Citizen Architect
“I don’t believe architecture is
about making a better world. Architecture should challenge what people want,”
Peter Eisenman (2010). In Citizen
Architect, a documentary highlighting the creation of Rural Studio by
Samuel Mockbee, Peter Eisenman expresses the notion above. While I can
understand the importance of what he does, I highly doubt that he has ever held
a public forum regarding any of his works. If he did I am sure that the story
of it would be more horrifically fantastic than anything already mentioned on
this blog. I believe this is because Eisenman assumes that he knows better than
the people that he is designing for and that is, for all intents and purposes,
false.
Who understands a building better than
the lowly people that inhabit it everyday? With the obvious answer being no one,
why then is participation and public forum not a bigger part of what we do
everyday as architects? And why is this even a topic of discussion in a graduate
level comprehensive studio history and theory class? Architecture for Whom?
Architecture for humanity… or at least for the people who populate it. It should
not be a surprise when a public forum turns into a madhouse of ill content and
unrest because people are complex organisms and architects are not taught enough
to listen in school, only to do. The great David Pastre once said that, “it is
important to not only listen to what people say, but also understand why they
say it.” Alejandro Aravena touches on this in his TED Talk saying that participation
is trying to identify the right question rather than the right answer. I think
this explains most of the architectural horror stories featured this week’s
blog. We, as architects, seem too get too caught up in trying to answer the
question, rather than answering what the right question was.
Walter Segal empowered people by giving
them the tools and rules to find their own answer. This is arguably the most
brilliant way of answering the question, but the rest of us will not be so
lucky and must determine the best answer based on listening and understanding
what the most important questions are before we can even begin to answer them.
Involving the community early and often and being able to listen and interpret
the feedback is a primary way to designing meaningful and functional architecture
and a primary way of making us true citizen architects.
Pastre's famous quote reminds me why it is so important for architects to truly demonstrate empathy with our public, to understand their various concerns just as they do, and bring clarity to those concerns through our narratives and proposals. Is this ability (empathy + clarity of thought) what they call the architect's third eye?
ReplyDeleteI also thought about Pastre's comment and what we learned in Charleston from his teaching. I think one of the reasons our Medway Park Pavilion was so successful in Charleston is we were working with the Charleston Parks Conservancy over multiple design meetings to make sure we were sharing our ideas, distilling them down to the values and expressions that the client had - received some minimal community member feedback that we were on the right track - but the design was tailored around the intended usergroups - community vegetable gardeners. I also agree that most of us won't have an experience like Walter Segal so we have to use other methods of listening to interpret the feedback of citizens / the public.
ReplyDeleteThere has to be a balance between an architect who does have expert knowledge and a client who knows what they need. Walter Segal did this well - he built a community that was basically the framework for families to then customize the space for themselves
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