The birth of a door

The birth of a door

When I see a floor plan sketch, there are two things I recognise: the spaces and visual elements that denote some attempt at arranging the spaces. If the spaces are clear enough, then I can imagine the doors that connect them: where two spaces touch each other, there is a possibility for a door. Sometimes the doors that are coming out of the sketch are all of the same kind, like office doors along a corridor or classroom doors around a hall: all clearly identifiable, dominant features in that space. In other cases, they're not evident in the way spaces touch but I know they're there, like the entrance to a building. Quite often it's easy to see which space could connect the undefined outdoors to the emerging indoors. These are often special doors, sometimes one of a kind, like the entrance to a castle or a cathedral.

So, I'm not surprised when I see a finished floor plan with some door missing. The designers may feel embarrassed that they've drawn a space without an entrance but I sympathise: it's easy to forget what already exists in one's mind, a thing so obvious as a door. At the same time, I wonder: how could they forget it? Do they have a complete picture of the design, of how people move around in it without all doors clearly marked and at least mentally connected into networks and flows? But then, architecture isn't always about how people use a building. That's why some doors are born only after people occupy a building and realise that they're missing something, that there are doors there waiting to be born.

Architectural productivity

Architectural productivity 

Some time ago a colleague observed that our school had excellent connections with industry. I reacted with puzzlement and he explained: we have excellent connections with architects in practice. I bonneted that we shouldn't consider that -a service- as industry. If there's a building industry, it has more to do with those who finance, construct, operate and use buildings and less with the ones who design them.

With hindsight, I was wrong: architects are the industry because they're the true product of architecture. More than buildings, we produce architects; our factories are the schools of architecture. Even in countries with high unemployment, schools of architecture keep on producing architects, many of whom continue with postgraduate and even doctoral studies. And what happens next? Is there a market for architects holding PhDs on typical architectural subjects? Not outside architectural education: most architects with a doctorate want to become teachers, too, and produce even more architects and doctors. It's an impressive recursive system that manages to make money, despite the absence of a real product.

The 3D-printing race

The 3D-printing race

Practically every week there is news of the latest success in 3D printing in building construction. Every weeks someone else claims to have solved the problem for good. But when one reads the details of the announcement, it turns out that the solution tends to be partial. There's some clever stuff like adapting design and production to the capabilities of the machinery but the entire production of even a small house is not something one can solve in an elegantly compact manner. One can 3D print concrete components but what about wood, glass, metal, brick - windows, doors, wiring, plumbing etc?

Could it be so that 3D printing is more suitable for high-end customisation, i.e. bespoke buildings? That's a completely different goal to making the mass-produced, affordable housing that seems to be the main ambition of building 3D printers; arguably one that agrees more with the capabilities and costs of the technology. The problem is that finding a way to manufacture concrete panels with complex shapes at a great height with minimal scaffolding isn't as appealing as the production of a complete dream house in a single day. So, the mass media will probably stay focused on that interminable race and bombard the public with more fantasies, wet dreams and marketing stunts.

Architecture as something else

Architecture as something else 

Peter Collins's Changing ideas in modern architecture, 1750-1950 has been a favourite of mine since my student years, not in the least for a hilarious bit about cooking in comparison to architecture - the gastronomic analogy. By looking at architecture through such analogies, Collins managed to make me aware of the dangers of the easiness with which we compare what we do to something else in order to produce arbitrary statements that might even not qualify as hypotheses, let alone truths (as often assumed). This extends to viewing design as problem solving and information processing, which I consider legitimate yet treat with caution. Metaphors, analogies, similes and the like are excellent ways of explaining some particular aspects of a phenomenon through a clear picture of something else. One shouldn't take them literally or for granted.

It follows that I worry not only about expressions like "architectural vocabulary" and "architectural grammar" but also about the misguided attempts by architects to use their discipline as something else. It's bad enough to believe that architecture can shape lives in a deterministic or utopian manner, we don't need architects playing anthropologist, sociologist, philosopher etc. and try to analyse, study and explain by making designs (precedents by cursory, selective observations that simply act as justification or inspiration, although the latter term seems to be out of favour now). Architects often seem to believe that they have some special right to develop solutions for everything and anything. The only thing they demonstrate is the urgent need for a clear scope and sound methodology for their own discipline.

Continuity and architecture

Continuity and architecture

Architectural design focuses primarily on discontinuity. In terms of process, it is applied to change states of the built environment in rather drastic and often quick ways, as with the design and construction of a new building on an empty plot or the refurbishment of a dilapidated room. Other changes, such as the deterioration of paint or plaster on a wall, are treated as continuous and hence a matter of use or maintenance rather than design. Maintenance bears an interesting relation to design: it's not just that it aims at keeping the building as close as possible to its design, the small steps it involves are considered trivial, even though they can change the building to a larger extent than people assume. Think, for example, of changes in the lighting fixtures in an office: they may render the relation with natural lighting to a degree that contradicts the intentions of the design. Nevertheless, if they're part of facilities management rather than refurbishment, they may go unnoticed and unconnected to design.

In terms of space, too, architectural design focuses on discontinuities, e.g. walls that interrupt space to create different spaces, locations for specific activities or with a particular character. Even within a single element, architecture focuses on discontinuities, e.g. those that concern morphology. Continuity in space (including on a building element) is considered boring - a non-issue. In effect, architecture is about the salient parts in our perception of the environments, the data that determine recognition and correlation of discrete objects (including spaces). One of the strongest examples of that is repetition, a favourite architectural device. This powerful combination of discontinuity and continuity results into patterns like a colonnade that are not merely recognisable but also demonstrations of what architectural design can achieve.

Intelligent stairs - can it be done?

Intelligent stairs - can it be done?

Yesterday I wrote about local intelligence and the possibilities doors have in this respect. Today, reading yesterday's note, my mind turned to stairs - another building element that fascinates me. Why do I expect intelligence from doors and not from stairs? Why do I assume that stairs are to remain passive or even unyielding? Is it just that I'm used to dynamic behaviour in doors? There are automatic stairs, too; escalators that detect that someone is approaching and start rolling. Why does this impress me less than a door automatically opening to admit authorised persons on a biometric basis? Could it be so that I see stairs as a danger, something to be feared and treated with caution - and for that reason prefer them to be passive? 

It could be because intelligence in stairs may be far more demanding than in doors. Automatically adjusting the stair dimensions to the size and mobility of every user would certainly impress me but it wouldn't be easy to achieve, even if it were about a single user at a time. Stairs that could accommodate several users simultaneously in this manner would be a feat worthy of the highest praise for its ingenuity but, as societal or technological priorities go, not of the same order as a cure for any persistent illness. So, I fear that stairs are to remain relatively unintelligent, passive and a bit menacing - beautiful but rather dangerous. 

What every door should know about itself

What every door should know about itself

Doors have a fascinating duality. Open they become space, part of the 'voids' of architecture: a hole that connects two spaces. Closed they are 'solids': building elements that separate the two spaces. Their interactionwieh humans can be complex, allowing first of all change between the two states of open and closed, as well as recognisable variation in between: ajar, half open, half closed - many recognisable states, often with specific maning.

This duality and interaction makes doors critical for the behaviour and performance of a building. It also makes them prime candidates for intelligent behaviour of the kind that delights me: local, practical, modest. Such intelligence can be observed both n real life, with automatically opening doors and similarly smart recognition of the user, and in design representations, with doors sticking to their walls or otherwise becoming attuned to their context.

What delights me above all is that such intelligence, certainly in a design representation, can be made possible by collecting all constraints on a door and using them to determine the behaviour of the door symbol. It's an interesting perspective: when the door knows enough about itself, it can become intelligent.

The perils of introversion

The perils of introversion

For some time now I've been coordinating and compiling a research proposal concerning some extension of traditional architectural activities - let's leave it as cryptic as that. The first hing that struck me was that there was no reason why this extension hadn't been realised yet; in many respects, it's just an additional service architects could offer, a simple extra application of stuff they do anyway.

The second thing was the number of unsolicited telephone calls and emails I received from people from other disciplines who insisted they should join the project. They were not exactly offering their capacities and asking whether we could use them, they were actually quite insistent they should be included, often on the basis of an earlier, fuzzy acquaintance or some unhappy past collaboration. Their key argument was that we needed them, that the project would not succeed without their contribution.

I tried to be polite and explain that it would be a primarily architectural project, implying that their own discipline was outside its scope, but soon realised that they felt strangely at home in the architectural domain. They saw proposing what architecture should do within their remit - not as clients or users of the built environment but as experts with some authority.

