Architectural labelling

Architectural labelling

The joke works in Dutch: once, many years ago, I went to buy a pair of trousers. The one I selected and tried on was fine. As I was looking at the mirror, the salesman came along and nodded approvingly. "It seems alright" I confirmed. "Meneer, het is van Frans Molenaar" ("Sir, it is by FM") he said in a surprisingly touchy tone. I couldn't resist the joke: "Het spijt me, ik dacht dat het te koop was" ("Sorry, I thought it was for sale"). 

Potentially everything carries a label today. That's not the problem. The problem arises when labels become unquestioningly synonymous with high quality. We are into labels because we associate them with status, performance, exclusivity, belongingness - all kinds of aspirations and positive expectations. Our mobile phones are preferably iPhones, our clothes and shoes come from whichever brand is popular today (and may be bankrupt tomorrow). Labels are more than a name. They indicate something we routinely associate with high quality: design. Design goods cannot be produced anonymously, they have to carry a label. "Design" implies that the products are conceived, developed and manufactured with care and attention. They may be as mass produced as other goods, out of more or less the same parts and components, using the same techniques, but they are different. Design goods represent more than utility and performance, namely a desirable lifestyle. 

It's probably inevitable that architecture follows the same trend. Architecture is more and more about style than performance, functionality, social and environmental change, despite the causes that happen to be in vogue. As a consequence, it is often more important that a building carries a label, the name of a popular or respected architect, than it fulfils its goals and requirements. A good architect produces good buildings without any doubt. This means that architects produce design goods, that they are designers. 

This is "designers" in a different sense than the one Herbert Simon used to compare the activities and tasks of architects, lawyers and physicians. It refers to form and appearance rather than solution to a problem. So, I can say that my chair is a Stokke by Peter Opsvik, that in my neighbourhood there are buildings by Herman Hertzberger but I cannot say that my knee is by Jansen or that the crowns in my teeth are by Mulder, although the work done by both that orthopedic surgeon and that dentist are technically and artistically of the highest order. As a consumer, I'm keen to associate the thing with the designer; as a patient less so.