Leonardo Ricci: how to project in architecture. Leonardo Ricci: how to project in architecture.I have written many blogs to assist students in furthering their intellectual curiosity. These blogs elucidate content that addresses a number of issues they encounter during regular design studio time.
I started my blogs in 2019 during the pandemic when I became aware that virtual desk critiques failed to offer the magic of one-on-one discussions, and that blogs, although virtual in their own right, could bring a personal message to all of my students.
In addition to reviewing important information that might have been lost in translation, I also recognized that in the virtual teaching modality, ambiguities in conversation might lead many students to miss assessing the critique of their project, which in our case now happened via zoom. What was absent for all of my students was the regular studio environment where they could mingle amongst each other, talk about their desk critiques, and support advancing their respective projects.
Building on this new environment, most of my blogs focused on the nature of architectural education and covered topics that ranged from design process, thesis, sketching, function versus program, to presentation skills. Rereading many of them, I realize that I have never dedicated one to the question: What is a project in architecture? This subject, which is implicit as being at the core of any design problem, might seem obvious and that is why it is rarely discussed, yet it is nevertheless fundamental to learning how to become an architect. When over the years students are confronted with this question, I most often get looks of consternation. I had to remedy this situation.
What is a project in architecture?
To do a project, is to project (and not to design). This means that students embark on defining a relationship to both the discipline and the profession of architecture, and this through space; an important connection that seeds the desire for life-long learning, and a path of self-discovery.
And yet, in today’s virtual world where so much information is readily available at a student’s fingertips, I have witnessed a puzzling attitude towards the art of making space (making a project in architecture). This behavior is alarming as it shows two important mindsets: a disappearance of courage (as in bravery) and a lack of daring (as in the willingness to take risks). For many students, to project is no longer about creating bold ideas as one would expect in the context of academia, but serves an interest in form making. Culpability for this trend is not new, but the reliance students have on digital platforms has exacerbated the need to create images—which I call poster art—that are tantalizing, but without much architectural meaning. I guess we will need to go through this again with very shortly with AI!
All of this is not surprising in second year studio as many student projects tend to express at best some sort of spatial organization using function and geometry that results in an attention-seeking stand—a wow effect—rather than questioning how they are responding to the actual program brief. Students self-impose the pressure to stand out, which is often showcased through the resultant garrulous geometries.
While I have witnessed my fair share of clumsy projects over decades of teaching—as well as truly exceptional ones—what is fundamentally different today is that there is an attitude that anchors a new studio culture. This generation tries desperately to figure out what their professor wants and how to secure high marks as if they were still in high school. I understand this is a concern for most educators, however, this attitude will overshadow the importance of learning through personal growth to become lifelong learners.
I will admit that I can no longer endure function (accommodation of human activities) and autonomous form making as the primary impetus for an architectural project. Therefore, as explored in an earlier blog, I have over the past years reintroduced function as a poetic component (e.g., light as definer of space), and complement this with an in-house seminar about the theory of the project. One might ask, why do I not simply create space without function or alternatively propose a contemporary interpretation of the nine-square grid project that let students explore spatial arrangements. The latter was groundbreaking and made Cooper Union’s pedagogy innovative under then Dean John Hejduk. My reason for not following this path is simple; I am less interested in abstract space making as it seems that it only postpones the design crisis when function must be introduced.
So, let me share with you, through the position of one specific architect, how a particular approach to function can reveal what is a project in architecture.
Leonardo Ricci
My example aims at finding an approximation of the question what is a project in architecture. The following thoughts come from a mentor, colleague, and friend who I met early in my tenure at the University of Kentucky. This exceptional character is Leonardo Ricci (1918-1994), an Italian architect, urban planner, painter, author, and Dean Emeritus of the School of Architecture in Florence, Italy.
What made Leo so beloved by his students and colleagues was that despite his age (early 70s when I first met him), he was so accomplished and therefore had nothing to prove and did not brag about his career to this students. Leo was the most generous professor I have ever encountered, and his willingness to share his knowledge was inspirational. Add to this, Leo exhorted a philosophical stand that was considered, among those who were willing to listen, sacrosanct. And, as we will see, engaging in Leo’s philosophical inquiry made great sense when thinking about how to approach an architectural project.
All of these qualities made him one of those ‘anonymous’ great masters of the late 20th century, mainly because Leo was able to formulate a program for architecture where “forms spring from man’s existential truths and not from futile motives of taste…” Leo mingled with French existentialists such as Camus, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, as well as the leading modernist architects and painters of his generation. Through his personal and unwavering stance, he was able to move beyond these exceptional minds and translated many of those ideas (and ideals) into his architecture.