This prompted a question in mind but did not ask it: would they behave in the same manner towards someone with a proverbially high skill or high knowledge level, like a brain surgeon or a nuclear physicist? I doubt that. Architecture is one of those areas where almost everyone feels at home, usually for the wrong reasons and with wrong intentions. That everyone knows buildings as a user, that many can arrange furniture in a room, that some can build or even plaster a wall doesn't mean that they all know architecture, that they may dictate its scope and direction.

Regrettably, architects may be at least partially to blame for that. If other architects remain the main audience of architects if architects do not know more than the rest about the schools, hospitals, offices and other types of buildings they design, if they don't care to demonstrate their mastery of not just form and style but also use and utility, people may assume that there isn't much in this architecture lark and other scientists may believe that architecture has little knowledge of its own to offer on matters they may know themselves or just be interested in from their own perspective.

Old worlds

Old worlds

I was watching the European Athletics Indoors Championships when I heard the commentators on the BBC mention the Commonwealth record. That was a word I hadn't heard for years and was struck by its colonial and imperial connotations. I know of the Commonwealth Games and I'm sure that athletes competing in them take them seriously but the records are a different thing. They refer to a view of the world that seems quite outdated. Even the geographic subdivision in continents means little nowadays with the high mobility of athletes who may train in two or more different continents every year and can easily catch a flight to hop around the globe in order to compete in various games and meetings in rapid succession.

The same seems to apply to architects, as more and more are not bounded by countries and continents in their work. The great ones in particular often get the chance to descend like demigods from some airplane to enlighten and amaze the locals with their genius. Mobility among architects seems to have its own commonwealths, networks around established names, cities and countries of acknowledged prominence. Even in our networked world that claims to offer opportunities to all, the old worlds appear to retain much of their old cultural power.

Failing the physical

Failing the physical

A fellow architect and university professor was talking to me about a lecture she'd attended. It was by some big shot from the museum world, whom she had found extremely knowledgeable and intelligent but at the same time irritating. I listened to her account and counterarguments why the big shot had it wrong but soon I drifted off. All I was hearing was differences of opinion concerning symbolic interpretations, semantic aspects, digitisation and various meta-matters. I compared these to my own recent experiences at museums and realised that this particular architectural debate was far removed from the physical reality and human interaction with it. It felt as if architecture had abandoned the physical environment, as if it no longer posed a challenge, as if everything there had been solved and architects had to move on to higher things.

Unfortunately, that's not the case and quite probably will never be. The built environment is far from what it should be in terms of behaviour and performance. It costs too much and delivers comparatively little. In museums, engineers may have managed to solve lighting, humidity and other technical problems but interaction with the resulting environment is often disappointing. Visitors may still experience glare when viewing a painting, may even have trouble finding a decent point from where to view a painting (just try to do so in front of one of the major masterpieces in any museum), circulation can be irritating, orientation can be a problem etc. Architecture hasn't moved on from those issues, it has failed them.

How to recognise a building

How to recognise a building 

It happens all the time: while driving through some unknown part of the Netherlands, in the periphery of my vision, some building catches my attention and immediately I know it's a school, a civic building or something other than the housing that dominates the urban environment. I don't have to think about it, I just directly know it. Scale, proportions, fenestration and other features make it evident that the building belongs to a particular use type.

So I wonder how far this goes, whether most people can recognise buildings like than and where it comes from: from earlier experiences with different buildings or from fundamental differences in form. This is an intriguing subject, especially because quite a lot doesn't seem to come from direct personal experience: if you ask a Dutch child to draw a house, they'll most probably draw an outline they've learned from books, with the roof pitch visible from the side rather than the front, as in the usual Dutch row housing.

Open and closed

Open and closed 

Now that research is so much about grants, one gets confronted with conflicting ideas about research output. Open access and open data are deemed essential for the dissemination of knowledge - and rightly so: even with the vast expanses of the Internet, there's a lot of scientific knowledge that remains inaccessible to the people who should be able to use it, like students, especially at poorer universities that cannot afford all subscriptions to all journals. Naturally, if everything is open and digital, I wonder what's the use of publishers any longer. Editors, reviewers etc. are almost always academics who deliver services just to further their area or career. Any colleague who asked for something like that would have my cooperation and of course any colleague can set up a website for accommodating publications and datasets.

At the same time, we're asked to be careful about intellectual property (IP), both our own and that of others. We have to register background IP when we enter a collaborative venture, administer foreground IP produced in such a venture, note side ground IP produced alongside the venture, and monitor postground IP that is produced afterwards thanks to the venture. Neologisms aside, I accept that IP is important as an asset and we have to protect our institutes' rights, even if we're not talking about formal IP like patents. We have to earn money nowadays and safeguarding IP is a good way of guaranteeing that.

Obviously there's a conflict between opening the door for others to access our publications and data and closing it to protect the IP that's in these publications and data. If one reads a text of mine and learns how to do something as well as I do, what prohibits them from using this knowledge? Or should I obscure some critical details in order to have exclusive rights to the real IP? Sharing knowledge and learning from each other have been hallmarks of science and research, and I'm unwilling to change that.

Even worse is that these issues are sidetracking us from our core business to legalese and managementspeak topics that contribute nothing to the main reasons why one does research: learn and explain. I don't want to spend my days like that; I don't even want to pay managers and lawyers to protect me from that. I prefer a simpler, perhaps naive world where research is an integral part of an academic's work, regardless of grants and IP. And yes, any publication provides open access to knowledge. Free access to the publication is a different matter; as I expect students to pay tuition fees, even if only to treat the education they receive as a privilege, I expect that one pays at least a small sum to be able to read a scientific book or journal. It's not different to any other book or journal.

Validation, verification, design

Validation, verification, design 

I often find myself entangled in discussions on what a brief is, what it does, how a design is structured with respect to a brief and all kinds of rather unproductive situations. Many of them derive from my own stubborn interest in terminological clarity and consistency, which may conflict with established terms and their use. Nevertheless, I don't intend to stop. I see what happens in other areas and it makes me believe that terminological clarity is a good indication that an area knows what it is doing and why (methodological clarity and relevance). So, I wonder what we are doing in architecture to validate and verify a design.

To be clear about the terms I'm using, validation refers to whether the design solves the original problems and validation to whether the design meets the specifications set up for solving the problem. In other words, it goes like this: we identify a problem, then we set some specifications for the designs that should solve it and then we make designs on the basis of this specification. In architecture the specifications (the brief) are often put aside and designers address the problem itself. This may indicate poor specifications or bad designer attitudes; in either case, it's a sign of a poorly operating field. Both verification and validation are necessary when it comes to testing the utility of a design as well as establishing and extending domain knowledge.

A practical example: accessibility is an undeniably serious issue in architecture. To ensure accessibility in a design we have all kinds of rules and regulations that specify constraints on spaces and building elements like the width of corridors or doors. A design can be evaluated against such constraints and so verified as an adequate solution to accessibility. However, it is also important to see if the building is also accessible by really testing it with respect to the movement of people with disabilities or spatial needs. Validation can make evident that e.g. additional constraints are required or that some constraints contribute little. We shouldn't assume that the ones we have been using are right or sufficient. Just think of Blondel's formula for stair design, which is seldom if ever challenged: 2 x riser + tread = step length. Why do we assume that it suffices for the design of safe and comfortable stairs? My own experience tells me that if a tread is not deep enough for my 46-size shoes, descent can be a problem.

Ghosts of buildings

Ghosts of buildings 

Virtual prototyping is a fascinating subject. Most people are attracted to it for practical reasons, for example because it allows us to develop and test designs as completely as possible, eliminating most mistakes and reducing error margins. Anyone involved in BIM would directly affirm that. My problem is that although I concur that these practical reasons are quite significant, I'm not sure that the improvement over other means of representation, specification and analysis like conventional drawings on paper is that big.

I think that there's more to virtual prototyping than these practical benefits; at least, more that attracts people to it. It's just like the old discussion: what's better, radio or television? Radio people would suggest that radio is better because it allows people to use their imagination. I'm unsure about that, too, but it's clear that radio allows more in terms of abstraction and reference. Some things are possible on radio but not on television. Radio comedy like the Goon Show made excellent use of these possibilities. On television, these jokes were impossible.

When it comes to architecture, I believe that the opposite is the case: conventional drawings ask too much of the readers; they require knowledge, understanding and slow interpretation to let readers imagine the three-dimensional form and its experience. Virtual prototypes, on the other hand, are complete ghosts of buildings that allow readers to see their form directly and imagine how they would experience them with high plausibility. However much I love architectural drawings and consider at least some of them, like floor plans, truly invaluable, the potential of virtual prototyping in architecture goes far beyond practical reasons; most aspects, such as its aesthetics, have yet to be fully understood.

