The heuristics of architectural evaluation

 The heuristics of architectural evaluation 

I was talking to a fellow architect about a recently completed building by a well-known architect in The Hague and her first reaction was: "Oh, I like him!" That was also the end of the discussion. Her statement implied a lot: she liked him, so he was a good architect and his buildings were by definition good. What could I tell her? 

What I should have told her is that what she said was a typical example of the biased, ineffective heuristics that reveal the limitations of our cognition: when faced with a difficult question, we often substitute it with another that's easier to answer without even realizing it. An example of such failures in Kahneman's Thinking, fast and slow concerns an investment decision one made to buy stock of a motorcar manufacturer because he admired their cars, without pausing to examine if the stock was underpriced at the time. 

This may be irresponsible behaviour in finance but in architecture it's normal: evaluating a building or design is hard, so we go by the reputation of the architects, by how much we like them and the tendencies they represent, and take the claims they make about their designs and the principles of the tendencies at face value. It follows that a building by a well-known architect is by default good enough and certainly interesting. 

One could argue that we know what we like intuitively: it's enough to see something to know it, in the same way that we can know that a person is angry from the first word they utter on the telephone or from the first glimpse we catch of their face, even from a photograph. This is called type 1 or system 1 thinking. It's what we do daily in an automatic, apparently effortlessly and generally reliably. It also applies to design products: if we're shopping for chairs, it's enough to see a photograph on a web page or in a catalogue to know that it's good. 

However, no-one should buy a chair without first sitting on it or a car without a test drive. Similarly, even an expert cannot say that a design is good at the first glance of a floor plan. One needs to study the documents, make measurements and comparisons - in other words, engage in type 2 or system 2 thinking: effortful and analytical and so generally transparent and reliable. The problem is that this kind of thinking is expensive, so we try to avoid it, unless type 1 thinking fails to deliver. Even then, we usually do it within the constraints determined by type 1 thinking: we don't normally test-drive cars that don't appeal to us. 

It follows that experiencing architecture in the same way that one experiences chairs and cars could give us a better evaluation than type 1 opinions. Embodied cognition can be classed as type 1 by its immediacy but it returns judgements based on quite a lot of information: when seated on a chair, our body tells us all about its affordances, from ergonomics and stability to tactile and thermal appreciation. Looking at the chair from all sides and in detail also tests our willingness to have it in our personal environment and see it daily next to other things we have and probably like. 

So, the next time you visit a building, don't be an architectural tourist interested only in taking impressive photographs. Try to be more like a user: take your time to really experience the building in a practical sense, try to understand what the claims and principles of architects really mean - get out of your type 1 comfort zone and try to test your assumptions analytically. It can give you a different perspective to architecture that's truly good. 

Does being a philosopher mean that you are a better thinker?

Does being a philosopher mean that you are a better thinker? Does being an architect mean that you are a better designer of buildings? 

The position of authority many assume derives primarily from their educational and professional background: in matters historical we listen to historians, in matters of health to medical professionals. This seems only logical but the situation becomes more complicated when the subject under consideration involves a capacity we all should posses, such as reasoning. Does a philosopher perform better in reasoning than others? We should certainly expect that: a philosopher has learned what reasoning entails more explicitly and in more detail than others. A philosopher has studied the corpus of philosophical works, so has access to hundreds of relevant views and approaches that inform and structure their own reasoning. So far so good; we can learn a lot from a philosopher. 

The problems start when philosophy becomes self-referential: when it addresses issues and debates within that corpus, with little regard for what a wider audience might understand. It's one thing to explain that what one is saying draws from other sources for reasons of credit, justification, transparency etc., another to try to impress by endless name-dropping that can feel mind-numbing for an audience and yet another to withdraw to the fundamental issues or technicalities of one's own discipline with little regard for what takes place outside of it. Philosophical debates are fine in philosophical circles but out of place in analyses of non-philosophical subjects that could profit from the rigour of philosophical reasoning. 

Similarly, architects have been trained in how to design buildings and have studied what other architects have done in the history of architecture up to the present day. Therefore, they should be able to design much better than untrained people. This is quite frequently the case: architects have a better understanding of matters spatial, functional and structural, as well as a wide repertory of tried solutions at their disposal, so they tend to avoid common mistakes non-architects make. At the same time, however, many of their solutions merely follow established patterns and architectural vogues. A design often merely copies what other architects, especially prominent ones, have made, resulting into a mass production of the same instances, which are automatically elevated to the status of prototypes. 

Learning from each other is a common and valuable practice in many areas, professional or not. The problem is again that it may reflect a self-referential architectural culture: that the choice of the particular solution is made not to offer good performance to clients and users but to engage in architectural debates, illustrate adherence to a particular school or otherwise favourably impress peers. The results are even worse than with philosophy because the tenets of architectural debates are often promoted as the solution to wider problems, e.g. societal or environmental. Architecture may adopt goals like sustainability, circularity or inclusiveness but superficially so, insisting on belief in the architects' capacity to change the world and confusing belief and intention with evaluation and performance. The world may be overheating, making summers often unbearable, but clever solutions in passive cooling, many known for decades are seldom applied to new construction or to the existing building stock, while sales of air-conditioning devices (actually a source of overheating themselves) are soaring. It seems that architecture has learned little from the failures caused in the second half of the twentieth century by its combination of blindness and arrogance. 

