The Case for Tangible Reality

I have written this letter not because I think that the views expressed are the only way to view the making of buildings but because it is a way; one that is rich in design opportunities, that is applicable to most of our building types and locations, and that the architects doing the everyday buildings of this world should know, if not embrace. I learned this view of the world from my teacher, Louis Kahn, and feel obligated to pass on what, to me, is still a rich and varied path.

The Case for Tangible Reality

Sitting on the upper deck of the ferry that travels from my island home to Seattle, I am pondering the future of my profession and wondering if we have overlooked or even lost some of our core values.

It's an unusually sunny day in late December. A fiddler plays in the corner of the sheltered area. High-pitched children's voices mingle with the lower pitch of adults in quiet conversation. The ferry engine hums steadily in the background and the hull pushes aside the water with a gentle sound. The low winter sun sparkles silver off the water, and the dark north face of Mount Rainier, 60 miles away, looms over this picture, reminding us of our position in the landscape. What does this delightful scene have to do with architecture? In my world, everything. For I feel that architects can capture these moments of visual and acoustic pleasure that elicit emotional and memorable responses.

I often find myself surprised and then moved by the photographer's ability to capture moments of beauty in objects or events that, at first glance, appear mundane or go unnoticed: a stick on the beach, a pattern of stones, a person sitting on a porch, another person at work; ordinary sights, but somehow transformed by the way in which they capture our attention and reveal the inner truth of the subject. This visual revealing of the subject's essence, connects us to it and evokes our emotions. Can we, as architects, do likewise? I feel that we can, when we viscerally realize that every combination of moment and circumstance in this world is unique. Every place in which we create architecture has unique characteristics and history that we can respect, reveal and reflect. Each material has its own characteristics that—if we are listening—tells us how it wants to be used.

The work of reflecting and revealing the uniqueness of each element in a particular circumstance can be a poignant and powerful, although difficult, approach to designing and constructing buildings. One could begin this exploration by first assuming that all people, institutions, places, objects, materials, and even events, have unique sets of characteristics that we can call their "nature." For purposes of communication we describe and define these characteristics with single words or names: Bruce, the school, the valley, the table, the war—shorthand for much larger and complex definitions. If one decides to work within the boundaries of something's nature, then we can ascribe to that "something" a will. There are certain things it is capable of doing and many things it will be unwilling to do while still falling within the definition of the word which defines it. For example: if we build a table that has a lumpy surface and is tilted in compound directions, it would clearly fall outside the definition of a table. It may be art but it's not a table. The table, therefore, has a "will" to have a physical presence that falls within its own definition. As do people, places and materials. If something has a "will", then we might extrapolate that it has a spirit.

Design, therefore, could be inspired by studying, understanding and then revealing that spirit so that it can not only be comprehended but also felt by the viewer in the same way that one feels this pleasant scene of sun, sound, water, and people.

I've meandered now from the downtown ferry terminal up to the Pike Place Public Market. This collection of fully functioning 19th and early 20th Century concrete and wood buildings literally form a vertical edge between the downtown core and the waterfront. I've purchased some fresh baked bread, Spanish cheese, and a little basket of out-of-season raspberries and am now sitting in a public eating area in the center of the main arcade. The cold air permeating the market has not deterred the weekend crowds. The place is filled with grocery shoppers, children, tourists, suburban teenagers, musicians, panhandlers, young urbanites eating Chinese take-out, old Asian men eating pizza, an elderly balloon artist painted like a clown, knots of people admiring flowers, fish mongers throwing salmon, hucksters calling out specials and people just walking, looking and enjoying this intensely urban show.

I love this place, as does everyone in this region. Why? Is it that the market serves as a tangible conduit for people to make an emotional connection to this city and region? Partly, perhaps. Or is it more fundamental than that? Do we respond so viscerally to this place because it takes the everyday experience of shopping and, by its social and physical setting, reveals more truly the actual nature of "market"? The directness of social experience, the personal contact with the merchants or craftspeople, the barter, the banter, the exchange of information, the visual experience of hand-painted pricing, the careful arrangement of produce or crafts, the presence of the crowds of shoppers all serve to connect us to the fundamental essence of the institution of "commerce". It is real. And because it is so real and true we connect to it and then respond to it emotionally. We simply feel more here than at the automated check-out of the supermarket or the mall. I suspect that all markets of this classic variety arouse similar emotions.