Leo’s architectural standpoint extended seamlessly through his writing in anonymous (20th Century), figurative art (painting), urban planning, teaching, and academic leadership roles. He believed in the interdisciplinary praxis of architecture where technological progress converged with humanitarian values—a praxis that differs fundamentally from the practice of architecture. Leo always engaged with his work and students in a critical reflection that was measured through his political, social, historical, and aesthetic engagements that constituted praxis. And yet, Leo was an architect in his own right and could superbly practice through designing and constructing buildings that have had lasting meaning in the field of architecture.
What was for all of us so consequential, was that Leo’s design philosophy was about creating a model of life, one where architecture had to be structured, and eventually given form to be called an architectural project. This outlook on how to do architecture is in total opposition to my previous concerns where students start with form without a larger idea about life! Leo saw form (meaning) as an end result with the obvious caveat, that geometry was always a way to seek a model of life.
I will admit that as I write this blog, Leo’s trilogy (model of life, structure, and form) continues to shoulder much of the way I teach and conduct projects, one where the art of making is not simply disciplinary but encompasses a number of complex issues that give architecture its letters of credential (e.g. relying on skills, creativity, and aesthetic values).
To illustrate the first point of Leo’s trilogy (model of life), I remember reading in anonymous (20th Century) a paragraph about the design of his future house. In his writing, Leo expressed fundamental ideas surrounding domesticity that conjure the definition of a model of life. Leo mentioned that the program of a bedroom was not a place to park a bed, but a design moment where he could create an atmosphere from a different condition and different times.
In his example, a bedroom was the result of the architect’s attention to the meaning of the magic of waking up with the sun, being bathed by the warmth of light, or as night was well after sunset, to retire to one’s bedroom ready to go to sleep, admiring the stars that no longer existed. A bedroom was no longer a place with a bed. It was the first time I understood what a project in architecture could mean.
My own teaching
Thinking of Leo’s approach reminds me of my own teaching where I challenge students about the nature of function and program. Case in point: In the non-descript seminar room where I typically offer reviews and discussions, I ask my students how they would they feel if, instead of the current tables, chairs, and monitors (A), I would instead furnish the room with a comfortable bed, two night tables with designer lighting, and their favorite books (B); or, dress a table with plates, silverware, glasses, napkins (C), with exquisite food and beverages; or, provide a sink, toilet, bathtub and shower (D); or, in a final scenario, curate art on the walls with the traditional captions describing the artist and other relevant information (no diagram) Images 4 and 5.
Students typically take my spatial variations back to accepted functions such as bedroom, dining room, museum, and bathroom without ever questioning the idea of room and its spatial boundaries, or even the poetic program of a room – here, I think of a room as described by Leo. When after discussion students realize the possible permutations in space making, one can introduce function as part of more robust design ideas, and, with great pleasure, introduce students to Leo’s ideas! These ideas explore permutations in space making by laying down foundations for understanding how design can be optimized for its purpose.
Of course, part of teasing my students with these spatial alternatives is not only to encourage them to question notions of function from the outset of any project—function as in human accommodations and how they may contribute to an architecture project—but to establish further along in the semester, how various functions can be simultaneously accommodated.
In today’s world where we need more sustainable (as in versatile) approaches to space making, I like to further challenge students by suggesting that a single space may very well be able to simultaneously accommodate different functions. By this I mean that the zoning of functions can merge and overlap as in a cubist painting to create a new spatial configuration (e.g., a staircase that is holds bookcases on one side and extends at mid-level into an office, ending on the upper landing with a railing that becomes a countertop for a kitchen).
Conclusion
I believe that Leonardo Ricci understood that architecture needed to contribute to a world of ideas, and not simply serve professional answers to utilitarian demands, nor be simply a disciplinary endeavor about form. And yet, when it came to the architectural necessity to accommodate life (building types as defined by Quatremère de Quincy) Leo had such virtuosity that both his model of life, its expression in structure and resulting form seemed to have been born by an existential necessity that only he could refine as an architecture project.
May one call it our Zeitgeist; I always return to how students may interpret my blogs. I remain adamant that students need to be shown how to seize opportunities to formulate questions about the contemporary state of architecture and society. If all goes well, they remain nimble (in time) and versatile (range of skills) in providing responses appropriate to their time. This is the only way that they can emerge from the banality of designs that are solely functional with a formal twist meant to inspire momentary awe.
Additional blogs of interest
Question of Pedagogy. Part 6
The meaning of architecture -memories from Cooper Union
Interview about architecture