epiphany 1

B”H

Its good to finally be back.. Congress was amazing!!!!!! I cant elaborate how important it is for a student to go.. What you learn in 1 week of congress will take you many months to understand!

I intend on blogging about the lectures at congress, just to give an overview. Before I do that, I have a nagging need to get a particular epiphany that I had during last week out into the open.

While a few of my friends were eating supper, we were looking at a website for a holiday retreat somewhere in Miami. The website was superb. It utilised night photography (which would make a Tuscan villa look amazing) and loads of Photoshop. The actual building was my main focus. Quite honestly, it was so boring.
We had this mad debate about why it was either good or bad, but not quite realising any form of closure. While the debate raged back and forth, the one guy said that my opinion was arrogant and egotistical. Which I felt was a little on the heavy side. To cut a long story short. They loved the building and I had a nightmare about it that night (just kidding - but it explains what I thought of it ;))

The epiphany that I alluded to earlier is simply this. As an architect we are expected to have professional competence and understanding in all fields of study that would affect our design. These can range from child psychology, landscaping, building technique and the current day’s politics. To be able to utilise any of this in a design language, we have to form our own opinion of what ever subject we choose. This is not arrogance. It just allows us to look at things critically so it can be taken to a lateral interpretation and later form concrete, timber, or masonry poetry.

To make an analogy between architecture and medicine. A student of medicine will write an exam and fail. He gets a supplementary exam and fails. He then receives another 2 exams after that to try and pass. 4 exams to see if the future lifesaver knows what he/she is talking about… Now I’m the furthest thing from a mathematician, so please allow me to invent some maths.

Let pass = 1 and a fail = 0
For every test a student can either pass or fail (obviously)
But for every test that he fails his apparent knowledge becomes diluted..

ie: test 1 student A passes with 51% Student A knows ½ of his/her work; or student A fails and writes the sup and then passes. He/she knows ¼ of his or her work and so on. So the student that fails 3 out of four exams and writes the last exam and just passes only knows 1/8 of the work required. Scary!!

In architecture exams mean nothing to some degree. All our marks come from projects as we all frantically know. If you fail you have a chance to redo that project for the end of the year crit. Your mark will only go up or down by 5% either way. To get into the BAS honours degree and further up the ladder, you will be confronted with highly critical people that will see very quickly if you know 1/8 or 100% of your work, and can deny you on that basis. One could now argue that achieving the professional status of an architect is a lot harder than that of a Doctor. Please don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for doctors, and would, most probably do badly if I tried to learn medicine.. but this issue is interesting nevertheless.

You are probably wondering what that was all about. Well let me explain. A person will go to a doctor with 1/8 of the knowledge that will be required to save your life. Patients will listen, and accept what ever the doctor says as a given. He is a professional, a doctor.. he knows everything!!

An architect on the other hand will tell a person that a building is ugly according to the theory or design philosophy that that he applies, or that it’s a bad idea to imply Tuscan monstrosities into an African landscape, and instead of being respected on his professional status, and knowledge, he/she is told that he is opinionated and arrogant.

And that’s what occurred to me. By definition we have to be opinionated. Imagine a client sitting there and the architect wasn’t sure if maybes, and hows… ask any contractor. The word architect yields power on a construction site larger than one would care to believe. Why is that? Because his professional training has given him the responsibility of making sure that buildings are built correctly and safely… That sort of power does not come from a person that is unresolved on particular issues. They are opinionated, because a heavy responsibility rests on their shoulders. Based on that being opinionated, at least for me, means confidence in ones knowledge.

So then why does a client or simply a friend get so insulted when you tell them that Tuscan architecture is a virus, or that the flashy pictures and pretty colours are just manipulating them to think that a building is beautiful? Well the answer is simple! I have my taste and you have yours. And by an architect even with all their training in theory and design practice saying that’s ugly.. you will ultimately attack their ego. And that never goes down well.

But there is a small solution within this irony… When a client disagrees with the doctor; they will often go for another opinion. Perhaps the second opinion agrees with the first. The determined client will go to a third, forth and even tenth doctor, just to hear someone say that different news is optional. Unfortunately when a person is really sick, it doesn’t matter how many doctors you go to. Your answer will be the same. The client inevitably will accept this and allow treatment.

Now imagine that a client went to an architect and wanted anything but South African architecture. The architect says no. The client then moves onto the second and the same answer is begrudgingly received. The furious client goes to a third, fourth and even tenth and receives the same answer. Ultimately the client will accept that he/she is living and South Africa and that architects wont design anything but South African. The mortified client despairingly accepts the new age of South African architecture and is a part of the revolution of the South African landscape.

I guess the point that I’m trying to squeeze out is simply this. We have the power to move boulders on construction site. To knock down massive buildings, but there seems a lack in the professional architectural community, to put their foot down and refuse anything but good design that is applicable to South Africa. If every architect joins this endeavour, the client would have no choice but to accept good and appropriate design. I’m assuming that the first few clients would be hard to convert, but once people see that South African Architecture is not merely a hut (which is a very valid solution within South Africa), but a fusion of modernism tied with legacy, history and a design language that speaks of progression, I feel that there won't be enough architects in South Africa to deal with the uniquely South African work load.