Architect's Relationship with Architecture
In the reading this week by Giancarlo De Carlo, there is a
quote that reads: ‘In reality, architecture has become too important to be left
to architects.’ When I first read it, I wasn’t quite sure exactly what De Carlo
meant by this. My first reaction was how could architecture be done without the
understanding of design that comes with being an architect. After the lecture
in class I have come to understand that his stance is architects have failed
society because they build a solution without thinking about why there is a
problem in the first place, and a solution found that way will never work. I
agree with De Carlo’s sentiment that architects need to bring the user back
into conversation. While watching the Getty film in economy class this week, a woman
spoke on how just an architect would design a great art museum, but the art
would suffer. A museum director knows what the art needs, but doesn’t know how
to design it, which would result in a terrible building and the art would still
suffer. Both are needed at the table to design something truly great. It seems
as though there has been a shift to resolve this in recent years, but our
generation will still have a lot of ground to make up if we really want to make
a difference with want we leave behind.
It's funny I thought of the movie too when doing the readings for this week. To your point that the people need to be brought back into the conversation, I would agree - especially when the predecessors completely ignored them. But I also think these ideas of "architecture for the people" are only reactionary. But I agree with your sentiment; like most things, the sweet spot is probably somewhere in the middle, where the architect and client/entity have balanced or at least respected voices in the design.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with the notion that users need to be brought into the conversation when designing. I would argue that even when this is done during the design process, you can never predict exactly how people might use a space and even if you study similar spaces, there will always be some difference that occurs.
ReplyDeleteHey Morgan, I completely agree that the film in class this week went hand in hand with the lecture and readings. There needs to be a balance between architects designing with the end goal being just that--the design. And, architects designing without standing firm with their own design principles. Maybe if Meier had been a little more open to the museum director's ideas in the beginning then there wouldn't have been re-designs during the construction of the project. Or there wouldn't have been the need to hire an outside architect just for the interior design of the rooms for the artwork.
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