Before one can make sense of what I am about to write you must read this article first written by Joe Debenny (architecture student at the University of Arizona) because this is in response. Well written by the way Joe.
I am not suggesting any real solution because that is not anything that can be said. It has to be done. It is however a necessity to understand that this is not an equation and has more than two sides that will never be equal. So let us not waste our time striving for solutions of any Utopia. I am going to share my very real experiences with architecture and hope to get any gritty honest feed back.
Let me tell a story from my past that I will draw analogous to what I think of what I know of architecture:
About six years ago I worked at a five star restaurant crawling with people of money and ran by an acclaimed chef. I had this job for over five years and as an observant, careful individual I will share one of many pieces of priceless knowledge I took from the chef/owner. All opinions aside the way this place ran could have been a much better and smoother operation if Chef didn't have his head so far..., you know the rest.
The situation is as follows. The chef was good at creating a delicious looking and tasting dish and cared very much for his "guests" as he called them to assure his care for them. But what happened when he left the server station, or even when he left town? Did his employees share the same care for his guests that he did? I think the answer to that depended directly on how he treated his employees and like every other situation the complexity and diversity of people. No. That is the answer. We'll just say that he treated his employees as though their attitude and moral at work had nothing to do with how his restaurant would reflect him and his reputation. Short tempered and disrespectful after he would laugh and smile with his guests he would return to "the back" with his bipolar threshold at the server station door. The employees would do things despite him and as a matter-of-fact one employee (who had worked their for 10 plus years) said, "I have mastered the technique of avoiding him"
This is an example of how lots of tiny moves and decisions in the work place effected the overall result. The employees out numbered the owner and were ultimately responsible for taking care of the guests. I would make a suggestion that his efforts of kindness (cause we assumed they were extra efforts to be kind) would have been much better spent on the 20 or so employees rather than the constant changing ever growing, thousands of guests. Im not even saying that this causes magic where the employees would in turn treat the guests with the same care. But I would guarantee, the employees would channel more though and action towards get the job done and to do it well rather than all the wasted thoughts and efforts spent otherwise.
This is just one example of many in the world how our train of thought effects the work we do. What you put in you get out and I truly believe that. It has proved true in math (all force equal zero) and in religion and depending on how you look at it in science as well.
Architecture school is a lot of time and effort. Unfortunately a lot of that energy is directed towards things that result in this "starchitect" mentality. It seems to all come down to your presentation and it's true, presentation is everything. But a good salesman can sell a crappy product and a horrible salesman will be less successful on pushing a good product. Every situation is a new recipe and the results are a byproduct of the relationship between the architect and his/her client. How is it that after school, all the effort you spend trying to learn about how things are built successfully does anyone honestly stay modest about their capabilities. Of course learning about all the materials available and possibilities and methods of doing these possibilities their will be high horses ridden as far as the ego can go. Many great things have been built and many not so great but those are only defined by opinion and everyones is different. Let me say however as naive as any occupant in a building their opinion is valid whether it is "correct" or not. Everywhere I read of how to approach this architectural myopia it begins with the education and I couldn't agree more. Student need to be in a state of mind to be eager for truth and multiple opinions. The more you question the more you understand. The motive isn't to learn as much as possible but to understand as much as possible. Where ever your professors are from they don't get a free pass to speak nothing but the truth so question them any time their is misunderstanding, confusion or doubt. This is the only way to narrow the possibility of falsehood in you life as an architect.
- "Design is what, for practical purposes, can be conveyed in words and by drawing: workmanship is what, for practical purposes, can not. In practice the designer hopes the workman will be good, but the workman decides whether it will be good or not. On the workman's decision depends a great part of the quality of our environment. Gross defects of workmanship the designer can, of course, point out and have corrected, much as a conductor can at least insist on his orchestra playing the right notes in the right order. But no conductor can make a bad orchestra play well; or, rather it would take him years to do it; and no designer can make a bad workman produce good workmanship. The analogy between workmanship and musical performance is in fact rather close. The quality of the concert does not depend wholly on the score, and the quality of our environment does not depend on it's design. The score and the design are merely the first of the essentials, and they can be nullified by the performers or the workmen." - David Pye
No comments:
Post a Comment