Lysenko, Lombroso, Lamarck

Lysenko, Lombroso, Lamarck

Lysenko is a prime example of what can go wrong in science when it becomes entangled in politics. As the developer of a biology for the Soviet ideology that denounced bourgeois, capitalist falsehoods, he is considered responsible not only for scientific backwardness (including through persecution, imprisonment and execution of scientific opponents) but also widespread famine in the Soviet Union.

Lombroso did not flourish under a totalitarian regime but became quite instrumental in the oppression of people by giving police and the judiciary "scientific" reasons for considering someone a criminal on the basis of their appearance. Interestingly, this is not what Soviet scientists would denounce as bourgeois falsehoods.

Lamarck was by comparison just wrong in believing that acquired characteristics are inherited, although this is nowadays under partial reconsideration: there may be some scope for soft inheritance, after all. In any case, his other contributions to science have retained their validity. For example, he is credited with recognising the difference between insects and arachnids (and for recognising that spiders have eight legs rather than six, as it was believed by those who had read Aristotle apparently wrongly).

What connects the three "L"s for me is their fall from grace as scientific authorities, as well as their easy connection to societal priorities, either political or ideological. Authorities are troublesome because quite often everything they claim is taken for granted, even if it's a mere opinion. However, more than authorities what scares me is the ease with which we promote societal priorities to unassailable truths. In politics this is often a problem we gloss over but in science we don't even talk about it. On the contrary, we tailor research to match such arbitrariness and change without a moment's thought when new opportunities arise.

At the office

At the office

If Were to catalogue comedy taking place in an office, it would result into a huge list relating to the social aspects of office life. Tati's Playtime also focuses on the physical aspects of the modern office and the alienation it may cause. The enormous, purpose-built set that contributed to Tati's bankruptcy following the making of this film is quite often not the background but the subject to the comedy. The only problem is that while Tati once again points out the absurdity of what we take for progress, his solution seems to be just regression to earlier patterns of life. He may have been right, though: office life hasn't improved much since the making of this film, despite repeated promises, including recent attempts and informality and playfulness.

This is evident in a more recent film, where physical aspects also play a prominent role: Office space. It's a film primarily about bullying: how office layout can be used to oppress people. It is quite different from Playtime but it too makes clear how the peripersonal space that dominates human activities and interactions in an office never fails to affect us. If one wants to harm us, they'll find many opportunities in our peripersonal space.

So, I come to the idea that Tati, despite his masterly grasp of affordances, couldn't give us an alternative because Playtime was less about peripersonal space and more about architectural style and the wider cultural changes associated with it. As for architects, this space remains a major challenge. Until they manage to focus on it and find some solutions, comedy will make thankful use of office spaces.

Designing for evil

Designing for evil 

Totalitarian regimes seems to have an inherent interest in architecture: Hitler had Speer for his grand projects, Ceausescu had his architects for his grand palace - there are numerous examples. Reversely, architects seem to find ways to impose their ideas or improve their status in totalitarian regimes: modernism flourished under Mussolini, while Stalinist architecture was arguable more due to the ambitions of architects than to Stalin's own preferences.

The match of ambition, even megalomania, and of the belief of knowing better for the people is quite worrying, as is the deep amoralism and opportunism of designers and engineers who side with evil and then disclaim any responsibility: they were either following orders or in complete ignorance of all evildoing. Very few dare admit that they didn't care about right or wrong, that they simply took advantage of an opportunity to act from their own perspective.

It is therefore hardly surprising that in cinema, dystopia and totalitarian worlds are often signified through strange architecture, even more than with oppressive technology: excessive forms, desolate spaces and a general feeling of alienation work well as background to desperate action. Interestingly, it's not just a matter of aesthetics or connotations with the architecture of known totalitarian regimes: it also extends to physical interaction with that architecture. But then, this might be a matter of economy: huge decors cost more money.

Properly constructed walls

Properly constructed walls

When one sees a wall one can never tell what's behind the outer layers. The paint and plaster may be immaculate but underneath the bricks can be rotten, thrown together haphazardly or full of holes. Reversely, the paint may be flaking off, the plaster cracking but otherwise the wall can be sound, just in need of some light maintenance. It's often difficult to know.

I guess it all melts down to what one wants to do with the wall. It's condition may be acceptable depending on one's requirements and purposes. A flaking wall indoors makes little sense but in a garden it may be acceptable as a picturesque element, something weathered and full of reminiscences. Even a crumbling wall might do in a garden but one wouldn't have it indoors. It would n't just be unity and dirty, there's little if anything one can do with a crumbling wall: one can't use it to support a floor or a roof, or to separate spaces; it might be useless even for hanging up shelves or pictures.

It's always like that: it's not the wall but what one wants to do with it in the particular location and situation. It might be because we call too many things "a wall". If we used more specific terms, we might be able to express more precisely what we want. It can also be that a wall doesn't have a purposeful existence without a space to bound and support: what we want may be part of the space and it just gets projected on the poor wall.

Not turning the corner

Not turning the corner

My initial attraction to the traditional Dutch housing has not diminished through the years. Even in the largely uniform suburbs with its endless row housing, there is a certain charm in the unpretentious forms and scale of the buildings, the resulting spaces and the feeling of community they emanate. Still, there is a couple of things that puzzle me in the typical Dutch blocks. One of these is the way the blocks terminate in a wall in the shape of the cross section of the building with few if any windows. In a country where Amsterdam School architects have amply demonstrated how one can turn the corner in a building, this is certainly puzzling.

I have been told that this is so that all dwellings in the block are equal; that the ones at the ends receive no special treatment in order not to have any particular advantages from their location. On the one hand, this reasoning seems plausible within the oppressively egalitarian (or possibly procrustean) mindset of the 1950s and 1960s. In the same period, social housing had to have a maximum dwelling width that not only seems pointless today but also limited spatial possibilities in the dwelling layout, e.g. producing spare rooms slightly larger than a cupboard. It is therefore possible that policy makers used and imposed this way of thinking to produce the same quality for all. On the other hand, it can just be laziness and indifference. Many of these blocks have been designed and constructed in boom periods, when all that mattered was production volume. These were different times to the ones of the Amsterdam School.

Either way, the result doesn't change: every day I'm confronted by these rather awkward and embarrassed-looking side walls, and wonder at their acceptance by the Dutch, who appear quite clever at adapting and expanding their space and property. One doesn't often see significant alterations to such walls. I wonder why; most dwellings at the end of a block have a side garden, too, i.e. ground on which one can nowadays build a small extension without much trouble from the planning authorities.

What architects don't draw (and probably don't design either)

What architects don't draw (and probably don't design either) 

Sometimes an idea enters my head and refuses to leave, making me entertain it for longer than necessary, making me assume that one day I might spend time researching it. In the most cases, the fault isn't entirely mine: what I see around me reminds me of it and rekindles my interest and curiosity. One such idea is all the stuff one sees on the facades of buildings: pipes, cables, satellite dishes etc. It quite rare to see them in some order and correlation with the building itself. More often they are haphazardly superimposed and arbitrarily connected to it. It's obvious that the architects didn't include them in their specifications; architectural drawings anyway contain few if any indications of such matters. Architects are preoccupied with clever, pristine, impressive forms - and quite often they manage to produce them. What they may forget is that there are other things, too; that they have to find a place for these as well in their designs.

Through the years I have collected quite a few photographs on this subject; good and bad examples of what may be attached on a building. I even entertained the idea of writing a book about it but finding time to interview the architects of a number of these examples doesn't seem feasible. If I find the time I might put them up on the Internet, just like people do with photographs of the dishes they have eaten an provide some entertainment to architects and non-architects alike. My only regret is that I don't have enough photographs of Parisian hotel: long ago, when the world was more innocent, I managed to go through the gates of these urban mansions to look at the back side from the internal courtyards and study the differences. The number of exposed pipes amazed me: could the occupants of those expensive properties wash their faces or flush the toilet when it was freezing outside? I have been told that the problem exists. Unfortunately, I didn't think of taking photographs of what I saw and nowadays it's highly unlikely that the concierge would allow me access to the courtyard.

Constraints and types

Constraints and types 

In the presentation of a school building (http://www.archdaily.com/314984/school-in-tarragona-batlle-i-roig-arquitectes), the architects make an interesting point: the commissioning of schools is highly regulated with respect to various constraints, a situation that leads to certain spatial types that are repeated again and again. Interestingly, the architects manage to find both merit  (in relation to the state of the economy at the time) and a design challenge (refinement of the types with respect to general goals and the particular context) in this situation.

Looking at their results, it is a typical instance of a straight double corridor with an entrance and staircase roughly in the middle; it has two main levels, with the gym in a separate wing behind the main slab. It is a design remarkable in the first instance only by its adherence to the corridor school type. The architects claim to have tried to make the school compact for economic reasons and to have minimised fenestration (which nevertheless remains quite generous, as we are used to in schools) for climatic reasons. Going through the presentation, I find myself nodding in agreement. I may not remember the design for long but I'm positively inclined towards it. If I'm ever in the neighbourhood, I'll try and visit the school.

