Is space for humans still important in architecture? I was educated by a second generation of faculty who praised the work of modernist architects such as Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Louis I. Kahn, and Mies van der Rohe—and to a certain extent Frank Lloyd Wright as the American proto-modern architect par excellence.
While I remain indebted to both my teachers and those modern masters among many others, I am a strong advocate for promoting contemporary architecture that is intimately linked to issues of the first quarter of the 21st century.
It seems that those who are deemed visionary are always part of the Zeitgeist (spirit of one’s epoch). Architects may also have a real-utopic sensitivity to their era (as described by German philosopher Ernst Bloch as being where one “reimagines utopia not as a static, distant place, but as a process unfolding in reality through human action, desire, and hope.” )
There are countless other ways to practice the discipline of architecture including: redefining space by using existing structures; exploring new building technologies; pursuing issues of environmental sustainability; tapping into powerful digital design tools; and more recently, leveraging the advent of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI). The latter tools allow powerful creative venues that have, in their own right, ushered the discipline of architecture into so many exhilarating unknown directions.
The scope of any architectural intervention is, of course, far richer than the above mentioned list. Observing over the past years—and I guess already prior to Covid-19—there is a paradigmatic shift in how students learn about architecture. Notice that I write how students learn rather than how faculty teach, as I continue to have discussions with colleagues around the world about their pedagogical strategies, which often, to my disappointment, do not measure up to with what students comprehend, assimilate, and practice in their designs. There is a fundamental differences between teaching and learning, between teachers and educators. Certainly, a set of dialectics that deserve to be discussed in a future blog!
Space
“Good architecture should receive the human visitor, should enable him to experience it and live in it, but it should not constantly talk at him… Why, I often wonder, is the obvious but difficult so rarely tried? Why do we have so little confidence in the basic things architecture is made from: material, structure, construction, bearing and being borne, earth and sky, and confidence in spaces that are really allowed to be spaces – spaces whose enclosing walls and constituent materials, concavity, emptiness, light, air, order, receptivity and resonance are handled with respect and care?
Peter Zumthor (1943-)
If Zumthor’s words are thought-provoking through his call for material honesty, integration of nature, and atmospheric qualities, one of my regrets in today’s academic setting is that I observe in many student projects, that ideas about creating new, evocative, and sensory spatial qualities are quasi absent. I should mention that with the rise of digital tools over the last decade, students—and I am talking mostly about those entering second year and third year—lack a holistic approach to spatial thinking as an experiential endeavor that brings into play all of the five human senses, and this within the discipline of architecture. In other words, to set center stage an argument for a model of life that is part of an innovative formalization of space, may well seem to be outdated.
Perhaps my feelings are in response to students favoring the nature of designing an object through its geometry, form, and manner of being produced. Many schools of architecture continue to ride on the coattails of what is popularly called the art of making. While I have no qualms advocating for its original definition as applied to architecture (e.g., “the creative and practical process of translating ideas into a physical built environment”), too often, student projects take two very different paths based on their interpretation of the art of making.
First interpretation
In one interpretation, designs are pushed to an extreme through digital technologies that enable students to create projects that are visually provocative but upon evaluation are often simply poster art. As a consequence, I believe that there is now a predictable aesthetic that percolates through many student projects. If this is true, my increased concern is that these types of projects (not the historical definition of type as defined by Quatremère de Quincy, Argan, or Moneo), seem far too often removed from architectural spatial concerns (e.g. Zumthor words above), which for me are the essence of our métier that sets human activities at the center of our art.
Second interpretation
On the other spectrum of interpretation, projects are banal, featuring predictable modern corporate designs with little inspiration as if architecture had been robbed to become merely about building. Ironically, both interpretations are brought to formal extremes when students show facades that are unoriginal, generic, and often superficial. (Worse, when they display a lack of facades.)
This ambiguous attitude toward design is accompanied by a universal trend to focus on newness rather than substance, or tradition versus re-invention. As a result, I feel that these projects often provide faculty little impetuous to give a constructive critique and elevate the discussion on architecture—a sine quo non condition for us wanting to be in academia.
This overall phenomenon might be the result of a generation that come to college expecting faculty will give explicit instructions about how to conduct an exercise. As educators we need to adapt to this new reality of the student’s expectation of a prescriptive environment that gives (ersatz) fundamentals instructing them how to think. But how much can we adjust when a student’s high school experience is focused on a “right” answer through “multiple choice” problems, rather than fostering the open-ended, critical thinking required in architecture.
A colleague of mine recently correctly mentioned that we need to provoke our students in order to encourage independent thinking, with the caveat that they need less personal discipline. If I read between the lines, this might be a suggestion to the detriment of the discipline of architecture that is required towards a professional degree. A necessary scaffold that can give students a way to approach a project.
Creating at the interior or exterior fringes of architecture
There are always the happy exceptions to my comments above, and those projects are a treat, that offer the feeling of hope that our profession will survive. And yet, I remember in my early years teaching when students—while naïve and inexperienced in second year—had a profound and welcome arrogant demeanor to let us believe that they could invent architecture out of nothing. It was both refreshing and challenging as we faculty understood that students created while pushing the boundaries to the extreme interior limits of architecture. Strong tectonics were part of their kit of parts that gave their projects this je ne sais quoi that inspired us.
Today, many students seem to no longer live in a world where they are taught to push boundaries. If they are courageous to embark on such a path, many of them choose to work at the outside fringes of architecture! Regardless of the path they choose, each generation of students is entitled to develop their modus operandum when designing.
This is critical as today’s challenges require foundational and new skills for a profession that seems immense, ever changing, and promising; one that demands quick and unconventional thinking to anticipate and confidently confront complex problems that do not yet exist. As educators, and not simply teachers, we can empower a new generation of students to feel confident as they embark on what I believe will be an extraordinary journey in the design field.
Conclusion
As educators and students in architecture, we all know how difficult it is to translate ideas into space. And without fully acknowledging real issues that the profession currently must address (as architecture and not building), I believe that architecture is fundamentally about the creation of space—in all of its complexities that go beyond form and shape.
If one truly believes that an architect must consider fundamental questions such as how do people live, how do people interact in cities—in public spaces and in buildings— and rural areas, architecture’s role should make every effort to improve lives. Only then will the architectural built artifact be successful, and this, if architects (we) are willing to take a genuine interest in those lives.
“The world today needs good design and architecture more than ever. Although noticing it isn’t always easy. We move fast, we scroll, we forget to look around, but the spaces we live in shape how we feel, think, and work.
Nic Monisse, Design editor at Monocle designed objects and spaces
I believe that architecture schools have much to deliberate through collective discussions to adjust their pedagogical strategy in the art of making. A mindset so needed if they want to reclaim the positions of leadership in their fields. I believe that there is the need for an environment where creating is about a shared future.