This example of an institution revealing its true nature and thus creating an emotional and memorable response is more than applicable to our profession. It is not clear to me that we, as a profession, see or value this. It is difficult to listen to the voices of every one of the social and material components of a circumstance and produce a design that allows them to sing in harmony. It is much easier to pick up on a narrowly focused topical abstraction or a technological marvel and run with it, while ignoring the tangible realities of religion, place, materials, and even institutions.

My concern is that instead of moving towards an architecture that exhibits a deeper comprehension and reflection of the ever-present variety of this planet, we are instead moving towards architecture that very often arrogantly and myopically disrespects everything except it's own abstract theory or novel technology. This is a loss, because the very elements that can help us create a vital and unique architecture are and have always been with us, and I feel that it is our current rigid focus on form that keeps us from designing an architecture that emanates not only from historical theory or technology but also from culture, place, climate and materials.

This was literally brought home to me when I received the December 2001 issue of Architectural Record. Depicted on the cover was a beautiful computer generated drawing of a building that floated with no context, almost no sense of materiality and even seemed to defy gravity. This stunning drawing led me to conjecture that our profession's current fascination with the computer's novel and almost magical ability to manipulate spaces blinded us to the reality of all of the other physical and emotional circumstances that contribute to the making of architecture. It is my belief that in the long run we will find a deeper and more profound use of the computer, and will use it as a tool for creating designs that more thoroughly reveal and reflect the nature of our visual and emotional experiences, just as this bustling market reveals, connects and engages us to the fundamental realities of "commerce."
 

I'm home now. The weather has turned. The wind is howling through the fir trees on the edge of my bluff. The gusts carry with them a horizontal rain that is pelting the windows. This rain and wind have gathered their energy far out in the North Pacific and are expending it against my trees and house. Immense thermal forces that are generated thousands of miles from here are knocking on my windows to remind me that the small place where I live is connected to the whole planet and is subject to its forces.

Inside, it's calm. The cats are sleeping on their respective turfs. There's a low fire in the ill-scaled stone fireplace. In the bookshelves above the fireplace there is a book entitled "Life". The author Richard Fortey, who was chief paleontologist of the British Museum, traces in a mere 400 pages the history of life for the past two billion years. This synopsis of the broad sweep of evolution concludes with a photo of rows and rows of slot machines. The photo is used to illustrate the fact that we are the product of a million times a million almost random chances, possibly more chances than the number of stars in our galaxy. He makes it clear that we were not inevitable. At each chance occurrence in the history of life, things could easily have gone a different way. Given the enormously compounded number of events that created us it is probable that we are unique in the universe. There almost certainly is other life out there, but something that sees, perceives, and feels the world around it the way that we do is highly unlikely. For all we know, we may be the only living thing in the universe that feels emotion or sees beauty. Our rational and emotional cognition of the world around us is what makes us human. It is a gift beyond measure.

Given this singular ability, I would argue that responding to, revealing, reflecting, and protecting the uniqueness of the real world around us should be our highest calling. Choreographing the visual experience of individuals so that the most poignant "photos" of a particular set of circumstances are revealed can give viewers the opportunity to understand the world around them, not only on an intellectual but on the more important emotional human level. These emotional responses connect us strongly to the world and in this memorable way they open the doors for us to feel and love, in essence, reminding us of the gift of being cognitive.

In a world in which the sheer pressure of human population growth is devouring our biodiversity and changing our atmospheric chemistry to the point of radically altering our climate, there may be great value in employing an ethic that guides people to an emotional connection to reality. I know of no one who is in favor of these ongoing environmental alterations or is looking forward to the unpredictable consequences. I also know of no one who feels that the planet will be a better place to live 200 years from now. So why do we do very little—or nothing—about changing this potentially unpleasant future?

Even though the answers to this question may be politically complex, I feel that the core of the problem lies in our fundamental disconnection from the living world that sustains us. We, as a culture, no longer have that primitive emotional knowledge that we and the rest of the living world are one. We may not ever be able to do anything about this loss and its concomitant problems but if there is a path that avoids this looming future it will start from an ethic of respect, appreciation and love for all the variety of this planet. That love can only be fostered by first promoting an emotional connection to the world. Where our hearts go our minds and actions will follow.

I feel that any methodology, in any craft or profession, that reinforces an emotional recognition of the gift of the real world is valuable in defending a future in which, I hope, other people can enjoy the wind howling through Douglas firs.