Thoughts on the Review

The review yesterday sparked an insane number of thoughts and questions, at least for me. I thought that instead of recording them merely for myself, that I would post them here, in case anyone else finds them useful. I apoligize in advance that they are so unorganized and imprecise.

Remember that they're just my thoughts, and as such could be totally wrong: I reserve the right to change my mind about any of them :-)


REPRESENTATION

Most of the reviews (with around three exceptions) followed a similar format: we presented our project, then the critics spent the rest of the time discussing it while we stood and listened, answering a few questions but otherwise not contributing much beyond our initial explanation.

Architecture demands many forms of explanation and representation: verbal, visual, spatial, material; these forms may speak to different purposes and audiences. If you consider physical construction and inhabitance as the ultimate goal of an architectural project (which is not always the case), then verbal and visual representation are, broadly, useful to sell and communicate your design to a client; visual and spatial and material representation are how one communicates through the building itself to the people who will use it everyday.

In this sense, the review structure follows a sort of professional logic: if a critic can't connect the concepts you convey in your explanation to the representations pinned to the wall, then how could the inhabitants possibly understand your concept built in the final, built structure? You're not going to stand outside the building and engage everyone who enters in a conversation about the design. If you can't read it in the architecture, it's not there.


SITE

"The development of a successful architecture is certainly about the intersection of construction, materials and ideas with a physical site." Is this one of the reasons many of the criticisms of yesterday's review revolved around site? I think, at least in my case, doing a quick study of possible sites would've greatly enriched my understanding of how my space would functions. It's probably good that we're spending almost two weeks on site in the next phase of the project.


CHOICE

Architecture is, by nature, a series of judgments and decisions. Any design requires hundreds or thousands of tiny decisions; all of these then inform the success of the larger decisions. This makes it vitally important to have a conceptual framework in which to design: otherwise, where are these decisions rooted? In addition, the act of decision - of judging - is automatically a positioned act, an unavoidably moral act.

The constraints placed on architecture - constraints of site, program, purpose, budget, light, material, gravity, etc. - are the nutrients nourishing the architectural process. They constrain, but also reveal and enable. Without them, architecture would be dependent on concept alone and devoid of much of its power. Without them, it would be almost impossible to make these hundreds of tiny decisions.

Architectural education encourages an extremely rapid process of absorption, analysis, and judgement; likewise, architectural critique requires a complementary series of rapid-fire responses. Perhaps this is why the ego, the manifesto, and the provocateur can be such powerful forces in the profession - architecture flowing out self-righteous faith in one's own actions is architecture with a powerful, proselytizing effect.

Yet, while ego can be a powerful force towards progress, all of this analyzing and judging, while crucial, can also breed layers self-righteousness that, in my opinion, can alienate and segregate contemporary architectural thinking and practice from contemporary cultural understanding. Provocation is good, but not for provocation's sake.

This is why I have enormous respect for our studio's research-driven process: as painful as the timeline can be, by attaching our architectural decisions to other non-architectural fields of knowledge with a fixed-connection (a rigorous methodology), we enable our designs to withstand forces of time and public perception. While basing one's architecture around the physical realities of the human form (like many of the other studios did) is a totally adequate starting point, I think that our broader base exploring the interconnectedness between programmatic interior and public registration is a richer, more useful base; it is the sort of foundation that architecture needs if it is to have power over how society understand and relates to space, let alone larger notions of how the world works


AIM

I think that I'm starting to understand what it means to create successful architecture, but what does it mean to have a successful review? Are the two synonymous? Is there an objective answer to this question? Obviously, above all we strive to educate ourselves and learn more about our abilities and what we need to address in our designs. But beyond that, what does it mean to have a successful review? Do we strive to make our critic happy? Do we strive to make the guest critics in our review happy? Do we strive to create discussion and provoke thought? Do we trust our critics and strive to produce architecture that is successful in the way that our critics think architecture should be successful, or do we take our own path and try an convince them of its merits? Is a mid-process review, like this one, a different thing than a Final Review? These questions aren't all that important in Core Studio, I don't think, but they will be in a year or two. It's good to think about them now.


ARCHITECTURAL METHOD

We research to inform our architecture, but does it not flow both ways? Shouldn't our design process inform our education about our concept? Designing a laboratory requires information and research about how laboratories operate, and how they fit in the larger worlds of science and the built landscape; this design process in turn helps inform the concept that we initially developed. The architectural method is not only rooted in research, it is also a method of self-education, a process with vigorous counter forces that inform one another in quick succession. My biggest question is where this process ends: is it over only when the deadline approaches, or is there some point where the natural processes finally reach a point of completion?


OTHER THINGS I'M STRUGGLING WITH

How does narrative relate to site?

How does curvilinear movement in a space relate to rectilinear movement?

What precisely did P-squared mean by reading the section, vs. cutting the section? I think I understand, but . . . maybe not.

Architectural reviews mean staring at the back of a lot of heads.

How can we apply the architectural method to other forms of design? Is it possible, or does the method require a spatial program to work correctly?

How can we force architects to be more rigorous with their research? Do we even want to? Would more accurate and more rigorous research produce a better architecture, or is research mostly useful on in so far as it sparks spatial and material ideas?

Is architecture worth the cost? How can architects do a better job producing architecture that speaks to non-architects; how can they create a visual representation that is powerful yet accessible?