Everyone Needs Everything!

[garethace]

Louis Kahn’s famous phrase was, “Everybody needs everything”. Louis Kahn tried to give the client/user of his architecture much greater dignity and deeper experience of architecture, than is required or specified in the normal, regular architect/client/contractor agreement.

 

Agree or disagree.

 

It is my own firm conviction that, most great architects down through history have in fact gone beyond that traditional client/architect relationship or inter-dependency. Louis Kahn's relationship with his clients bears out this fact. Louis often continued to design projects such as Luanda, long after he had even lost the commission. Louis Kahn stopped working for developers in Philadelphia, on large urban River front projects, because he suspected them of merely using his name to gain weight in commercial developments.

 

The Architectural Spa-bath.

 

I am increasingly aware nowadays of a growing designer culture, and the amount of TV series simply based around design/gardens/interiors etc. Using the premise that the current Architectural profession merely supervises actual building contracts rather than providing a total design service to clients. I have something in mind that may happen in the future. As clients are becoming sophisticated, design-aware and so is visualisation technology.

 

The provision of design and visualisation services may warrant a new contract. One that doesn’t inherently specify the need to build whatever is visualised. The resulting visualisations from this pre-process may actually contain a lot of useful information. About what the client/user would actually need or want. It would be a nice little database of ideas, personal to that client and what (s)he or they, actually would like to build. Like the hair stylist keeps your colour records in the salon!

 

The client could look upon this service as a preparatory exercise to actually going to visit a real Architect to agree to actually build anything. In a way, the client could play a much more sophisticated role in the design process, from much earlier on. Allow themselves some time to familiarise and to be comfortable with some of the jargon, idiosyncrasies, the issues/strategies of designing architecture. In reality, it would be a kind of prep-school, or ‘Architecture for Dummies’ manual, or even a kind of Spa-bath of Architecture.

 

This understanding by the client could ultimately be useful to the Architect later on. I mean why wait to six months prior to construction before designing a vision of the house of your dreams? Or why wait six months before construction to envision what the new Town Hall may look like? Too often in practice the client has to learn how to ‘get what the architect is saying’ on-the-fly.

 

They have to worry about finances, time schedules and a host of other things etc, while trying to listen to what an Architect is waffling on about – in a different language to normal people. I am sure that most Architecture firms are going full throttle trying to build stuff, rather than envision stuff. So most clients are not welcome in the Architects practice, merely as curious individuals trying to figure out what how they can understand Architectural design.

 

 

Brian O' Hanlon.

[William Alexander]

Brian,

 

Sounds like a good idea. But given the current climate of architects and achitecture in general, would'nt this bruise some egos?

 

The real world application of this thought may be an introductory service by a firm to entice possible clients and start building the ultimate Kahn type relationship. It may seem costly but high returns on marketing dollars usally are. It could also give the young architects with CG skills a chance to build thier client skills and show thier stuff to the senior memebers of a firm.

 

Just a thought.

 

rgrds

WDA

[garethace]

The Architectural Café.

 

Architects merely providing a visualisation service would become a risky business indeed. If the client was satisfied with his/her visualisation, or virtual building model design (whatever the format, technology is improving in this area all of the time) – what is to stop him/her/they then going directly to a very sophisticated contractor and saying, “Here you go, have your draughtsman detail this up because I want you to build it”. The real bad omen is when the Architect severs this ancient umbilical chord between him/herself and the building contractor.

 

Kenneth Frampton has explored this notion in a very weighty tomb he wrote, tracing the connection between various Architects and construction. Mies van der Rohe said “God is in the Details”. Whereas Mies was indeed a wonderful builder of buildings, and great Architecture. His relationship to his client was different to that of Louis Kahn. He told Mrs. Farnsworth basically to go bugger off, when she was unpleased with his efforts. Then you have his young student at MIT, Philip Johnson who managed to compromise the purity of the Farnsworth design solution, and build the Glass house and other little houses. Which gave more back to the participant, but which also followed up the strict Miesian belief in ‘Master Builder’. Johnson didn’t obsess as much over, ‘What is a brick’. Louis Kahn designed Yale, and other early projects against a backdrop in America of very Miesian puritanical design values. They were like a portable ‘Lego kit’ the architect was given to make Miesian solutions.

