Thinking about Architecture

I have recently signed up to a service called ‘School of Everything‘, which lets anyone advertise offers to teach anything, on any terms they want, an idea that, as a follower of Ivan Illich, and (slightly paradoxically) also a founder of a small, alternative school, appeals to me a great deal.

The site shows you other members who have identified themselves as living close to you, and one of these has labelled himself a ‘psychogeographer‘. Originally coined in the ’50s by the precursors of the Situtationist Internationale, the term is not strictly defined, but implies an acute sensitivity to the experienced realities of place, implicitly rejecting separation of different aspects or  thoughtless devaluation of any. It has recently become a little trendy, having been used by Will Self and associated with the work of Iain Sinclair – an example of recuperation in effect?

As someone who has always been excited by  situationism and the anarchic view of life, I was intrigued to find someone calling himself a ‘psychogeographer’.

Looking at his website, I was interested immediately in his work on ‘complexity maps’ – I am convinced that the next stage of our metaphysical progress (the only ‘progress’ that really matters) must be an engagement with complexity, even if only for something as mundane as survival (the global ecosystem being one of the more complex systems we know of).

I delight in the wilful, playful, deliberately paradoxical flavour of situationist events and artefacts, but my own paradox is that I am an architect – the things I build are permanent, hugely energy intensive, and need to nurture and support life.

In the work I choose to do (making everyday, practical buildings), embodying disturbing, psychologically aggressive elements (as does most of the architecture which claims or is recognised as having been influenced by situationist/deconstruction theory), would be obscene to me. The ‘situations‘ which should occur here are those that happen when real life is supported, when the character of people, materials, the natural world, sensitivity to micro-climate, delight in beauty are the drivers of architectural decision making.

This requires me to welcome complexity, to engage with it, to attempt to develop a feeling for the flow of life,  so that my buildings can support it. This is hard – hard for two reasons; one, I live in a culture formed by four centuries of cartesian thinking, of finding success in the radical simplification of systems that underly the ‘scientific’ approach; and two, humans are fundamentally poor at dealing with complexity – we can hold very few ideas in consciousness simultaneously.

I am fortunate to have been a student of Christopher Alexander, who, in his relentless pursuit of understanding beauty, of wanting to be empowered to create beauty, has employed rationalist means to approach the irrational – another way of saying he has sought to expand our metaphysics.

His invention – the notion of ‘pattern languages‘, is, I am certain, one of the new tools we can use to help work creatively with complexity – to get out of the nightmare that we are in, where our paradigm for learning about something is to kill and dismember it, so that we can build some terrible crude simulacrum, animated by brute force alone.

Enough!

I am hugely pleased to have written this letter – it has helped me crystallise some thoughts, forge some relationships between aspects of my thinking that can sometimes seem at odds.

Part of the ‘Reveille! Earth calling Architecture!’ series, collected under ‘Pages’ on the right.

Architects in general are hopelessly, pathetically trapped by the word ‘modern’.

Within architectural circles, not to be ‘modern’ is to be beyond the pale, outside all normal, acceptable discourse.

And yet the de-facto definition, inside the architectural world, of ‘modern’ , is laughable, embarrassing. It basically means;

• no features that look purely decorative (features that ARE purely decorative, but don’t look it, can be accepted – are in fact the norm),
• flat roofs where possible (where pitched roofs are used, they must be deliberately odd in some way, so as not to look traditional),
• asymmetrical windows
• er, that’s it
• oh yes, it has to not look ‘dated’.

Anything else is fine.

Now, many architects, on reading this, will become apoplectic and argumentative. I welcome comments, and will seek to answer them as I can, but, dear reader, I hold firm to this claim.

Of course, the subject doesn’t come up much amongst architects, because architecture (I’m talking about the real world of architects who build things here, not the even smaller and essentially hermetic world of architectural theory) is essentially a closed shop. No-one who doesn’t subscribe to this laughable ‘code’ is accepted as an ‘architect’. It is only when an architect strays, that another will comment on a lack of modernity (either apologetically or aggressively, according to type). And this will be a wounding criticism to most architects, who will be set to scurrying about, either to change or justify their transgression. Because what they are really being told is that they are being judged, according to the code, as to whether they are ‘one of us’, or not.

Of course, as a nominally intellectualised class, architects don’t like to think of themselves as being ridiculous, or to be exposed as being laughably adrift from contemporary cultural discourse (which, as we will see, has long relegated ‘modern’ to the past), and so various cover-phrases, such as ‘contemporary’ or ‘of today’ are trotted out in public, so as to avoid the embarrassment of using the word ‘modern’. But in private, between consenting architects, ‘modern’ is the commonly understood shorthand.

