What does it all mean??

What exactly IS architecture?  I remember my class being asked that question rather bluntly by our architecture professor on my first day of graduate school, about a million years ago.  I also remember the dumbfounded looks on the faces of my classmates as we were all hopelessly caught off guard by such an apparently simple yet difficult question.

The answer is no easier to come up with today as it was on that distant September day thirty years ago in a small classroom on the second floor of Syracuse University’s beautifully neo-Classical Sloane Hall.  I remember several of us sputtering a few random, nonsensical responses that may have captured some tiny aspect of the definition, but totally missing out on Professor Korman’s bigger point.  His response to us was that there is no easy, singular definition to the term “architecture.”  And that was the point. 

It would be the responsibility of each of us as we grew into our professional roles, to find our way to a definition on our own terms.  I know that may sound like some New Age mumbo jumbo, but that wasn’t what he was aiming for.  Architecture obviously does have some very tangible aspects.  The buildings all around you, for starters… DUH!  But it is the bigger idea that we’re trying to get at here.

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the great British architectural historian famously said, “A bicycle shed is a building, Lincoln Cathedral is architecture!”  Like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said about pornography, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it!”  So there!  I’ll bet you never thought someone could relate architecture to pornography, but I just did!!

Bicycle Shed

Lincoln Cathedral

I digress.  What is architecture?  It’s actually quite simple.  Architecture is power.  There you have it.  All done.  Good night and drive home safely.

Wait, what?  You want more than that?  All right, all right, I’ll explain.

What Sir Nikolaus was getting at above with his bicycle shed comment was that buildings are literally all around us and the vast majority are inert, functional and anonymous.  They are not architecture.  In order to rise to the level of “architecture,” a building must be elevated in its design to encompass a measure of beauty, style and most importantly, an idea.

An idea?  What the heck is that supposed to mean? 

Boy, you ask a lot of questions.  OK, the idea of a building is primarily its meaning or purpose.  But not strictly purpose in a functional way, like for instance, the literal purpose of a hospital is to have a place to treat sick or injured people.  But purpose in more of a long term sense, more along the lines of what the building represents, most specifically what it represents to those who built it.

And that’s where “power” comes back into play.  Architecture is power because the greatest works of architecture through the ages were built by the powerful.  And the powerful wanted you to know that they were powerful.  They told us that through their buildings.  Many forms of expression are quite temporary, but architecture, if done right, can survive for thousands of years.  And it is also the most expensive form of expression.  Can you think of a more permanent and pronounced form of bragging?

That’s what great buildings are.  They are a means to show off, not just to your contemporaries, but to your progeny and their progeny and so on, for generations to come.  How do we know this?  Just look briefly at who built the greatest surviving structures in history in every single age.

If you look back as far as the Roman Empire, what do we see still standing?  The Colosseum, the Roman Forum, some amazing temples, etc.  These buildings were built by emperors, who obviously possessed the most power in their day.  If you move into the middle ages, what buildings do you see still standing that are the most impressive?  I would say the cathedrals of western Europe.  And who built those?  Times up.  The Church did.  And who had the most power during the middle ages?  The Church!

In more recent times, you’ll see that architecture during the Renaissance and the periods up until the modern era was dominated by the monarchies, and that is evident from the elaborate castles and palaces you see spread across the European landscape.

And the current era?  Who builds the most elaborate and expensive buildings today?  If you travel to any major city in the US or anywhere around the world for that matter, you will see urban landscapes dominated by skyscrapers built primarily by major corporations, the power centers in today’s world. 

Architecture is about power, pure and simple.  This is not meant as self-agrandizement… well, just a little bit, but not much.  But in reality, architecture costs money, and great architecture tends to cost a lot of money.  And as we all know, money is power.  So, the next time you’re wandering down a city street anywhere there are large and nicely designed buildings, think about the message that the owners are sending.  What are they trying to tell you, across the ages, about who they are (were), what their values are (were) and what was most important to them in their lifetime.  Buildings can speak volumes, literally!

And remember, don’t stop looking up.

IT'S WAR! It's war! Fredonia's going to war!

Now that I’ve sucked you all in to my blog world after reading my riveting essay on the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, it’s time for something a bit more light and fun.  What?  Light and fun architecture??  It’s just not possible, you say!  OK, you’re right.  But at least let’s try this time to deal with a topic not so dry and academic.  (YOU!  In the back of the room!  I heard that little snicker when you said “boring” under your breath!)

War!  Let’s talk about war.  How’s that for light and fun?  Ok, not a particularly light topic, but one that has a rather interesting tie to architecture, and it’s a subject that I know a lot of folks have some opinion on.  Well, to be clear, we’re not going to actually discuss the Clausewitzian topic of fighting strategies.  Because when it comes to significant historic battles, buildings tend to be among the biggest losers.  Many great structures and city centers have been utterly destroyed because of the wars fought near and around and within them.  But that’s not what we’re here to discuss today. 