 

Whereas Kahn, Shroder etc gave you light, space, views – much more. Mrs. Schroder was apparently quite instrumental in keeping Mr. Schroder 'on track' to design something way ahead of its time in Holland. Some Architectural Journals do come with good details of the construction, and possibly a rough breakdown of costing and procedures for fabrication. Personally I like the idea of breaking a design down into costs in an Excel spreadsheet. It does bring an air of reality to whole process. On the other hand, Kahn could have built a lot more works than he did, but would often refuse to design a project, which was half the cost than what he had envisioned.

 

That is exactly what Frank Gehry uses the computer for. He doesn’t design/envision using a computer, but with more traditional physical scale models and Architectural drawings. Only inputting that information into the computer, via 3D digitising methods, to later become very accurate construction documentation given to a builder. He doesn’t actually conceive Architecture in the computer, as some people often think – when they see those very nice CATIA visualisations. So at the end of the day, you are still getting a real Frank Gehry design, not some binary solution made by CATIA Inc.

 

Yet I do question why the Computer Visualisation happens at the end of the design process. When the Architect is practically ready to go and compile tender documentation. There is this nervous anticipation on the part of the Architect, will his/her client like the visuals, having gone to so much trouble in preparing a design. Months of hard work can just go down the toilet, if the client sees a problem with the 3D visuals. I have asked several really excellent young Architects you use 3D modelling software, if they would show a client their 3D Visuals. They said no, only the standard 2D documentation – rather than confusing the client or give them an opportunity to get ‘cold feet about actually building the project’.

 

But on the other hand, take for example, the client with 1 million to spend on a house, four times the size of a normal dwelling. This type of client, and many other clients on government boards, with high-powered lifestyles and jobs are used to being pampered and treated to a very lavish array of services. Don’t tell me they cannot afford to have visualisations done of their project/house/Master Plan. Whether they ever build these grand visions is beside the point. Already a lot of Architecture firms, do drawings, visuals and physical models for clients/projects that will never be realised. But you can ‘never say never’, not in this game.

 

Architects normally contract to take responsibility for the construction documentation – not visualisation. They administer the timely, and economical completion of the building works and fabrication. But clients often do worry and become very apprehensive. This is always eased by a few good visuals. When I did 3D visuals for the clients, I felt a bit like an in-house counselling service to the client. On large government jobs, a nice physical model can soothe the client’s conscience and allow them to feel like an important part of the whole great merry-go-round. Without understanding what a foundation, a bill of quantities or what scaffolding is like. Instead of being invisible beings, in this drawing office of busy secretaries, noisy telephones and busy Architects.

 

Some clients are developers, but were previously building contractors, or Planners, or one thing or another. Born and raised in the trade, and used to looking at building plans. But some clients aren’t, and I think the beauty of Louis Kahn, Robert Venturi and these kinds of Architects, was being able to design such wonderful little buildings for very simple but nonetheless dignified everyday people. Without being very patronising to them, that is. I find this whole ‘Ken Stark’ designer culture to be very patronising. But still house wives and a lot of men nowadays seem to buy it wholesale.

 

They can spend hours strolling around stores, imagining what the new living room could be like, while stopping to have coffee and discuss purchases from a catalogue. When they come to an Architectural firm, they are lucky to get a mug of coffee. Not to mind a computer visual. While they have to listen to everything their Architect often talking in a completely foreign language.

 

I would ultimately see this pre-visualisation contract/process as satisfying a growing hunger amongst affluent, trendy younger people for habitat types of leisure activities. Something a person and their potential partner could do on Sunday mornings.

 

I would ultimately see the service being primarily web-enable. Meaning that anyone, their family, friends, neighbours etc could visit the design visualisation, and offer opinions or suggestions to the young trendy web-savy couple, on a message board. The young couple might then be able to respond to their friends suggestions, and learn to think more about what they are designing, paying for ultimately. Gradually making the final decision to go ahead and build/decorate more real, but not too real. I can imagine even a few younger practicising Architects taking advantage of such a service too. Rather than have their partner constantly bicker them about ‘drawing up some ideas’.

 

I am reminded primarily of that film starring Michael Douglas called, “The Game”. But also the current crop of reality TV shows – the line between reality and fiction is very blurry indeed nowadays.