Apologies for the inconvenience

Apologies for the inconvenience 

One sees quite a lot of construction activity in the Netherlands. Projects planned before the credit crunch as well as new ones aimed at stimulating economic and business activity seem to be everywhere. Delft has been a building site for quite a few years and will remain so for some more. What impresses me in how these activities affect public space is the relative indifference for the inconvenience citizens have to suffer, especially cyclists and pedestrians. Quite often the inconvenience has a strong physical component: having to push bicycles up some stairs is no joy - and not just for the many elderly cyclists or parents carrying children. The perceptual component is equally discomforting: where there used to be an orderly or at least recognisable context for ones movement and activities, the environment becomes a variable obstacle course. Orientation and navigation become problematic, distorted by both new elements like temporary fences around the construction areas and the need to constantly solve minor problems like keeping on the arbitrary route  that circumvents them on the particular day. One cannot relax and walk or cycle without thinking, just enjoying the views around them, as one can often do in the Netherlands.

The problem is that everything seems to be for the benefit of the construction activities: roads and cycle paths are blocked so that transportation and site logistics are served, with little regard for the comfort or even safety of citizens - quite often the taxpayers who finance the projects. This should actually be a priority for any public project: rather prioritising the efficiency of construction works, planning should respect those affected by the works and take good care of their needs, especially if the works last long. People need to feel cared for by town hall officials but also by construction firms. It may prove more expensive but goodwill is difficult to achieve and easy to lose. Populism thrives on the accumulation of small dissatisfactions. Proper planning can minimise physical inconvenience but arguably more importantly stimulate involvement of people in what takes place. This refers to both participatory design of the temporary situation around construction activities and the possibility to organise this situation in a way that affords views and information on what is happening, on the projected final state and progress of the works. Rather than feeling alienated by changes in one's environment, citizens should be able to view these changes as part of their environment.

The plank

The plank

I can't remember when I'd first seen The plank but I must have been very young because I had no idea who Tommy Cooper was, let alone Eric Sykes - and Cooper I knew and admired by the time I entered adolescence and started thinking about what I liked in comedy. Sykes became another firm favourite later on, so the indelible memories of The plank that made me spend quite some time looking for a video tape of this film (that was long before the Internet) were fully justified by later comedic experiences.

The plank is classed under slapstick but it's mostly subtle and slow, largely gentle, drawing from centuries of theatrical experience with the physical comedy one can derive from a long object and its handling. The eponymous plank remains the centre of attention, complemented by a rich collection of amusing incidents, some familiar and predictable and others more original, like when Sykes insists on opening a paneless window to get a bottle of milk from the milkman standing outside and Cooper closing the window later because he's feeling the draft.

When it comes to comedy about building, The plank is to my knowledge the only film fully dedicated to the subject - as opposed to having some slapstick related to building at some point in the film. In its old-fashioned, slow-paced way, it remains a monument to what a great generation of comedians knew and managed to preserve.

Internet

Internet 

I've been a rather early user of the Internet. Having the advantage of working at a major university, I had access to it even before the web was invented but never expected it to be that big a thing. If one had asked me back then, I would have asserted that it would be a nice thing at universities, a tool and plaything of the higher education and research world. Professional or social applications were completely out of my field of vision. This didn't change even after I started putting my courses on the Internet, having students present their work online (also in progress) and realising how valuable the Internet could be as a dissemination and communication environment.

When the extent of my teaching was reduced, my professional interest in the Internet waned, exactly at the time that it became a big thing in society in general, subsequently triggering interest in academic research and education. With raised eyebrows I saw how my colleagues became fascinated by a sequence of Internet vogues and vowed never to become involved in such matters. As a result, one may say that I've missed a lot but at the same time I was spared much. Keeping a low profile on the Internet may not be a bad thing, after all, especially for people who know they don't have something substantial to communicate to the world every hour of the day.

Sketching

Sketching

Sketches may be sacrosanct in architecture but I never managed to see them like that. Sketching may be a great way to externalise design ideas and one can learn a lot from correlating these ideas to the sketches but in the end they remain a temporary product, an intermediate state in the production of a building design. So, I fully concur with interest or even fascination in sketching but I also refuse to revere them more than the design or the building.

For years I'd been working on the automated recognition of drawings (something that deserves far more attention than it's given) and every time I presented some part of that work, there was someone who pointed out that of course these recognition approaches did not apply to sketches. Without much thought I agreed with such remarks, until one peaceful summer afternoon in the garden, when I was doodling on a piece of paper. Suddenly, the inquisitive researcher in me finally woke up and asked the obvious question: it is so? Are sketches that different from drawings?

I've spent some time on that question and the brief answer is that from a representational point of view there may be fewer differences and more similarities than assumed. Sketches are fuzzier and compound but at the paradigmatic level (the level of symbols and primitives), they often come close to drawings. I just hope that I'll be able to test this hypothesis at a large scale in the future.

The moral of the story is not about sketching or representation; it's about insisting on questioning established prejudices and conventions. It may seem silly, fractious and obstinate at times but if done with real curiosity and interest in learning, it can be a source of great pleasure to the researcher. Why do research for anything less?

Solids & voids

Solids & voids

It's quite uncommon to see building elements and spaces represented in the same way. Most of the time, the one is implicit in the other (as with spaces in conventional architectural drawings) or is a product of the other (as with spaces in BIM). Usually, its the spaces that are implicit or derivative. In architecture, we may shape space but in fact we build solid elements; what is left over within the volume of a building is the 'voids' (a bad name because spaces contain quite a lot). A figure-ground reversal is seldom applicable to the duality of solids and voids in architecture.

This is one of the reasons why I'm interested in alternative representations like graphs. Using graphs one can describe both building elements and spaces in the same way, si that their complementary character becomes apparent. After that, it's possible to see different patterns emerge, patterns that describe and possibly explain stuff one's only vaguely aware of.

Functional comedy

Functional comedy 

What people call "function" in architecture (a term I consider quite misleading) is a frequent sort of bemusement and frustration. It's not surprising, therefore, that it is a frequently used source of comedy: many comedic situations arise from mismatches between what users want to do and what a building affords. The combination of architects and "function" in not as common; in fact, I'm aware of only one instance: Monty Python's The architects sketch, where Cleese proposes to design an apartment block as a slaughterhouse as if it were the most normal thing for a residential building. To the apparent disbelief of the clients he responds in a similarly matter-of-fact manner: he hadn't fully divined their attitude towards the tenants. 

This is textbook comedy, based on the displacement of an activity in an alien context with disastrous results. It's a pity that architects don't realise that they also produce comedic moments when they dare propose new-fangled ways for doing things without properly appreciating the consequences. At least, we should laugh more at many proposals architects make in the firm belief that they know better than their users, that they can shape and better the users' lives.

Analysis and synthesis

Analysis and synthesis 

I've always been fascinated by analysis, by the means that help explain something and the insights they produce. Especially with computers, their ability to calculate large quantities of complex data in quite short times made me believe that computer simulations are the most important contribution of digital means to designing. When it comes to synthesis, however conceptually elegant, automatic generative systems are no match to human creativity yet.

The problem is that the promise of computerised analysis has yet to be fulfilled. Technical progress seems to be limited by the lack of serious interest by those who would benefit from analyses that go beyond the capacities of rules of thumb, normative abstractions and the usual conventional stuff that serves as alibi in architectural design. I spend days in meetings on computational and data-driven approaches that are mostly about decision support but it's unclear where the support is founded on; it's all about the decisions. Well, as far as I'm concerned, analysis is the foundation of any decision, any design action, as well as most communication. Unfortunately, there seems to be an important prerequisite: some goal to be achieved, some constraint to be met, something that requires transparent, effective and reliable reasoning. If synthesis is about other matters, a self-contained exercise, then analysis is a just formality.

Architecture and aspiration

Architecture and aspiration

I'm often bemused by architectural nostalgia: the admiration for old buildings that are no longer feasible or required - garnish gothic railway stations, overdecorated stuffy theatres, austere and oppressive classical banks. Architects but also lay people tend to bemoan the reduction of such buildings into utilitarian, often anonymous architecture. The post office is no longer a public grand hall but an insignificant small shop or even just a counter in another shop. We appear to find this evolution a kind of degradation; we prefer monumental designs, expensive materials and rich decoration. The success of digital architecture but also the renewed interest in urban-centre high-rise is related to that.

