I had the fortunate opportunity to hear John Ronan speak at the AIA Iowa Convention this year. He offered words of inspiration for those of us whom work in the practice of Architecture in these times. Fitting words for a 1st post and the dawn of a new decade.
Excerpts from John Ronan: A Keynote Address to the Iowa AIA Convention
New Realities
We live in conflicting times, for never has interest in architecture been so pronounced in the culture, yet the the role of the architect been so marginalized. A process once controlled by the architect has been slowly replaced by a model in which the architect is merely one service-provider in a constellation of program managers, stakeholders and consultants who influence the process. In this new scenario, the architect is often relegated to the role of brand manager or empty generalist. We could once ignore this condition, but now the receding tide of the economy has laid it bare before our eyes.
There is an old joke that starts out, “Architects know less and less about more and more until they know nothing about everything . . .”, and as with anything humorous, there is a kernel of truth to it—the information age we live in stretches the architect’s knowledge base ever thinner. But within these current trends there is opportunity for the architect. Building contractors that once came up through the trades, bringing with them specific and useful knowledge of building materials, now follow a career path that goes through a college classroom that often bypasses the construction site altogether, which has created a vacuum of knowledge within the project team that the properly-trained architect can fill through a rigorous understanding of material properties, fabrication, assembly and its navigation through the building process. Architects will move back toward the center when their knowledge base becomes the bridge between idea and reality.
New Tools
The last two decades has seen an explosion of tools that offer exciting new possibilities to the architect, from software programs that allow complex geometries to be more easily studied, analyzed and documented to software-driven fabrication tools make their construction and assembly more easily realized. But with the advent of these new tools, there has also come an unsettling trend within academia, and certain parts of the profession, to fetishize the digital tools of design and fabrication, and to place value on an outcome by virtue of the means used to produce it.
These new tools have the appeal of speed and directness. Rapid prototyping reduces the feedback loop between designer and design, while digital fabrication tools plug the designer directly into the making of the object. But as these tools become commonplace within the industry, we have become silent witnesses to the disappearance of the craftsman from the professional landscape, who is being cut out of the equation, and along with it his knowledge about materials and their assembly. Architecture and making is no longer a dialogue in which information is shared, and knowledge passed down, but a one-way communication between designer and machine that gives primacy to authorship, too often resulting in a vacuous formalism.
The challenge for architects today is how to avail themselves of these new tools with the sensitivity and knowledge of the craftsman and employ them in a way that reconnects people to something that is culturally meaningful.
Technical Advancement
The history of modern architecture could be told through through the development of modern technology. Since the advent of steel, architects have pushed the boundaries of what was possible, technologically, and the milestone developments in the profession often coincided with milestones in technical advancement. Technology became a touchstone, a standard by which the profession judged its own success and level of advancement.
But in the past fifteen years we have seen a shattering of these boundaries thanks to advancements in technology, coupled with unlimited capital and ambition. With cost no longer an object, everything seemed possible, and was. Suddenly technical boundaries vanished and nothing seemed beyond the realm of the possible.
But when everything is possible, what do you do?
We are now witnessing the effects of this lack of boundary—everything is possible but nothing is meaningful or relevant: an architecture of the arbitrary. The challenge for architects today, now unconstrained by technology, is the definition of boundaries we impose on ourselves, the self-defined criteria that will preclude arbitrariness, and makes what we do culturally relevant.
The Age of Spectacle
If you lived on an island and the only information you received about the world outside was through the design media, you might be fooled into thinking that all the buildings built in the past fifteen years were art museums, performing arts centers, and office towers, and only those by architects who had developed a signature style. The truth is that there have been a great number and variety of excellent projects, but the design press has largely been focused on spectacle.
This is something of a “chicken and egg’ proposition. For did the media mistakenly conflate photogenic with important, or are they merely reporting objectively on a profession obsessed with formal innovation? No matter. The results are what they are, and the message is clear: what is valued is that which is unusual, sensational. The upshot of all this is now surrounds us: urban fabric rendered as independent formal objects, with each project competing for attention by attempting to be more formally outrageous than the previous one, like chattering pundits on a cable news shout-fest, straining louder and louder to be heard.
The profession embraced this new development with both arms, thinking it had never had it so good. Most of the results were empty branding exercises, attempting to create on the surface the illusion of difference that belies a boring sameness underneath--the same old soap in a new package. But now the party’s over, and the profession is suffering a collective hangover. Perhaps it is time to reassess our priorities. Do we really want to become exterior decorators? Maybe the goal of architecture is not always to shock; perhaps some things need to be confirmed or validated. What do we leave society once the novelty of form has worn off?
I'd like to thank Mr. Ronan for sharing the above. You can view the work of this amazing firm here: www.jrarch.com
