Designing Excellence
Which would you prefer: to live in a great building, or across the street from it? Thus did one of my professors like to summarize one of the great dilemmas of architecture. Should our emphasis be directed toward solving the internal function of a building, or should we concentrate on the image that the building presents to the world?
I have come to realize that this question is misleading, and unnecessarily polarizes a discussion that should be about unity. It implies that a distinctive building does not work very well on the inside, and that a well-planned and comfortable interior yields an uninteresting exterior. A great building must do both; it should work on the inside as well as the outside. Unfortunately, this does not seem to happen very often.
One reason is that there is an inherent conflict between the business and the art of architecture. It may be good business to minimize the time spent on a given project by falling back on stock plans, formulaic motifs, and repetitive details, but it tends to compromise the design quality. There is also a longer term, more subtle, and ultimately profound effect to this kind of bottom-line expediency: if we do not value design excellence, neither will our clients. And people will not pay for what they do not value.
We succumb to the economic pressures of architecture at our own peril. We stand by as architecture becomes reduced to banal, cheaply constructed real estate, and the culture of building is reduced to a search for ever more efficient delivery methods.
The Third Way
There is, however, a third dimension that is not addressed by my original question: what kind of street do we create with our buildings? How does a building relate to its surrounding area? Is the building an urban good citizen? By being overly conscious of how a building looks from the exterior, we risk creating an urban landscape of disjunct signature buildings. This is the unfortunate result of the teaching of design. Design studios tend to reward the distinctive rather than the ordinary. Most buildings in an urban setting should be background buildings; distinctive buildings are reserved for a few prominent civic buildings and landmarks. Think of the courthouse square or a typical village in Provence or Tuscany.
We architects tend to be frustrated by how little control we have over the overall urban character of the built environment. Being responsible for only one building in the composition (usually,) the inevitable result is a cacophony of independent structures vying for attention. We could however, begin to impose some order on this landscape by being more aware of the surroundings, and responding to appropriate contextual influences. By working individually, but toward a common purpose, we will create greater quality and value.
Our clients are usually more interested in ensuring that their needs are met. Their emphasis is on internal planning and the basic building systems. Usually, it is only the architect who has much concern for how a building looks from the outside; clients will generally acquiesce once convinced that neither internal function nor budget is being compromised. I suggest that we do indeed have an opportunity to leverage our influence over the built environment, but we must collectively understand when to take center stage, and when to be part of the choir.
We seek greater respect and influence as a profession. We will get it by creating a culture that values design excellence. We do that by the example of our good works.
James Hill, AIA