New architecture for Leiden

 New architecture for Leiden 

Today, Good Friday, the main item on the news page of the regional broadcaster is a controversial plan for the redevelopment of an old part of the University in Leiden: Omstreden plan ter inzage: waarom wil Universiteit Leiden uitbreiden in binnenstad? - Omroep West. The controversy apparently concerns the demolition of a number of social housing units, so as to make space for a new humanities campus. The steady decline of social housing in the Netherlands is indeed a sign of our times, although it doesn't receive enough attention next to worries about the housing shortage and dangerous investors in the housing market. However, what caught my attention were the artist's impressions of the new buildings (Beelden - Humanities Campus - Projecten - KCAP). 

The design is by an established architectural firm and the images depict a morphology one should expect from them: flat façades dominated by glass and a paper-thin roof on top. For over a decade, the same architecture has been facing me from across the street at my office: the student housing complex at the corner of Michiel de Ruyterweg and Julianalaan, Delft (2 Michiel de Ruyterweg - Google Maps). With less glass on the façade but no sun shading, just like the Leiden design, this complex is also oriented to the south and the west. Whenever the sun shines, the student studios are notorious for becoming unbearably hot. 

Is there any reason to assume that the Leiden University complex will fare better? It is possible that it will use very advanced materials or that it will have heavy-duty services that could alleviate the thermal gains from the unfortunately oriented glass but such measures significantly raise construction and operation costs. This is obviously not desirable, although we seem to care less and less about such matters. Dutch buildings were already  overly and often unnecessarily reliant on mechanical ventilation; following the heatwaves of early years, air conditioning is presented as an unescapable necessity but there is significantly less interest in passive measures such as sun shading, clever orientation or natural ventilation. Moreover, when it comes to university buildings and student housing, thermal performance appears not to be a priority: in addition to the Delft housing complex mentioned above, there is another abominal case in Leiden (Bloedhete studentenflats in Leiden: 'Het kan wel 40 graden worden' | NOS) and probably many more elsewhere. 

Still, in the environmentally-conscious twenty-first century, with so much talk about sustainable, low-energy buildings, not trying to include passive solutions in a major public building is surely a lost opportunity. We need exemplary designs that demonstrate the possibilities of cleverer architecture. Adding a bit of green to the flat roofs of the new humanities campus in Leiden, as the artist's impressions suggest, is far from enough. 

The con of computerization

The con of computerization

Like a con artist, a scientific area I know rather intimately is known by many names: computer-aided architectural design, design computing, computational design, digital architecture, digitization or digitalization … And like a con artist it keeps promising the same things to different people without delivering much in the end. I've come to consider this a primary characteristic of the area: rather than delivering, it shifts its attention to new clients. CAD was aimed at designers and engineers but it failed to become more than admittedly adaptable but nevertheless expensive drawing. BIM was sold to a wider market of largely unknowing yet enthusiastic and powerful stakeholders. BIM has yet to deliver but now we have digitalization and proptech, which appeal to artistic designers and property managers respectively. Fundamentally the area has been promising more or less the same in different guises.
Much of this is inherent in computerization: it's full of short-lived technologies, early market share acquisition, gadgeetering and wannahaves with little practical value beyond fashion and exhibition. My life is full of obsolete technologies -things that work perfectly well but have been superseded in what they do- and, even though I often discard as much as I can, they keep accumulating. Any individual, any area involved in computerization falls victim to the transience of computing technologies.
Unfortunately many areas make it even worse by their lack of historical memory. It is impressive how often I get a feeling of déjà-vu reading research proposals or reports: it is not only that new generations want to do the same stuff as there predecessors, they also appear ignorant of earlier attempts and especially failures. And if one points this out, the usual reaction is one of solipsistic dismissal: yes, others may have tried it already but we have better technologies and better brains, so we'll do it anyway. Unfortunately, new attempts generally fail in more or less the same way as previous attempts. Ironically many talk of machine learning but human learning appears to be ignored.
In conclusion, the whole thing feels like a con: promises without return, merely selling the idea to the naïve, the ignorant, the deluded. And the worst thing is that everybody seems to behave like a con artist.

Experienced architects

Experienced architects 

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a reunion of my fellow architecture students. Most of them I hadn't seen for almost forty years but they proved to be delightful company. It was as if seeing each other after so much time brought us back to our young selves. The scars of the intervening decades were there, openly visible and unashamedly discussed, but they had receded to the background.
Most of my fellow students had become professional architects and their views on architecture delighted me even more. Their realism without cynicism, attention to detail and overall performance, pride in the ability to develop environments that work and understanding of the role of architects made me realize that there might still be hope for our turbulent profession. The only pity is that these views are not heard often enough. We still pay too much attention to the opinions of architectural celebrities, while the architects' umbrella organizations appear to be lost somewhere between a glorious past and an imagined future.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.