Architect as Translator

“There is something divine in a work of architecture to bring us into accord with the natural world, the supernatural world, with our fellow human beings and the great unknown.”

                                                                                                -Samuel Mockbee

After reading Mockbee, in my head, architecture is a fabric of relationships, a quilt of patchwork which wants to be built off of the prescriptions of the personalities of each individual material which went into it. It is an inter-relational network of things which live and die on their own accord, which are not so much architects of their own existence but subjects of space and time, in a universe which enforces no right or wrong answers, but follows patternable phenomena through which opportunities are presented. These opportunities can be nested in the context of our realities, and by observing and knowing their patterns of life and death (also decay) we are given rules to obey--hard line criteria that ought to be pursued in every detail, as their livelihood in the structure has the opportunity to impact our own livelihood. They may seem quite basic, i.e. the structure needs not fall down, the structure should not leak, the structure should allow passage of air and light, etc. But it is a conversation of immense depth. Herein interfaces our own biology and physiology, which impacts our emotional and spiritual existence, with the physical world, and interfaces the materials in play with the physical world--taking into consideration material qualities and their environmental relations, their limitations and the forces they endure, and spatially arranging these to suit our objectives (which are often those of not leaking, standing up, longevity, economy, and so on)

 

 

"The initial sketch is always an emotion, not a concept"

Some of the early rural studio projects I think are initially very seductive through their creative use of material. Cleverness in design to make use of the materials available in such isolated communities carries many merits and shows a level of transparency about human life--one that is honest to its time, it’s community, its humanism. But after listening more to Mockbee’s thoughts, I’ve come to see more that many of these projects could be representative of a somewhat transcendental architecture which is immaterial, that is--not substantiated through its use of particular materials but fundamentally great in process. The materials that work are the ones which are used because they are the materials which are available. This is an architecture of understanding relationships, materially and socially, both which are designed to craft a physical place--which has the potential to, as Mockbee put, “bring us into accord with the natural world, the supernatural world, with our fellow human beings and the great unknown.” I should say craft, rather than something like “manifest” because this greatness in process suggests the ultimate challenge as an architect is something incredibly human, and does not rely solely on manifestation but rather the primary role is more like architect as translator and mediator, to comprehend the visions of others, communicate them well, and translate them into buildable form.