Product vs. Process

Architecture originates in our imagination; it begins with a germ of an idea, which becomes a sketch, which [if the architect is auspicious] then becomes a corporal structure. In all of these stages, it is a product. It begins as a visual image that the architect produces, and then becomes a tangible image that the architect produces.

But architecture should not be a product; it should be a process. Rather than focusing on our beautiful images and our end products, we should be thinking through architecture as a process – thinking critically through each stage of design and layering each phase in a cohesive manner. Consideration of context is one of these phases of design - perhaps even one of the most important ones. In Critical Regionalism, Kenneth Frampton discusses sensitivity to site along with architectural tectonics as “the presentation of a structural poetic” – it is the natural expression and artistry of construction based on its physical place.

Without exploring the context of a building, without this ‘regionalism’, architecture can only be a product. This year’s Architectural Review declared that the most recent projects of noted architects Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry both “arrogantly flaunt their refusal to defer to local context… announcing instead that the supposed right to ego-expression of a starchitect trounces all such decencies.” These two architects are arguably the most noted and celebrated architects of our time; the fact that they do not deign to consider the importance of contextual site evidence in their designs is perplexing. Peter Zumthor, on the other hand, is a much more admirable architect. His Thermal Vals in Switzerland become completely imbedded in the place; the use of the land, the culture, even the light and shadows of that particular site are taken into consideration of the design.


With the Thermal Vals, Peter Zumthor creates architecture through process; he presents the structural poetic. This is a far more profound way of practicing architecture than the stunning visual products that Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry create.

Comments

  1. I absolutely agree with your statement that architecture without context is only a product. I also think that architecture that fails to consider both its local and global context can fall into this same predicament, which is where I struggle with Frampton's claims of focusing only on the regional scale. What makes an architectural work great is not that it is created in a vacuum of its own site, ignoring outside influences, but that ideas that have been developed by the global community of architects can be filtered, critiqued if you will, and applied in a manner appropriate to and as an enhancement of a particular place.

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  2. All very true. And even more importantly, it should be the process of filling a need for a user, and wanting to enrich the lives of people. This was a problem I had with Indigo Pine; we were designing a product. And even though we embedded it in southern culture, typology, and resources (which arguable made it "regional"), it was still something that could be picked up and placed on any site in the country. In fact, that was a driving factor and one of the first goals explained to me when I joined the team, which was hard to swallow after all my years of architectural education demanding projects be tethered to a specific site.

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