality at which it can encompass use, embrace use without yielding to use that is what I would call architecture.”
Raimund Abraham
Notwithstanding that the value of usage is the third concept of the trilogy with program and function, it remains critical in the hand of the architect. Without careful consideration of how program and function work in tandem the spatial experience of any place may fall short in creating “a building [that] also has to make sense to those who see and use it.”
This was the lesson made clear to me in that beautiful bathroom designed by Phillip Stark, where the water ended up on the floor…