 

Brian O’ Hanlon.

 

[ September 08, 2003, 05:35 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[garethace]

quote from another message board:

 

we are the people who have chosen to design the built environment for others and have a duty to understand the issues and deal with them to the best of our knowledge and ability.

That is where you are wrong, we are a profession that has chosen to specialise on behalf of the client, to accept responsibility for the guarantee of timely and economical completion of a building works project. That is foremost. We haven’t chosen to DESIGN the built environment but we have chosen to HELP BUILD the built environment. The part about designing is really only something you wrote into the agreement yourself, and doesn't carry that much weight generally speaking. Only that as a result of (A) Competitions and (B) Pretencious Architectural School College professors, believing themselves to be really important in the real world - you have this mis-conception that the Architect is doing anything else other than supervising/overseeing/coordinating a building fabrication proceedure/activity.

 

I mean, why does the Architect get paid at all. The only place where the Architect might get any brownie points at all for decent design, is where deeply insightful clients notice the work, of a certain Architect Master Builder. And like discovering a new up and coming painter or fashion designer, commission them to do works. The established Architect 'Names' don't have to worry, and quite regularly lend 'weight' to very dodgy developer activities, by putting their professional name on the building sign. That doesn't necessarily MEAN for a minute, they every 'sweated' it out with the eventual client/user.

 

Well at least follow that link i gave to Frank, and compare how Mies van der Rohe treated/related to his clients. To how Louis Kahn worked with them. Louis Kahn wouldn't slash a budget/design down to fit into a budget. He made out that was the Architects duty - to hold off, in order to make sure that Architecture was introduced into peoples lives.

 

Mies built great buildings, but he didn't care what the client/user thought of them. He did expect the client/user to come up to his level of classical excelence, in order to appreciate his designs. And they are wonderful, if you are into oriental Zen space etc. I think Steven Siegal who be in his element in the Farnsworth temple of meditation. But Louis Kahn designed little houses that were 'home' to people.

 

I guess Van Eyck, Hertzberger etc are like that today. I remember one story of Kahn designing a dorm for girls in a private school in the states. Kahn thought about this design problem and decided that girls on their own together was a bit unnatural. So to combat that sterile situation he put a fireplace at the corner of the main social rooms. Indicating that young women associated a fireplace, with their Dads at home. So you need to define very carefully, in precedent how different architects have tried/refuse to accept the eventual client/user.

 

But all the traditional building agreement between the client, architect and builder stipulates is that the Architect should be responsible for whatever is BUILT. While Architecture is very responsible to building/construction - its relationship to client/user has been upheld and sullied by equally talented design minds - van der Rohe or Kahn. I have tried to discuss that notion of UNBUILT projects as a way to alleviate the often severed 'relationship' between the Architect/client/user, in modern day practice.

 

Think about it.

 

Brian O' Hanlon.

 

 

Furthermore.

 

(Apologises What?)

 

We are a profession that has chosen to specialise on behalf of the client, to accept responsibility for the guarantee of timely and economical completion of a building works project. That is foremost. Architect specialises in one specific task – (s)he is not a generalist in this sense. The Architect as generalist is just some urban legend that professors in colleges invented for their own purposes. With little better to do than think up really interesting thoughts of how Architecture can be more than it is.

 

Think of a DELL computer, it is a mish-mash of many different products, brand names, devices, components – all gathered together under one warrantee or agreement/contract between buyer/DELL corp, instead of dozens, if you were to ‘make’ that system by yourself. A client/Architect agreement is something similar. The fact that some Architects managed to take the client/architect relationship to a new level, is simply beyond the whole point to begin with.

 

Louis Kahn I think was the original ‘bastard’ professor in Philadelphia Architectural School. He even had a ‘bash-up’ with Rudolph and pissed off to Yale instead. Apparently Rudolph without consulting Kahn, enacted a design brief in the Studio to design a ‘Roadside Frozen Custard Stand’. And Kahn later went crazy over this, preferring his students to do stuff like ‘Re-design Chandigarh’ better than how Le Corbusier would have done it.