While every building should receive the care and attention it deserves, I fear that we fail to understand a fundamental difference in the role and hence function and character of buildings in different periods. A railway station in the nineteenth century wasn't just a transport hub; it was a transport hub for the affluent. It had to be upmarket to attract the right customers, those interested in luxury and comfort. At the same time, to other people, less affluent, it was aspirational" if you wanted to improve your station in life, this was the kind of environment you should try to get into - from the clients' side, although the servants' side to such places wasn't a bad beginning.

Much of the nostalgia for old-fashioned buildings comes from such aspirational connotations rather than pure aesthetic or historical value: there are not just nice old stuff; they are old stuff we link to luxury, success and high social status - status that could be acquired with money, the Orient Express nostalgia. Architecture has always been aspirational -just think of the Renaissance and Classicism and their role in elevating society; architectural ornamentation as a status symbol; eponymous architecture (labels) and our current keenness to enrich our life with it. In the case of past architecture it is even more so: past aspirations refer not only to historical high points but also to analogies with today's aspirations. Promoting the preservation of even doubtful old buildings is also a mark of culture; supporting such actions has its aspirational aspects, too. Moreover, old aspirational buildings tend not to be as controversial as new ones. On the contrary, they are objects of civic pride, cultural achievement or at least technical achievement.

Citizens

Citizens

In research and policy circles, one often hears of citizens or even "the citizen": dear, vulnerable, oppressed human beings that must be protected and helped. In historical studies, however, e.g. of what happened in Nazi German or communist countries, one also gets a different side of the citizen: people taking advantage or manipulating a system for personals reasons; thousands of denunciations by neighbours, colleagues, friends, even family. Most of the damage is done by citizens, not the relatively few agents of the secret services. It wasn't the Gestapo or the Stasi who kept everyone under observation; it was the citizens doing it to each other; the secret police often had a hard time just processing all the anonymous and eponymous denunciations they received.

What we also often see is a distinction between two kinds of citizens: on one hand, the active, well-educated initiators of actions and protectors of their rights and privileges, and on the other, a largely inert mass of low-income, poorly educated people who must be protected but can become surprisingly powerful and effective once brought into actions. This arguably suggests that citizens can achieve a lot if bothered to do so. The problem is that one cannot be certain why citizens may spring into action and what they will try to do. That's why places like the Internet can be wonderful and terrifying at the same time.

Naked architecture

Naked architecture 

As a young architect, I've spent many hours trying to take impressive photographs of famous buildings: well lit, from an interesting viewpoint that afforded some attempt at clever composition and always devoid of people. That last thing was often the most time-consuming, as I had to play a waiting game with passers-by.

Even when I switched to just taking informative photographs, reminders of what I'd seen and felt at this or that part of a building (not necessarily famous), it took me some time before I was ready to accept people in the photographs. That's how I'd learned it: the photographs of buildings should be free from clutter that obscured the architectural features. It was alright to have a single human figure somewhere in the periphery as an indication of scale but that was all.

More recently, this has been turned around: I have become more and more interested in the interaction of humans and buildings, so I'm taking an increasing number of photographs and films exploring just this interaction - registering how people interfere with architecture in their daily activities.

I was reminded of the old habits when a colleague has a problem with a memory bar and asked me to recover its content on my computer. Many photographs were indeed recovered, so I put them back on the memory bar and handed it back to him saying "Here's your porn". He was puzzled and shocked: what did I mean? Well, I explained, the photographs were mostly of buildings devoid of people - naked buildings.

We laughed about it but later I thought there was more to it: architectural photography has some pornographic traits, like nudity and exaggeration. We are taught to lust after famous buildings and their forms. They may remain unattainable to most of us but they are what we would love to possess. Well, at least we have the photographs.

Things that can go wrong with a model

Things that can go wrong with a model 

Architectural models attract attention to an almost fetishist level. Students have to make them, clients want them, every museum visitor enjoys them. Few have the courage to that them as tools of the trade. I remember one teacher who used to dismantle student models, almost physically attacking them while asking interesting questions about composition and alternatives. After that, one learned not to put too much time in their models and expect the worst.

In comedy, if something goest wrong with a model, it can be funny without getting too hurtful (we're getting rather sensitive about such things, robbing physical comedy of many opportunities like pratfalls). In Monty Python's The architects sketch, a spontaneous combustion and collapse of the model momentarily embarrasses the architect and, by the strange acceptance of the design by the clients, facilitates a jump to the subject of how to recognise a Mason. The most interesting thing about the model is the association between it and the behaviour and performance of the real building: that the model catches fire suggests that the building is highly flammable, despite the architect's claims; similarly, the instability of the model suggests failure of the load-bearing structure, which the architect is quick to admit. I suppose that the association between model and building is justified by that both are three-dimensional objects. This makes us forget the scale differences and the consequent differences between a simulation and the real thing.

As for what happens to the model  in One fine day, the least said, the best for all who have seen that forgettable comedy.

The artificiality of architecture

The artificiality of architecture 

It so happened that I've been reading two contrasting texts. The first was a linguistic research proposal on the use of words like "with" in various languages and how children learn them. The other was a critique of architectural education and practice. The difference was depressing. On the one hand, there was a detail of a fundamental human capacity. The more I read about it, the more fascinating in seemed. The research promised valuable insights and useful results. As a lay reader I was learning and getting to believe more and more in the value of the science and the particular research.

On the other hand, there was the production of a major human achievement - not as fundamental as language but really close. But the text wasn't about how societies use it, it was about what architects cared. In architecture there's still too much emphasis on how professionals create, not on what people actually make out of environments either designed on not. That's why stairs still cause too many accidents, buildings are energy inefficient, doors open in ways that annoy etc. The closed system imposed on the production of architecture makes its true performance of its products less relevant than insiders' opinions on them.

It's like imposing artificial languages on people: they'll mostly manage, despite the imposition, but having something imposed on them doesn't help. Last year there was enough about the words Shakespeare had coined, not to mention the phrases we keep on quoting. That's different: it's about providing people with building blocks, powerful symbols and images through which they can express themselves. It's a striking contrast with architectural environments that have to be kept pristine, as the architects want them, or photographs of buildings without people. Languages are more of an invention than buildings, yet buildings remain significantly more artificial than languages.

Theory and representation

Theory and representation 

BIM may seem to stimulate progress but in some respects it restricts progress. In the bad old days of CAD, no-one dared suggest that CAD was anything more than a technology. This created room for theoretical and methodological development as a complement, as the underlying reasons for using computers in architecture or at least as an intelligent approach to an enabling technology. The old diptych of design and drawing was interpreted as theory and representation, allowing room for exploration that did not necessarily fit the priorities or limitations of the technology.

By being both a technology and a methodology, BIM restricts this room to within its own framework. It forces one to work with a representation that often disappoints and requires much loyalty concerning key methodical aspects. In this sense, BIM is an old-fashioned technology and approach, a largely closed (proscriptive) system. It doesn't help that the current implementations are lacking in many respects, for example the central issue of shared models: to be able to collaborate online, people have to make many concessions concerning the size of files etc.

This brings us to an interesting situation: the currently dominant technology, which theoretically promotes inclusive integration and appears progressive, seems to exclude further development and variation. Of course, some would argue that add-ons, especially parametric programming tools, allow us to solve many problems but that's not the best way forward, especially concerning representation. If BIM has given us a usable theory of design, we now need a better theory of representation.

Does it matter that they're architects?

Does it matter that they're architects?

In romantic comedy architecture often appears as an interesting profession, probably because of its associations with creativity and sensitivity. However, it often seems to have little if any added value for the comedy itself: the architects in One fine day, HouseSitter or 3 men and a baby could have been anything: interior decorators, artists, writers - anything that would ascribe them similar secondary characteristics. Of course, it doesn't help that the three examples aren't great comedies, uninspiring in more than one respects. Why should the architect characters be better than the rest of the film?

On the other hand, there is good comedy directly deriving from architects and their clients in Monty Python's The architects sketch. The comedy comes from distorting the character of the architects, their intentions and social or professional functions. But then, one could never accuse the Pythons of being into rom-com - not even in A fish called Wanda. So, I conclude that it's rom-com that can't take advantage of architecture as a subject, not comedy in general. I suspect that the reason is that it would cause an internal conflict that would confuse or even alienate viewers.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence 

I do expect a lot from artificial intelligence. First of all, I'm sure that low-level practical intelligence can liberate human designers from trivial or repetitive tasks, like the proper positioning of a door, so that they can concentrate on the bigger picture, e.g. how circulation takes place in the design. One should obviously know all about doors and their positioning but shouldn't have to spend too much time on each door in a design.

In addition to this small yet essential stuff (and rather tricky in terms of intelligence), I want even more from computers, especially feedback from analyses that monitor design actions and decisions, calculating their impact on behaviour and performance, so as to give early warning to the human designers. The analyses and simulations already exist to a large degree but have yet to be integrated in designing as they should be for this kind of immediate and continuous feedback. Analysing a design once it's practically finished contributes little to improving the design.

