Lockdowns and solutions 

Yesterday, on October 13, 2020, seven months after the first lockdown in the Netherlands, the Dutch government announced the second, this time partial lockdown. To my surprise, the news was received generally positively. I guess people under such conditions want clarity, not choice and the responsibility and uncertainty that go with it. This could be a reason why we accept draconian measures with gratitude. Rather than having to interpret the basic rules of social distancing and protection from infections in our daily lives, we appear to prefer general restrictions and the consequent elimination of many situations in daily life. Why worry how having a meal at a restaurant can be made safe is there are no restaurants to go to? Remove the opportunity or temptation and the problem is gone - no need to solve it. 

I do not share the apparently general acceptance and approval of how the corona pandemic is handled in the Netherlands. This does not imply I'm against anti-corona measures, that I find them unnecessary or contrary to my human or civic rights. On the contrary, I support the need for change and accept the principles underlying them, as well as the inevitable effects and the resulting necessity for social cohesion and solidarity. These are part of my human and civic responsibilities. In fact, I see the pandemic as an opportunity to improve our habits and environments, to make our lives healthier and happier. 

What I doubt is the sufficiency of general principles and total restrictions. A lockdown is a very temporary solution. We have experienced how tricky getting out of a lockdown can be, as well as how easily we can then end up in the same problematic situation that seems to call for another lockdown - a vicious circles of binary options. Imposing a second lockdown, even if it's a partial one, indicates a fundamental failure, not only of the people and their behaviours but also of the approach to solving the problems caused by the pandemic. Have we learned so little in these seven months? That seems inconceivable. Unfortunately, too much attention goes to new measures, such as the use of face protection, and too little to how different principles, measures and devices apply to different situations, how they are interpreted, related to each other and other factors, refined and improved thanks to knowledge generated by the applications. 

This is my main objection: general principles and measures are meaningful only in context. By working out what they do in different situations we can evaluate their effectivity and cost, appreciate the complexity of these situations before and after, and generally improve awareness and the ability to find practical solutions in daily life. 

This brings me to what I consider a major failure of the governmental approach: we have been hearing how this theatre or that restaurant have successfully implemented the general principles and so managed to adapt their operation and environment, making them safe and keeping them profitable. Have such best practices been analysed and evaluated? Have we learned from them, have we worked on templates and elements that can be adopted by others, too, have we developed platforms for sharing knowledge and solutions? Rather than indiscriminately closing all restaurants, we should have rewarded and showcased those that have achieved the goals we aspire to and used them to educate the rest and stimulate general improvement. This is something we have to do, an inevitable stage towards safer environments and activities, which is only delayed by the second lockdown. It is moreover something we need to do even if medicine manages to produce the cures for COVID 19, so that we can be same from future pandemics with different causes. 

In summary, we need to work out the necessary changes with more specificity and in more detail, so that they become applicable to any context and meaningful to all, learn from best practices and try to generalize them. 

One could say this is a design approach and I'd take that as a compliment. Design can actually contribute much to the solutions required because by changing the environments within which we operate, it can also change our behaviour. That's what affordances are about: you can demand that people observe social distancing but putting markers on the floor makes it not only easier to understand what one should do but actually part of our interaction with the environment: a constraints that's easy to observe. It's the same magic as with a flimsy piece of tape that cordons off an unsafe pavement or the foam lines football referees use to position the defensive wall at a free kick: physically they may be insignificant but culturally we tend to obey them. 

Of course, its is even better not to annotate but physically change the environment, taking into account the anti-corona principles. This is often seen as a long-term development because it may require wider or multiple entrances to rooms or buildings, wider corridors, better ventilation etc: costly and difficult modifications. This, however, should not stop us from starting already now. There are enough cases where adaptation is directly possible and we need to start producing the best practices from which we can learn. All we need is willingness to invest and to share. 