Architects have of course had to accommodate themselves to the real world, accepting, for instance, that the number of ‘modern’ buildings in the world is far smaller than the number of ‘pre-modern’ and ‘vernacular’ ones, and that most people actually prefer these buildings, particularly the most attractive, to the products of ‘modern’ architects, and that there is work to be had in dealing with them. So there exists a tolerated sub-class of architects, called ‘conservation architects’. These are treated with an amused and gentle contempt by most architects, who view them as well-meaning but essentially sad cases, occasionally of use when one has to work on or near something old. [The conservation architects who want ever to be considered for work from the mainstream are careful to let it be known that they subscribe completely to the ruling dogma of 'modern' - see  The Past in aspic]

But just try asserting that the whole of the history of architecture is the valid basis for contemporary work, that pitched roofs and symmetrical windows are just as valid as any other type, that decoration is a vital part of architecture, and see the reaction from most architects. Even worse, try arguing for these things at work. Kiss your career goodbye, or go into voluntary exile, seeking shelter with the outcasts, the architects who espouse ‘traditional building’.

And what do you find? That these outcasts are just as trapped by, in thrall to, the idea of ‘modern’. Except that to this small, embattled group, modern is everything that buildings should not be. Try suggesting a flat roof to this lot, or an asymmetrical facade.

Now you begin to discover what being an outsider really means.

How did this state of affairs come to pass? Have architects always been this foolish, this lost? Not at all – we have a chequered past, but not all of it is shameful. See the next instalment!

Many entries here don’t truly merit the title ‘Thinking about Architecture’ – they are reactions to projects, news items, or are about projects we’re working on.

But, starting today, I’m going to begin trying to write some more general posts on architecture. As these will hopefully have some coherence, I’m going to store them in the ‘pages’ area of the blog – the links at the right hand side of the page, under the heading;

Reveille! Earth calling Architecture!

<update> Since ‘pages’ don’t allow comments, I will post each part as both a blog entry and a page. I’m afraid you will need to register in order to post a comment – spam generators love posting comments it seems!

This is an aerial overview of a ‘concept’ scheme we have developed for a new type of residential care home proposed by Deep Green Care.

A bird's eye view of the concept scheme

We began by thinking very carefully about arrangements of rooms that could meet the operational needs of a care home, which tends toward units of around 25 beds, at the same time as minimising the feeling of an institution. This led us to create clusters of 8/9 rooms, three of which are then clustered around an internal courtyard/atrium, where there are also support rooms and social spaces. At the same time, we developed a typical room type which is laid out to have windows on two sides, to give the best quality of natural light. Combining these together around a central hub where larger scale support and social spaces are grouped, we developed the form shown here (for the purpose of the concept scheme, we have assumed a site with a slope, so that there are two storeys at one side, and one at the other, to give 75 rooms).

How have we come to be working on such a project? Well, about a year ago, we had an intriguing email, asking if we would be interested in working on a concept scheme for a new model of residential care, one that was at the same time concerned to be seriously sustainable, and at the same time deeply humane, looking to connect these two concerns in a holistic way.

Of course, we said; ‘Yes, please – right up our street’.

We were lucky to get this chance – Julie Hotchkiss, the founder of Deep Green Care, happened to be good friends with  David Whitehead, an architect I used to work with at MJP, and naturally asked him if he was interested. Earning my deep gratitude, David recommended us as perhaps more suited to the project, and I met with Julie shortly afterward.

The Deep Green Care proposal comes directly from Julie’s life experience. As someone who needed care after a serious illness, and found the available options unappealing, she;

“resolved to create the sort of community I would like to live in, should the need arise”

It appeals to me powerfully, as someone who has always tried to work in a ‘holistic’ manner – always aiming to consider the totality of a situation, as far as one ever can – that the sustainability of the building could tie in with the sustainability of the lives of the people who will live and work in it (better environments in residential homes have been proven to lead to longer life).

For me, one of the most engaging aspects of the proposal is that it aims to soften the distinction between permanent care in a residential setting at one extreme, and living at home with visiting carers at the other, by providing a range of building types around the central residential building. This might mean that someone in the early stages of a degenerative disease might live  perfectly normally in a normal house in the grounds, accessing care services only when and if needed, secure in the knowledge that, over time, additional care would be available and that if eventually it becomes necessary to stay in the central care home, family are close at hand, and can visit on an informal basis. We have suggested that existing houses that adjoin the site, but have front doors on surrounding streets, could be bought, with links being made via the back garden, so that people can live on a normal street, as part of a normal neighbourhood, while still having good access to services.

Anyway, there is a great deal more to read about Julie’s ideas for Deep Green Care on her blog, if you want to know more. It’s a fascinating idea, and we are hopeful that they will find a suitable site soon, so that we can begin to work on a real, rather than an abstract, scheme!