 

Kahn was perhaps your normal everyday dangerous Architectural college professor. But Kahn’s legacy to the profession around the world, was to bring it out of a period of ‘Miesian Grids and Master Builders’, into an era that was at least somewhat sympathetic to clients/users needs and dignity as human beings. For that, I am prepared to ‘put up with’ an awful lot of waffling and material from professors in college, or Architects in the AAI, who are dealing with issues that are important.

 

Someone like Merrit Bucholtz today is a masterly builder of buildings. And I suppose to be fair, Mies van der Rohe did turn the Architectural professions attention back to its origins – to when Architects were out on the Parthenon supervising and cutting blocks of stone, or the great Gothic nameless Architects of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. So I guess, you cannot really be too judgemental of either camp.

 

[ September 08, 2003, 06:36 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[William Alexander]

Brian,

 

Great, lofty and grand ideals. This line of thinking... I'm a firm believer in and of. However the reality of a working firm and design is so contrary to this. There have always been a very limited number of indivuals with the intestinal fortitude to follow an ideal, yet have the skills to be successful. Then bucking the momentum of the status quo. It's so much easier to roll with the flow.

 

Architecture on the everyday level is so lacking in detial and feeling. You seem to allude to this in many of your posts. SO much of this has to do with the costs. It's easy to draw a dark shadow line on the buildings cornice, it can cost so much more to actually create it. The "Builders" very quickly reduce the cornice dimensions to typical lumber sizes or less costly profiles. In an effort to minimze costs and maximize profits, usally on the clients behalf. Where does this leave the architect... "You can't beat um jion um".

 

This is similar to the Firefighters here in the US. Thier unions and associations fought to ultimately eliminate wood truss construction. Due to the inherent rapid failure rate in fire. Many still to this day have a real problem with wood truss construction. Commercial use is protected by automatic sprinkler systems from, at least in part, that effort. But the real piont I'm making is, not one FF I know opted for the additional cost of standard wood framing in thier own homes. Go figure. At the end of the day it's about costs.

Ideals fade quickly when it costs money.

 

The question/s I pose to you Brian is-

How would you implement these ideals you have in actual practice, how could they sustian a firm over the long run, how do you cost effectively integrate the 3d modeling and visual aspects?

How would the great client relationship architects have used the 3d aspects?

 

It's political season here in the states. I'm tired of whats wrong, lacking, missing, grossly negligent. What are your views on how to implement your ideals.

 

Respectfully I would be very intersted in your thoughts.

 

Wm Alexander

[garethace]

Who will be the Dr. Do Little of the Architectural profession?

 

This was an introduction to a book about Architects, the environment and society at Sinead Bourke's Introduction to Tracings 2

 

This volume is a forum for discussion and the overall impression is one of seeking. This volume does not profess to provide answers and none are provided. What it does give the reader however are fresh viewpoints and insights. No doubt, the aim of this series is to expand our sense of awareness of the built environment to hopefully inform and bring about a better quality environment. This series has started a much needed process, one which needs to be extended however to make its presence more felt outside the realm of architecture. Should contributions be included from sectors of the community actually building the built environment, as well as from those affected by it, a more palpable and no doubt valid discussion would ensue.

I like that Eddie Murphy movie, ‘Doctor Do Little’, where he suddenly began to hear all the animals speak, and re-discovered the trill of being in medical practice for himself. This buzz, which had eluded him for so long, did somehow return. He started treating the animals and found himself giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the rats! Dr. Do Little re-discovered clients in the most unusual places. The Medical industry became really client/public oriented from the beginning. The Architecture profession can treat even its well off clients very poorly in my view. I have even witnessed the company execs and rich house wives being practically shoved around by the Architects – not to mind the common rats. I mean the doctor is a professional, but that doesn't prevent him showing courtesy to good clients. The doctor develops a real relationship to his/her client I think, and that helps him to diagnose the problems, notice mood changes etc.

 

Architecture might change some time in the future, and become more of a fully-grown service to society, the public, the client rather than a contract supervisory sort of thing. Louis Kahn was an architect who showed us how to become deeply related to the client, rather than the building contractor. Without allowing the client to diagnose the illnesses for you that is. He managed to show us, how Modernism with a little help from Beaux Arts times could in fact be more than what Mies had shown us. An Architect worth looking at from this particular viewpoint is Malaysian Ken Yeang, who holds dual qualifications in marketing and in Architect. Ken believes strongly in Architects educating their market, and does a lot of this himself to the well off Asian clients. There is a good chapter about Ken Yeang, in the Bryan Lawson book 'How Designers Think'.

