A New Kind of Person

“Him I consider the architect, who by sure and wonderful reason and method, know both how to devise through his own mind and energy, and to realize by construction, whatever can be most beautiful fitted out for the noble needs of man.”

There is a side I love about this quote and a side I question. I’ll always come back to this point and the overall lesson but there is something fascinating and grounding about not just designing, but building. A beauty in, like Alberti says, being able to take your vision and idea and turn it into something real, all by your own hand with the help of others. The ownership and pride you can take in participating in an act of building something that the world experiences is great.

But what he eludes to about defining a new kind of person and wanting to be free of everyday environments and traditions, constraints and limitations are not something I agree with. If architecture truly is meant to be special, why does it have to be in the way we always have thought of it? Why can’t it be like we discussed, special due to its interactions, impacts, and relationship to people, experiences, and everyday life? Architecture recognition of what always has been and about what people do to it and feel of it are valid. The so called mundane of life is valid. We shouldn’t take that for granted because it is the thing as a collective we tend to miss in our chaotic moments.

So yes, maybe he’s right in defining a new kind of person. The kind of person, the kind of designer that acknowledges the everyday and its people, is stimulated by constraints and takes advantage of what's here.