Learning to be Bad
"Whatever good things we build end up building us." - Jim Rohn
As they released their groundbreaking book on the urban environment of Las Vegas, Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, and Steve Izenour, took a wrecking ball to much Modernist theory, similar to how Le Corbusier sought to take a wrecking ball to the medieval district of Paris. No longer did a building (city, landscape, etc.) need to be recognized as inherently good by consensus to deserve an analysis. Rather, these academics posited that much could be learned from the bad, ugly, and the mundane. I find that their new method of formal analysis has added much to the profession of architecture and the academy. For myself, this has often been my approach towards developing my own analyses; it is important to engage and focus on the bad in architecture just as much as the good.
However, the key factor that the Yale Formal Analysis Studio introduced as well was the idea of neutrality. As stated by Scott-Brown, "Judgement is withheld in the interest of understanding and receptivity." For these designers, the work is not good or bad; it exists. This means that almost every built structure merits an analysis. Their features, characteristics, and qualities can all be measured, documented, and recorded. I don't believe it is possible to be neutral.
Through our many formative years, including those in the area of architectural education, we have all developed biases towards and against specific forms and styles. Some are influenced by the content we have consumed. Others have been formed by analysis and opinion developed by others. Nonetheless, I believe we all have an instinct of whether or not we delight in or despise a project. It could be the material. It could be the forms. It could be the impact. At the end of the day, we all assign a specific value to a project. For more social projects, this is an essential characteristic of our analysis (or biases). It is imperative to determine whether a project is having negative or positive impacts. If we ignore the negative of a project, we are just as likely to imitate it - therefore learning to produce bad architecture. I don't think this goes for form - everyone's taste is different. It goes for the ideologies and interactions stitched into the identity of the building.
The Yale Formal Analysis Studio essentially decided not to judge architecture by its cover. I also posit that neutrality is rarely, if ever, achieved. The visceral reactions we experience from taking in truly great works, or just works that appeal to us, are undeniable. While it's fascinating to peel back the layers of a project, this is more meaningful if we are drawn to it in the first place. And this is precisely the reason interior designers, like me, break into architecture.
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