 

The Architect’s client isn’t always one individual though like in medicine. In the ‘How Designers Think’ book by Bryan Lawson, Michael Wilford who was a partner with James Stirling explains how difficult it is sometimes to deal with clients on larger master planning projects. Because sometimes the client is a large council or board, which can often change many times over the course of a longer design process. Indeed sometimes the Architect is the only remaining individual who began the process at the start. Indeed, learning to hear these clients say anything, or offer you any suggestions is really a job cut out for a Dr. Do Little. For a students final thesis here in Ireland, students are asked to develop a real relationship to a client. I remember one young man who wanted to design an Airport and took his motor bicycle out to Aer Lingus, to get a brochure from a receptionist! (Crash helmet under his arm) But at least he made an effort! Most students bypass that stage of the ordeal completely and draw, draw, draw.

 

I am really tired of people describing architects like Louis Kahn, as late bloomers. That Kahn never built anything in his life, and then suddenly started building all of these buildings. Perhaps Kahn had just gotten to know him self and others better at that stage? I think that Louis Kahn was sort of like the Dr. Do Little or the Architectural profession, who suddenly experienced super sonic hearing abilities. The client isn't always the user in Architecture either unlike medicine. At the very moment, the Architect is like a very big hired piece of artillery, a bit more like the Panzer Four division of the German army. Something the client uses to go to war with on many different fronts.

 

This temperament doesn't quite suit the client, public, user relationship thing as well though. I honestly do wonder, how much of the client/Architect relationship has indeed become watered down – through this insistence upon directing the builder’s operations from an office/contract. The reason I am just curious, is mainly owing to the fact, that my architectural education has been so dogmatic about the building technology side of things.

 

I am just looking at analogies for Architecture as a service industry. Things like exclusive clinics where professionals pander to the clients every need. I mean there is no point in turning over millions, if you still are insolvent at the end of the day. How ‘serviceable’ can the Architecture profession actually become, before you are putting too much of what you earn back into the service to your client. Considering that a good 3DS VIZ-ualists salary might be more than what some Architects make. On the other hand, I have seen Architect saying to clients basically, you are important up to a point, but basically you will have to take whatever I give you. Or what the builder can build, and I can stand over.

 

Were Architects like Kahn unable to delegate, was that model of professional practice a bit like ‘in an era of tall cuisine, it was the tallest cuisine around’? Certainly Kahn did go to great pains, compared to other professionals to care about his clients/users. I just feel the debate as to how an Architect handles a client, has received altogether much less attention, than other aspects like Building Construction. Is that a mistake, or a limitation of the profession? Your guess is about as good as mine, since I have never built anything. It's easy to draw a dark shadow line on the buildings cornice, it can cost so much more to actually create it. The "Builders" very quickly reduce the cornice dimensions to typical lumber sizes or less costly profiles. In an effort to minimize costs and maximize profits, usually on the client’s behalf.

 

I think that the Chicago school, from what I understand of Werner Blaser’s books on the subject anyhow, was all about learning to feel the building through the weight of your pencil. To distinguish between a heavy line, or a light line and what have you. Even in the 1:20 detail profile, showing the steel sections for the builder to actually use. Mies van der Rohe, sat down one day with a young student at MIT and just looked at a drawing for an hour without saying anything. Then went out of the room, and none of the students said anything either. But they knew exactly what he meant – to look at what you are drawing! I like this quote from Cathal O’Neill, a description similar in fact to the practice of reading.

 

The purpose of the exercise was clear; it is, after all, the basis of every architect's work process to propose, observe, refine. But the lesson was clear: architects spend too much time proposing and rarely enough time observing and refining.

 

But there is another kind of Architect too, the one who develops the client relationship a lot more. Even when that client happens to be a whole entire city or suburb. I talked a lot about how VIZ or drawing can teach you to see the world around you. Louis Kahn was very aware of how people experience and use his buildings. From all points of view, like how we use a room, a corridor (or sneak passages as he called the modern equivalent in high-schools etc), how natural daylight is the giver of all presences. His many models and sketches are all excellent vehicles of his understanding about clients/sites/briefs etc. Of his attempt to understand the relationship of people with the built environment.