Social distancing and design

Social distancing and design

We are constantly reminded to keep others at a distance of 1.5 or 2 metres. Most people try to do so, some ignore the advice to the irritation of the rest and others behave as if everybody is a threat, even at a great distance. Beyond personal reactions, the overall effect is spectacular: in contrast to other times, public space is heavily underused, with lots of space for everyone. It's a joy to be out and about with such low densities of people and vehicles.
I wonder what will remain after the scare is over. Will we revert to the old habits and tolerances, squeezing into every bit of space available to go as fast as possible to our destination? It seems probable that we will forget. I remember cycling through the Dutch countryside during a previous epidemic and coming close to or under flocks of birds. Wondering if they were infected, I gave them a wide berth, trying to hold my breath as long as possible. I no longer do so.
Even more important than user behaviour is the design and management of the environment. We naturally try to keep an appropriate distance at all times, as Edward T. Hall and others have observed. Unfortunately, the affordances of many environments force us to come closer than desired to others. Sometimes a distance of a few centimetres from a stranger is all we achieve in a bus, train or metro, as well as in a air terminal, cinema theatre or classroom. When the pandemic is over and current measures are relaxed, we might be forced to accept the same congested situations once again. Will we react with the indignation such poorly designed and managed environments deserve? Will we demand safe and comfortable distances at all times? How will authorities and designers react? In many respects, such a pandemic is a wake-up call: to invest not only in adequate care when something goes wrong but also in designing environments that can prevent the worst. We deserve public transportation and public space that are generous, comfortable and safe. They come at a cost but that cost seems a wise investment.

What architects don't draw (and certainly don't design)

What architects don't draw (and certainly don't design)

I'm collecting photographs of things that don't seem right in buildings. Most are of pipes and cables just attached on the building, marring its appearance, creating places difficult to clean or maintain or even hazards. 

Others are of details clearly not designed, resulting into strange, dysfunctional, unreachable or uncleanable parts. 

 

My problem with such failures is how they happen and why. It appears that even with 3D software, integration and interoperability in BIM etc., there is a lot that we fail to see. Even worse is that we often don't care - and I'm referring to everybody here, from architects and engineers to clients and contractors. We're used to improvised solutions at the last moment, even on site - we are even proud of this capacity, as if any old solution just so as not to halt design or construction is to the benefit of the building. 

I believe that the answer to the problem is quite easy technically but currently impossible socially: there are not enough people interested in changing the production processes in the built environment. If these don't improve, no change in designing can be expected. So, I'll just keep collecting the photographs in the hope that the sheer volume of stupidity they present is enough evidence for some future generation.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

The recurring fascination with generative systems

The recurring fascination with generative systems 

Soon after I had entered the area that used to be called CAAD (Computer-Aided Architectural Design), I realised it was motivated by two quite distinct and actually conflicting ambitions: to computerise drawing and to automate design. The design automators were in power back then, leading the area with creeds like "intelligent design versus stupid drawing". I didn't agree; I have always been fond of drawing and fascinated by visual representations in general.

Still, when the democratisation of computing meant that computerised drawing became commonplace and hence dominant, I was less than pleased for the basic reason that much in computerised drawing was not about new, intelligent representations but about producing the same old stuff on paper, only seemingly more efficiently (people think that efficiency is merely the ability to change easily the content of digital documents). What followed is what one can see in architectural education and practice today: an overemphasis on visualisation, combining poorly readable line drawings with lavishly rendered perspectives, meaningless or jittery walkthroughs and often no time to study all those images for the benefit of the design.

The funny thing is that design automation persists and is resurrected by every other generation of students and your researchers, who somehow inherit or more frequently rediscover the appeal of the same techniques for generating patterns one can pass off as schematic designs. Among them, those relating to space allocation never fail to come up: one makes a list of rooms, determines some clustering of these rooms, uses some elementary way of arranging them in a floor plan, usually without the benefit of architectural knowledge (e.g. spatial typology), makes some manual adjustments to make the layout look less like the product of a child playing the architect, and calls it a design. It's amazing how easily people believe in the same old, tired techniques. It could make one believe that they have some inherent power but I suspect that they're simply easy enough to be rediscovered again and again. That they lead to nothing and are forgotten for a generation or so is a truer indication of their power.