If this partnership between the analytical computer as an intelligent design assistant and the creative human designer seems obvious, one can't say the same about intelligence that allows computers to understand design intentions through types, grids, schemata etc. and impose these as coordinating devices. It may seem strange that an analytical assistant should take over the design like that but there's a lot an assistant can do to promote consistency, including assuming such a coaching role. This can also prove liberating to designers, letting them focus on intermediate levels (the spatial aspects that often go wrong in buildings), as well as making them see the overall picture that emerges from their possibly uncoordinated actions. Who know what kind of clever distortions and antitheses they might conjure up once they realise it.

Dream house backdrop

Dream house backdrop 

Father came too!, the Scottish variation on the theme of the dream house is a well-produced comedy of the 1960s, a time when British films were clever and refreshing. It relates the perils of refurbishing an old cottage for a newly-wed couple. Unfortunately, as the title suggests, the building activities are more of a backdrop to the power struggle between the husband and his father-in-law )played with a typically larger-than-life attitude by James Robertson Justice). It compares unfavourably to the directer relation between the Blandingses and their new dream home, as well as the new home's catalytic role in personal relationships and situations. Nevertheless, building activities in Father came too! provide more than enough grounds for funny situations, generally focusing on the ineptitude of DIY-beginners and the shiftiness of contractors and worked. It's interesting to see such versions of stereotypes which still exist in British comedy.

Situatedness in architecture

Situatedness in architecture 

It seems obvious that a building should relate to its immediate environment - morphologically, geometrically, symbolically and probably in many other ways. Yet at the same time architecture is full of concepts and ideas that have proved to be quite portable: classical temples have been built in the same way all over the ancient world; Palladian villas were transported from northeast Italy to England and beyond; modernist designs have been repeated with little variation in several continents. Is situatedness in architecture a myth? Or is this yet another example of stubborn demarcation in architectural theorising? Why should it be either this or that? There are many reasons for combining and mixing, both practical and cultural. Once again I fear the value judgements are hastily attached to descriptive analyses to either praise or dismiss without any grounded arguments.

Style and contrast

Style and contrast 

I have soft spot for The Quiller memorandum. Admittedly, I like the whole genre of cold war spy thrillers but that's not the reason I watching this not so great film: it's the photography and above all the use of architecture. Germany in the reconstruction period following the Second World War is presented as a Janus-like built environment - or rather a combination of an overworld (sunny, clean, modernist and hence forward-looking and possibly cleansed of the sins of the past) and an underworld (dark, decaying, full of historicist elements and Nazis). Much of the film is predictable but the contrast between the overworld and the underworld is a point of personal interest. Every time I happen to come across the film on television, I don't change the channel, waiting for some glimpse of those hopeful images of a modern society that were part of my childhood and youth. I miss the belief in the future we used to have back then.

Precedents and references

Precedents and references

Design precedents are something that has been on my mind for a long time - not that I've done much work about them. The main reason is that precedents require quite a lot of work: collecting information in some detail; organising collected information in a way that makes factors, features and internal relations explicit; building on this organisation to make some of the reasoning behind the design; connecting the precedent to its own precedents as well as antecedents (including new designs). These tasks are quite demanding.

However, probably the biggest problem is the loose manner in which even design theorists treat precedents: they might call any reference a precedent, ignoring the need for structural similarities that reveal rather than mythologise. This is probably indicative of the weaknesses of architectural and design theory: theorising comes easy in creative areas. Any successful designer or teacher can find an audience and present some view that immediately becomes gospel. Forget validation and verification, the view doesn't even have to have internal consistency. In such as mess, the really worthwhile ideas (and there are enough of these to develop a real domain theory) simply disappear in a sea of vogue and nonsense. What's the use of trying to have a proper definition of precedents and references in this framework?

Museum Kaap Skil, Texel

Museum Kaap Skil

Texel has long been a popular tourist destination and it's bound to become even more popular now that international tourist guides seem to promote it. In many aspects, Texel is indeed a special place but in others it's just like the rest of the Netherlands. The village of Oudeschild must have been an interesting place in its heyday in the seventeenth century but today it's not the most attractive of places. It's just like any modern Dutch village, with a tiny centrum comprising the usual shops for the locals and, if there's a chance of tourists coming along, a couple of shops for them to buy souvenirs.

The surprise in the centrum of Oudeschild is the striking yet simultaneously discrete facade of Museum Kaap Skil. A few hundreds of wood slats placed vertically in front of a curtain wall, cut in an irregular shape that reminds of a roofline manage to attract attention without imposing the building on its immediate environment. The inside is similarly pleasant and quite understated, with lots of light coming in filtered by the slats. Nothing much happens in the building itself, although it's worth a visit, especially with children. Just don't get into details on the exhibits: the system of ledgers and drawers they use in the museum doesn't work well.

The open-air part of the museum, comprising a few cottages, workplaces and an interesting collection of flotsam and jetsam is a nice touch and contrasts with the rather cramped and chaotic interior of the museum but in all, the building itself is probably one of the better designs by Mecanoo.

Symbolic representation

Symbolic representation 

I've heard it more than once: "So, what's new about BIM? We've seen it all before, with CAD libraries and the like." People who say such things are not only old, usually in their sixties, but also typically people with little if any hands-on experience about what they're talking. They're not people who spend time drawing, modelling or designing with computers, otherwise they might have noticed a fundamental difference between CAD and BIM: the level of symbols used.

In CAD, the basic primitives one interacts with, the ones that carry the essential information for the representation are graphic elements: lines, shapes, surfaces etc. In that CAD follows established traditions in architectural drawings, which rely on convention to support recognition. For example, two parallel lines close to each other and with a certain length must be a wall. So, in CAD we draw these two lines with vector graphics rather than ink on paper and if we want be sure that there'll be no misinterpretations, we group them together and possibly also label them as a wall. This changes little to the basis of the representation: it's two lines.

In BIM, one may still draw lines but works directly with symbols for architectural entities: one draws a line to indicate the axis of the wall but only to enter certain geometric properties. The type of the wall, its width and layers, are defined by type and not by the other lines. The appearance of the wall may be two parallel lines but that's just one of the many possible ways the wall may be depicted. What the representation knows is that there is a wall, not two or more lines.

This doesn't make BIM better than CAD, it just brings architectural representation closer to the structure of other digital kinds. Texts, for example, have been symbolic at the level of characters from the beginning - not complex pen strokes like in joined-up writing. When I type a letter on the keyboard, what the computer retains is an ASCII code for that character, possibly dressed up with a font, size etc. Just like a wall in BIM, this dressing up determines the appearance of the character; the character is not recognised on the basis of  its appearance.

The difference between BIM and CAD is therefore one of symbol level: BIM uses symbols for architectural entities, while CAD uses general graphic symbols, those belonging to the implementation level rather than the representation proper. There may be many things wrong with BIM but that it finally gives us a symbolic digital representation for architecture is significant.

The dream house

The dream house 

One of the few architectural  subjects in comedy is the dream house: a pride and joy that turns into trouble. The Blandings family in Mr Blanding builds his dream house suffers from its naive attitude towards the tricky issues and devious people in the real estate and building trade. This does not apply to their architect, who is not coincidentally the only straight character in the film; he is just a helpless in-between. The Blandingses even come close to the brink of collapse but in the end they triumph and live happily ever after. That's sympathetic comedy for you: even if you feel superior to the naive heroes of the film, you want them to succeed and feel glad for them if they manage to do it, yet still have a laugh at their tribulations.

A different kind of sympathy is what they try to elicit from the viewer in comedies like HouseSitter and The frighteners. In both cases, the hero is an architect who started building a dream house for the love of their life: the dream house is not a goal but part of the background, something that gives their architect owners a tragic dimension and makes us wish them well. Especially in The frighteners, the ghostly half-finished dream house is a powerful setting that works well (HouseSitter fails in that respect, as it does in most respects - it feels strange to praise a film with Michael J. Fox and dismiss one by Frank Oz with Steve Martin). In fact, it works on two levels because it also becomes a goal in the end.

What makes the dream house interesting is that it's not just a possession: it's the container of a dream life with a dream companion. As a comedic setting it gives opportunities for physical comedy and provides rich metaphors. But it's the emotional power of a desired state for both the house and its occupants that plays in the sympathy of the viewers. We don't care if the Blandings home may prove a costly affair in maintenance the shoddy way it must have been built; we can share their relief and joy for the present and hope for the best in the future. After all, houses are always causes of trouble - we're used to that.

