Too Many Task to Juggle

I enjoyed the conservation about building facades and how the notion of the façade has changed over time. The façade has changed in terms of possible materials, the technology within the facades, the connection to the environmental conditions, and their depth. Within the article “The Politics of the Envelope, A Political Critique of Materialism” by Alejandro Zaera Polo, Alejandro explains many different façade grouping and their relation to not only the building context but the surrounding buildings connections. 

One item that Alejandro mentioned in different parts of the article was the notion that “the architect” has lost the ability to control the design of the building and now the façade is the last true area that we can design. I personally think the days of old where “the architect” controlled all the designs area of a building are gone, and they aren’t coming back. Which I don’t think that is a bad thing truly. While controlling a design from ground up would be beneficial for one person/firm to see, the demand and required knowledge of buildings systems in the current time is just too great to control. New building technology becomes unveiled on a weekly, if not a daily basis. The current amount of materials that can be used within a building outweighs the days where we only had wood, brick, stone, concrete, and even steel to choose from.  The complexity of the drafting programs, the amount of written documents, and the presentation demand of architects alone takes a large portion of architect’s time. Add in material studies, client relations, dealing with the public / neighbors, codes awareness and numerous other things, architects are simply in short supply and in a constant time crunch. How time is even available for building design is still a mystery to me.  Architects took on some many of the task making a building happen that as time passed, architects had to give away task to lessen the burden upon them. Once the other consultants had the task given to them, they thrived and we are left now with less control. Again, I don’t think it is a bad thing, maybe just not something we want.

Back to facades, I appreciated the grouping that Alejandro laid out within the article. He grouped buildings in terms of size and form when dealing with their façade.  I thought the connections to the surrounding buildings for a façade was an important factor that becomes overlooked at times. Especially in terms of environmental conditions. I remember a situation not too long ago when the building owners/design team of a new high rise building in Columbia were being sued by a portion of downtown Columbia due to the heat reflected off the high rise onto the nearby buildings. The added heat demand overloaded the mechanical systems of the older buildings and ruined their systems. The new building had to pay for the other building’s mechanical systems and to add some component to their façade to account for the heat reflected. So it does matter to design for the surrounding conditions.