 

Someone said to me the other day, not everything in life comes to you on a plate. It is funny I didn’t actually know what that person meant by that statement and I casually brushed it off initially. That is, until I was chatting to a very knowledgeable music type of individual. He asked me to explain Architecture to him, as best as I could. I proceeded into my normal long effort of what I think Architecture is/is not. But suddenly I drew back and said, lets wait a minute here – perhaps things don’t always come handed to you on a plate. So I suggested that I e-mail him a few hyperlinks, to some of my deeper discussions about the topic.

 

I mean, isn’t there something in the effort of reading? Isn’t there some sense of achievement when you have finished that page, and worked yourself to understand something relevant or important? I mean if I give it straight up on a plate in a pub/cafe, to some guy who thinks he knows everything (and possibly does too) about music, did that person have to work for that? No. So my question is precisely this, why isn’t Architecture about learning how to read, to observe and to refine, AS WELL as learning how to propose?

 

Is information just tasty bite sized chunks now? A seudo, pre-processed version of the real thing, and are we all like puppies? Until the Architecture profession does learn to be a thinking, a probing, a questioning profession, it will perhaps never ask the right questions about itself. Not to mind find any of the right answers. And I go back to my friend Louis Kahn once more: “A good question is always much better than the best answers”.

 

Louis Kahn died in a toilet cubicle in some foreign airport, on the way back from Pakistan to the United States. It just explains what a great affection the man really did have for his clients, his site and the whole rich process of designing Architecture. I imagine more young architects nowadays would just say to hell with that. E-mail me over some digital photos of the site, and a schedule of accommodation – I will have something for you by Friday. That is I suppose the biggest criticism I have of projects like the Egyptian Museum one in Cairo. At least the winning entrants actually flew over and drove around the dusty roads, in some Egyptian guys Taxi!

 

Another person said to me recently, “Go and build something and then you might know what Architecture is all about”. I wonder is that the problem, that Architects are in a mad rush to build something? I think that Louis Kahn has left behind him, as many UNBUILT great projects as REALISED great projects. And what he actually built seems to have this timeless quality about it. It does not look like something built in the 20th century often, and I believe he intended that to be the case too.

 

Yet in the current profession a design, which is un-realised is deemed to be inferior. As if most Architects actually got on planes and taxis to visit that much Architecture anyhow. As if looking at the real photography of a new building in a magazine, was any different from looking at a VIZualisation. You see the blatant hypocrisy? The traditional well-trodden path taken by Architect after Architect over the past 100 years has been this.

 

1. Architect meets with a client willing to build.

 

2. Architect builds a building for that client.

 

3. Architect then draws concept sketch for the building and proceeds to talk to other Architects and to post-rationalise what (s)he has done.

 

4. Architect then publishes their words, opinions and photographs of their work in a magazine. They expend more effort after the design has been completed attempting to imbue something rather lifeless with life and to inject it with some class.

 

5. Architect then becomes famous and a household name amongst circles of rich clients and other Architects.

 

6. Architect then perpetuates the myth of their very own celebrity.

 

Notice how ready-made, easy to consume, like watching a TV programme as oposed to reading a book, this whole process is? All the talking and looking normally happens when the cheques have all cleared and the Architect has some spare time to waffle and debate. Everything looks rather different in hindsight. The Architect doesn’t really discuss his/her work with the client, but with other Architects. Notice how very easy it is to summarise things now, and package them into nice tasty bite sized chunks?

 

Brian O' Hanlon. 14th September 2003.

 

[ September 14, 2003, 11:49 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[garethace]

I have also covered a small couple of ideas about the society, politics and Architecture here:

 

Housing and Environment in Ireland

[garethace]

I think individual young Architects like Bucholtz McEvoy are a bit like this account of warfare: Vietnam War, Guerrilla tactics: use your weaknesses against the enemy. The enemy is larger but also slower. You are small but more mobile. You rob, steal and capture what you can, so the enemy provides you with equipment. The Americans finished up supplying the enemy with tools to destroy them. You are growing stronger as the Americans grew weaker.

 

(Enemy of the State starring Gene Hackman and Will Smith)

 

Brian O' Hanlon.

Original discussion here