Solids & voids

Solids & voids 

It is unfortunate that many perceptions of architecture consider only its solids: the building elements that comprise a building. The voids, the spaces bounded by those elements, are at least as important. It's in these spaces that we deploy our activities; it's for the benefit of these spaces that we construct these building elements. Yet, I wouldn't consider the solids as just means for the voids. The relation of the two is more complex and interesting than that. Thankfully, a few researchers have realised that and worked on useful formalisms and produced some interesting insights.

There's a lot that we still haven't properly explored in the duality of solids and voids in architecture but what never ceases to surprise me in a most pleasant way is that once once acknowledges it, many problems can be easily resolved. Propagating properties, constraints, behaviour or performance from solids to voids and vice versa becomes a transparent, straightforward solution to all kinds of information and design issues - and the existing techniques help a lot. In fact, I would argue that this duality should be a foundation of architectural thinking; not something one just says and then forgets but an operational correlation that supports a complete toolkit of methods and techniques.

Orthodoxy and orthopraxy

Orthodoxy and orthopraxy

Design methods are split into two categories: proscriptive ones that tell you what is acceptable and prescriptive ones that tell you how to do it. This distinction between orthodoxy and orthopraxy is quite fundamental. One can fine it everywhere, including in religion: the ancient Greeks and Romans were arguably more into orthopraxy (making offers and following rituals) than orthodoxy (developing a dogma).

In archtiecture, proscriptive methods tell you that a classical or modernist building is what you should make. That's what matters and in order to do it, your building should include elements from the corresponding canon. It's not possible to make a classical building without elements from the classical orders.

Prescriptive methods can be seen as a reaction to proscriptive ones: it's not enough to know the final state of a design, we need to know the way to reach it. So, prescriptive methods love algorithms and sequences of well-defined steps. They tell you to do first this, then that and so on. If you're lucky, they also tell you when to stop.

One might be tempted to see proscriptive and prescriptive methods as complementary: by putting the two together, one would have a complete, strong method. However, I fear that any union would bring out the weaknesses of both. Proscriptive methods restrict designing to arbitrary systems and conventions leading to stagnation and frustration. From an intellectual viewpoint, it's interesting how they operate by excluding all other options but adopting them can be quite claustrophobic. Prescriptive methods, on the other hand, tell you too little to feel confident. They often amount to hill climbing: taking small steps towards some local optimum that may not be the best option or even good enough - but then you cannot know that as you move blindly around.

Walls

Walls 

There are some things that rarely escape the background. Walls fall under this category. They are important only when we build them. Afterwards they become just limits of spaces and surfaces that accommodate decorations and the like. We expect a lot of them, from supporting our own weight when we lean on them to grasping onto screws and nails that lift even more weight. Indoors they determine our horizons; outdoors they shape streets and squares. Still, they are largely treated as immaterial entities; only their surface textures are apparent to us.

One often reads of intelligent objects, e.g. intelligent behaviours of object symbols in digital representations. It's a fascinating subject and I firmly believe that we can do much with such intelligence. The only problem is that I don't see it as applicable to walls, not because walls require no intelligence but because they don't seem like objects to me. Especially when I look at them in floor plans, all I see is a complex, often ad hoc network with fuzzy subdivisions. More than an object it looks to me like an amorphous substance that fills in the gaps, covering and protecting the rest. Such as substance requires a different kind of intelligence to the anthropomorphic one we take for granted.

Big business, big data

Big business, big data 

The built environment is big business, yet we insist considering it from within the limitations of small and medium enterprises. According to all statistics I read (e.g. https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2013/10/15/rapport-woonuitgaven-van-huurders-en-eigenaren-bewoners), we spend at least one quarter of our income in order to have a home. If one adds to that the cost of workplaces, transportation from home to work, shops and entertainment etc., it becomes obvious that the built environment is where we invest the most. Yet I don't think we receive enough return for our investment because we don't acknowledge the scale of the problems and solutions involved. Everything is cut down to small pieces, not to be manageable but to suit existing, lately outdated practices.

Big problems require big data: we have to collect quite a lot to have a reliable picture of what happens, to identify patterns and develop adequate representations for realising the enormity of our tasks and thoroughly testing solutions. Big data in the built environment is not just a matter of clever, opportunistic demonstrations but a matter for sustained effort that leads to better awareness and insightful overview. It's strange that the average car has more sensors than the average home and that the car sensors and the automated behaviours that derive from them are considered much more important than knowing what happens at home, even though the car doesn't cost as much.

On the positive side, there's a lot that's really big in the built environment: the egos of all the mighty - architects, politicians, experts, property developers. Unfortunately, all these egos absorb rather than radiate and reduce everything that can grow around them.

A study in affordances

A study in affordances 

I say Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle as a young teenager and have since remained ecstatic about it. It's a masterpiece and a comedy - all I need to make me feel happy and full of admiration. Interestingly, much of the comedy is about human interaction with buildings. It bears many similarities with Gibson's theory of affordances and was made around the same time that Gibson was publishing his books on the subject. It might be a coincidence but I suspect that there are underlying reasons for the wider interest in human interaction with the world: the modernisation of the world and the emphasis on the individual following the Second World War. But even if it's a coincidence it's a film architects should study to understand how easily things can go wrong if one insists on one's one vision and forgets what the vision is about and for whom. In fact, I've been using extracts of the film to introduce affordances to designers. Comedy provides the best view to the human condition, a distorted and exaggerated one, but exactly for this reason the clearest I know of. Philosophers may give us transparent argumentation but comedy is so immediate that it can tell the same in a much shorter space. Thinking and discussing comedy, moreover, tends to be much more pleasant, too.

Yet another grant proposal

Yet another grant proposal

I've been preparing yet another grant proposal for a research programme new to me. So, I've spent days reading yet more bold pronouncements, learning new acronyms, adapting my intentional and ambitions to new Procrustean frameworks. Why should I do that instead of research, instead of reading something I could learn from, instead of working out a problem and exploring new approaches? Who thinks up all this triviality? It gives the impression of direction and accountability but all it does is encourage conformism: yes-men and sycophants who inflate every new vogue -sorry, societal or scientific challenge- with the samen enthusiasm and apparent loyalty before moving on to the next opportunity to get money for old rope. It's a waste of time, my tax euros, of everybody's time and money. Just imagine that fiction was written like that, that every short story and novel followed the same template, that authors spent their time writing proposals instead of books. It would have been a much poorer world, with very few books worth reading - which is arguably the case with most scientific publications today. The worst is that they're turning me into a grumpy old man, despite my intention to stay playful and happy. I need to find a real solution to such inevitably time-wasting activities before long.

New ways

New ways 

One of the things that keep puzzling me is how presumed revolutionary solutions like BIM are deployed: almost everything remains firmly entrenched is established conventions and practices. The same old parties -the architect, the contractor, the builder- keep on doing what they've been doing, only more and with the questionable benefit of new technologies (questionable because they don't seem to get the most out of them). This doesn't seem to agree with 21st century tendencies in market and labour models: where's the outsourcing, where are new kinds of services, where is the distribution and combination of expertise? In other areas we see things change drastically through new approaches that complement the new technologies. Don't we need such structural change in the production and operation of the built environment? I've grown old waiting for the change to come from either internal motivation or from external forces but it appears that such sensibilities are not shared with the majority. So, I'm watching how people preach revolution but don't even support evolution; they just promote stagnation.

Failure

Failure

We seem to measure failure in various ways. If a building fails to be comfortable or even safe (in minor ways, at least), we tolerate the discomfort or brave the danger of stairs with too shallow treads, even on a daily basis. We accept such things do happen with buildings and so also the exposure to some of their effects, just shrugging our shoulders stoically and going on with our lives. It's an attitude we adopt with quite a few artefacts, from shoes to computers. We may spend endless hours painfully breaking in shoes or trying all kinds of remedies for hardware or software problems - that's life.

On the other hand, failure in an airplane or a medical operation seems unacceptable. One would say that what matters is how critical a failure can be. That a train fails to appear, making the next one too crowded is different from a collision of the two trains. I accept that but also wander about the mathematics of it: is it more dangerous to descend a bad stairway a few times every day or to fly to a holiday destination once a year?

In the end, what concerns me is avoidable failure: like in team sports, I want to reduce the errors I make without external reasons. We have to be aware of why and how we may fail and take steps against it. There's no excuse for not doing so, even if others keep on failing.

Hypotheses and speculation

Hypotheses and speculation 

One of the constant irritations a researcher faces is the necessity to check what others are doing. The value of knowing what one's peers do and publish is undeniable. There's a lot to be learned from literature reviews in terms of broadening one's knowledge  (especially with complementary viewpoints) and deepening one's understanding about the potential of some approach and the nature of problems to be solved.

