We Build Together

Ardmore Park Pavilion, completed Fall 2021 by the Clemson Architecture + Community Build Studio

As I was reading Giancarlo De Carlo's "Architecture's Public", there was one particular quote that caused a reaction within me.  With this work of De Carlo being over 50 years old, I was reading the work through the lens of trying to find its contemporary relevance.  The piece on architecture was written at a similar time of social revolution as our own and so I felt especially compelled to find translations to the present.   What quote struck me was the following:

In reality, architecture has become too important to be left to architects.  A real metamorphosis is necessary to develop new characteristics in the practice of architecture and new behavior patterns in its authors: therefore all barriers between builders and users must be abolished, so that building and using become two different parts of the same planning process.  Therefore... every architectural event - regardless of who conceives it and carries it out - is considered architecture.

The solution that De Carlo proposes to create this “real metamorphosis” is what he calls “process planning” in which the planning of the built environment is accomplished in a democratic spirit with the users.  Upon this reading, my immediate reaction was to think about the contemporary practice of design builds.

In design builds, the typical barriers of architectural practice are dissolved to create a metamorphosis between the architect and the builder.  This way of practicing seeks to make things more efficient and limit the Modern movement’s over-specialization to spur more cohesive creative solutions.  However, the cohesion does not come from the authoritarian planner, but through the phase changes that occur from the interaction of tacit and explicit knowledge held by both architect and builder.  The pre-established inclusive foundation provides fertile ground for when the client and user are brought into the process.  As the design process is fueled by the accounting of every party’s needs on an equal basis, everyone feels ownership over the architecture.  This shared feeling of ownership leads to longer building lifetime and higher levels of satisfaction in meeting the user’s needs, which De Carlo’s process planning seeks to produce.

I believe the North American concept of design build has the potential to meet the goals that stem from taking a process planning approach.  And I also believe that this potential increases even more when the design build practice is limited to a highly local level where the architect, builder, and client all will likely be users too.  The design build may not be the only way of successfully achieving the goals of De Carlo, but it has a great shot at doing so.