Human resources

 Human resources 

Yet another student of mine came to the same conclusion after studying a couple of cases at a construction enterprise: the main problem is the human resources, that the people working on a project have to perform well if projects are to be successful. To be fair, it wasn't purely her own conclusion, it was what she was told in the interviews she conducted with the middle managers - and she took it over, as many others before her had done when researching different aspects of design and construction projects. 

Putting the blame on your workers is always the easy way out. Yes, one should expect every professional to perform at least adequately but if it doesn't happen, what does this mean? Is it just a matter of personal failure or do the organization of the project and the enterprise play a role? People may perform well individually and still fail as a project team - something rather frequent in sport. There, it is usually followed by changes not only in personnel but also in approach, e.g. recruitment structure and game tactics. But even if failure is personal, how does it come? Poor education and poor training are often blamed, as are inadequate tools. Especially with computerization, it's increasingly evident that outdated, irrelevant or cumbersome tools can lower performance by adding an irrelevant burden to users. 

We should keep in mind that people are fallible, that even with the best of preparation and organization they may still fail. So, in addition to them, they should be given the right tools for the job: tools that prevent or correct their mistakes, that nudge them towards the right procedures and steps, that add to their capacities and increase their understanding and appreciation of what they are doing. We shouldn't blame them for struggling to perform with tools that don't meet these standards, just understand what their problems are and solve them at source. Yes, we still need to change the world: we've been saying for a long time but have yet to start doing it in earnest. 

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.  

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.

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.

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.

Getting away with it

Getting away with it: privileges of eminent architects 

Reasonable doubts do not seem to occur to eminent architects - or apply to them. When they make designs more complex than apparently feasible, many assume that they know what they're doing, that they have done the necessary investigations to ensure that what they propose can be made. Somehow people expect eminent architects to achieve innovation relatively easily, not just because of their presumed capacities, experience and resources but also because of their status. If anyone can do something, its surely the ones we all know and admire. So, when they fail, people are mystified: how is this possible? Some start having doubts, others develop schadenfreude, yet others remember how weak the profession can be, how opinionated and self-indulgent. When something goes wrong, there's always someone else to blame. And don't forget that even bad publicity is publicity, after all. Once one has reached a high status, not even disgrace can remove them from the public eye and, quite often, public sympathy. So, it's possible that eminent architects never fail; it's just their buildings (including clients, users, contractors etc.) that fail them.

Failure

Failure 

The subject of failure in architecture is a tricky one. We are more inclined to dismiss buildings on aesthetic grounds than to criticise them for practical (function) shortcomings. Perversely, we often choose to defend interesting buildings against such criticism: eminent buildings are allowed to have leaky roofs, draughty windows or uncomfortable rooms. This attitude relates to the higher norms architecture is expected to serve. When a building is primarily judged with respect to the classical canon, modernist morphology, its use of folding or the complexity of its form (as produced with digital tools), then there is little attention for pedestrian circulation, interior air quality or energy consumption.

This also creates tolerance for neglect. If higher norms are the focus of designers, then other aspects may be neglected and roofs may therefore leak. The mistakes designers make are excused or ignored. Of course, humans make mistakes and we should be prepared to forgive them, especially if they do not destroy the whole or if they are honest mistakes, stuff one could not have anticipated. However, one of the human strengths is to correct mistakes: to realise that they were made and do one's best to reduce or remove their effects, even if this entails heavy costs or embarrassment.

The capacity to correct mistakes and so improve buildings and their performance has its place in designing, which we are fond of describing as a cyclical process. Each cycle offers opportunities for improving a seemingly arbitrary concept and progressively adapting it to the problem, but also for correcting mistakes made or detected in the previous cycle. The only imaginable reason for failing to remove mistakes from a design is neglect, often caused by blindness to the mistakes, stubborn attachment to a design or its features, or lack of appropriate training. With today's digital means that facilitate precise and accurate analyses, as well virtual prototyping, there are few justifications for failing to detect mistakes.

So, should we tolerate roofs that leak or rooms with poor air quality because they happen to be in a beautiful building or designed by eminent architects? I guess it depends on the threshold of acceptability, of satisfication: a building should be good enough to justify its existence - not just meet the original specifications but also present enough potential for improvements in cycles of use and redevelopment (the cyclical process is not restricted to designing), including rectification of wrong assumptions concerning use and changes in society. No roof should leak but what counts most is that we are able to fix leaks.