However, when I'm asked to see what people have been doing in practice, I worry that I'm just waisting my time. In areas like architectural computerisation we're not talking about industrial giants with tradition in and resources for R&D. In most cases, all I get to see is what one or another reseller or consultant makes on the basis of arbitrary opportunities and usually poor knowledge of theory. Rather that working hard to develop a plausible hypothesis, such people just form an opinion, assuming a lot they don't know and then embark on an adventure, convinced of the value of what they do even before they produce anything. They just speculate and claim.

I fear that this is the difference between science and architectural design, too: instead of hypotheses, architecture offers speculation; instead of validation and verification, artistic license and arrogance. Too many believe they can make something better than the other without any really valid reasons. This is often because they believe they have a better opinion but even more often because they are better - in their own opinion. They're so good, they have to brag about it.

Architects and journalists

Architects and journalists 

Architects believe that they shape the built environment, that they are responsible for the ways cities develop, how people live in their homes or work in their workplaces. Similarly, journalists appear to believe that they make the news. You see them present their exploits on television and you get the feeling it was they who liberated a city rather than (admittedly courageously) walking behind those who actually took it. With journalists, being close to the action, a real eyewitness, often counts more than being able to give a good overview of the facts or an insightful and informative explanation.

I wonder how much architects actually make in e.g. a city, how much of the built environment is down to their skills, sensibilities and decisions. Sometimes, when I see haphazard rainwater piping on a facade, I wonder how much architects fail to take into account. But even when it comes to the parts that are undeniably architecture, I wonder to what extent architects lead rather than follow, whether they are followers and eyewitnesses of change rather than its initiators and carriers.

One thing that makes things more difficult to read is the combination of prescriptiveness (sometimes moreover moralistic) and vogue: modernist interiors, for example, were sold to the public as the correct way to live, uncluttered and bare, free from the sins of decoration and worshipping the past - not as an aesthetic choice. Nowadays that these heavy associations have died down, people are once again allowed to be eclectic and ironically include modernism in their choices.

Expectation, prejudice and observation

Expectation, prejudice and observation 

Van Leeuwenhoek was no scientist; he was an amateur but apparently a highly skilled one in both modifying and using optical equipment. Through his skill and persistence he became a scientific celebrity. These facts are widely known. What many people may not know, through, is his initial goal in microscopic observation: to find the secret of pepper. At the time, spices were brought to Europe from Asia at great cost and with considerable trouble. If Europeans managed to unlock the secrets of spice flavours, they could reproduce them locally, without the expense and perils of foreign travel and commerce.

In accordance with the beliefs of the time, Van Leeuwenhoek expected to find the secret of pepper in the form of its microscopic structure. The taste was sharp, so he expected to see sharp edges and corners in the particles of the stuff. Instead, he was surprised by images of a wide variety of "little animals". The rest is history but what would have happened if he had ignored what he actually saw, if he dismissed the "little animals" as irrelevant noise and became fixated on sharp things, searching desperately for anything that could be presented as evidence? To his credit, he became fascinated by what he saw and did not try it to fit it to then fashionable notions.

The cool cats

The cool cats 

Some time ago I watched Melville's Le Samouraï again after a long time. I enjoyed as much as the first, second, third or ... time (how many, actually?) but probably with more detachment than when I was young. At that time, the atmosphere had a different meaning; the tragic heroism of the story permeated every aspect of the film. The magical, then unknown environment of Paris was as strong as the hero's character; it had a charm that attracted and inspired. Now I smile when I realise how Melville made everything look cool. The people are cool; their dress is cool; they listen to cool kaxx; they drove cool cars (Jeff only steals cools Citroën DSs - one of the reasons why I love the film); the criminals are not miserable low-lifes but cool, silent types; even Jeff's filthy apartment looks cool in the film's dark photography.

That was what they were selling to us back then: cool. Delon was cool, McQueen was cool, Newman was cool. That weren't the strongest or invincible or whatever they have been selling to us before or after. They were just cool - as detached, as ironic as I feel now watching them. Reality was a game to them but a game with principles - their own, eclectic and idiosyncratic principles, as Jeff's pointless death illustrates: what was he trying to achieve? And so we tried to be as cool as that by putting on similarly cool clothes, listening to cool music, watching these cool films, feeling cool by proxy. We didn't have to achieve much, be or become something. All we had to do was adopt the style. Easy.

Architecture and meaning

Architecture and meaning 

Is it so that architecture can express ideologies and cultural attitudes? They say that Le Corbusier's villa's encapsulated the attitudes of their early 20th century-urbanites that occupied them: their mechanised environment, their detachment, their god-like overview. They also say that the Renaissance villa was a connection between its agricultural setting and the urban culture of its occupants (retaining some form of ecological balance or "consensus" according to Back to the garden  - b.t.w. in both cases it's about villas: could it be that the type holds some special appeal?).

I find such claims hard to accept for two kinds of reasons. The first is that they are not inclusive. For example, despite their charm, modernist villas didn't become a huge success, even if one adds blocks of flats with similar morphology to the tally. Suburban semi-detached and row housing with more traditional forms and a closer contact to the ground have an enduring popularity that disproves many of the modernist arguments.

The second reason is that ascribing a particular meaning to an architectural form seems like a scholarly invention: isn't it possible to attach various meanings to them, e.g. link them to the aspirations of a social class? In the end, one could have any kind of connotations, as the frequent a-historical revivals suggest. Drawing from affordance theory, one might even claim that user activities can change the meaning of any environment.

Observation and theory

Observation and theory 

One reads mostly observations; theories are thin on the ground and often thin in content, too. Scientists appear rather reluctant to dare or to deviate from a grey average. They're even reluctant to write in the first person; it's always "one". Who's that one? Anyone? Everyone? I don't care. I should be able to voice my own opinion, to try and work out the significance of even small things I do and enrich the frameworks within which I'm working, not just apply, observe and report.

Interestingly, in design and the arts (and possibly also economics and politics), people are too quick to theorise and generalise. The tiniest hypothesis can be turned into an unassailable belief or even truth. In this respect, the sciences and the arts may be drifting even further apart. The former observe and the latter make, the former with little room to develop thoughts that appeal and inspire, the latter with little reflection in order to make their products truly relevant.

My own position is probably the trickiest.  need the validated theories of scientists to make sense of what happens in my own area but as soon as I apply them, I realise how partial or underdeveloped most are: laboratory results with many limitations and restrictions, sufficient for one or another aspect but not for all. At the same time, in my area people just want easy solutions, prescriptive or proscriptive ways to innovate and impress.

Popularisation

Popularisation

Not so long ago, when a particular founding father of my area was mentioned in a discussion (often unfavourably), someone would say it and the others would concur: yes, but he's doing a great job popularising design computing. It was a strange reaction: it combined negative undertones with a genuine pleasure that someone was trying to explain the value of the area to a wider audience. I must admit that I liked him; I wouldn't trust him (as most of the founding fathers) but I enjoyed his style.

Some time after his early death, I tried to re-read his books. I was rather disappointed. There was too much futurology for my taste but what made me really uneasy was the rhetoric: it was the usual architectural stuff, attempts to impress through references, clever observations and limitless, speculative theorising. It's forgettable stuff, after all. I'm not saying this just about this particular author. Many areas like design computing become too desperate to become accepted, to be admired by a target group - in this case, architects. On the one hand, it is only logical: this is the wider audience - schools of architecture and architects in practice. To succeed, design computing had to become accepted as a way of designing, appeal to architects who would then use it to compose. Only then would design computing achieve its true goals. The rest (visualisation, communication, information management) are mere efficiency improvements that have little to offer to the core of architecture.

Now that there's little resistance to computing in architecture, design computing still remains in the periphery. Eminent architects may use computers to design but most are just clever users. I guess that popularisation didn't work as expected, perhaps because the wrong target group was chosen: people who couldn't care less or who didn't have the power to change or interest in change. Another possibility, of course, is that popularisation mostly promotes the populariser, making him a known figure for what others have done. So, what do I do with his books? I gift them to colleagues who come late to matters digital and they are thoroughly impressed. He was really good at that, after all.

Superiority and inferiority

Superiority and inferiority

When people of our civilisation have encountered other human beings, they've treated them as inferiors. From Neanderthals to aboriginals, they've been at best noble savages. beautiful children too naive to take care of themselves, certainly in our advanced world. On the other hand, science fiction abounds with sentient extraterrestrials with superior intellectual or technology to ours. Such beings are in some if not all ways more advanced and often dangerous, as they are inclined to disregard us as we have disregarded and enslaved people in colonies or even annihilate us (and we've done that, too). Is this a mere reversal, putting the shoe on the other foot or do we actually see ourselves as an in-between species (or civilisation), halfway between the primitive and the truly dominant? Because one thing seems certain: even against superior aliens, our ultimate goal is to win and often conquer.