War and architecture do have an interesting historic and social connection however.  And that connection is primarily through it’s defensive structures: what we typically call forts.

Fortress architecture has a history that dates back thousands of years.  The first defensive structures were not built strictly for military purposes, however.  Shortly after the development of the city-state, and the human tendency to want to take what someone else has, and the invention of weapons to carry out that wish, people started to realize that they might want to protect what they had and began to experiment with ways to keep the other nearby tribes from coming over and stealing what they worked so hard to grow, invent or build.

The simplest technical solution that early historic humans came up with was the wall!  You couldn’t get any simpler than that.  Any wall, if it’s high enough and solid enough will keep a person (who doesn’t possess a ladder, trampoline or a shovel and a lot of time) on one side indefinitely.  And that solution worked quite well as long as you had the time and resources to man the top of the wall and start picking off the enemy before he had time to bring his ladders, trampolines and shovels up to the front of it. 

So city-dwellers began building large walls around their urban centers to keep the marauders out.  And while city sieges were sometimes effective, the walls tended to be more effective in the long run, such that it is quite rare to find a European, Asian or Middle Eastern city built before the Renaissance that wasn’t surrounded by an extensive system of city walls.  And as siege technology grew in sophistication, so did the design of the walls.  The old city walls that we see today, such as those in many German and Austrian towns like Linz or Wiener Neustadt, appear to us as some of the most beautiful surviving ancient architecture.  But the elements that we see today as aesthetically pleasing were originally built as purely defensive structures in response to some sort of siege technique.  The crenellations along the top allowed the defenders secure position from which to fire at the attackers.  The beautiful towers that dot the old town neighborhoods were originally entry and look-out points, and sometimes used as organizational edifices, office space along the wall, in other words.

Northwestern corner tower in Wiener Neustadt

Of course, the design of these walls reflected the style of architecture of the times they were built.  You therefor see stylistic embellishments that may have gone a bit beyond pure function, but all in all, they were truly beautiful examples of form following function.

But as the technology of warfare advanced throughout the Renaissance and early Modern Period, munitions became more powerful and deadly and simple walls became less effective at resisting attacks.  Walls gradually lost their utility in keeping out invaders, but at the same time, armies became more mobile.  Military strategy began shifting from attacking civilian targets like cities and castles to targeting the enemy’s forces instead.  Over time, military theory evolved more into using structures to protect the armies themselves rather than protecting the civilian targets, which were less strategically important anyway.

Thus, by the time of the Enlightenment in the 1700’s fortress architecture had become every bit as elaborate as the old town walls, requiring battlements, revetments, bastions, etc.  The geometry of forts also became much more interesting from a defensive standpoint as well.  Star fortifications developed as a means to better protect the installation by allowing crossfire between the bastions, the extended points of the “star.”

Bourtange fortification, in Groningan, Netherlands

Needless to say, the engineering behind these fortifications was much more complex than space allows me to explain here, but the results were sometimes immense and quite beautiful despite their military origination.

Citidel of Jaca, Spain

But as all things change over time, fortifications such as these gradually became obsolete as well.  With the invention of the exploding artillery shell in the nineteenth century, the traditional masonry fortress was not capable of withstanding bombardment for very long and military strategy evolved once again from using forts as strategic holding positions to making forts primarily bases for housing troops and weaponry.  That evolution can be seen very clearly in Fort Desoto in Tampa Bay, Florida, begun in 1898 as a defensive station to protect Tampa from a potential Spanish invasion during the Spanish-American War.  The bastions have devolved into mere revetments whose sole function is to protect the gun emplacements rather than the soldiers who actually manned the fort. 

Artillery bastion at Fort Desoto, Florida

Because the defensive strategy of the modern military is vastly more complex, involving air, electronic and long-range perimeter isolation, the obvious need for physical protection of the fort proper, is long since outdated.  The modern military base may still carry the name “Fort” such and such, but the utility of the term fort is relatively outdated as a descriptive term.  This is why we more commonly hear the term “base” used in the context of the modern military fort.  Base certainly makes much more sense because it more accurately describes what the installation actually does – it serves as a base for the military units housed there.  This is also where you can sometimes hear the term “camp” as well, such as Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. 

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

We would like to think of war as a strategy of absolute last resort in the affairs of humankind.  But it is something that has always been with us as “civilized” people.  Architecture has served humans in many capacities over the history of our purported ingenuity.  It is no surprise that it has also served the cause of conflict and defense as well.

Questions, questions!

So, when we were last together, I made a point about all of us demanding better architecture for our communities.  I then posed the question, “how do we ask for it?”  That’s a good question, even if I am the one who came up with it.  But in order to ask for better architecture, it might help to actually know what better architecture is.  And, alas, there lies the rub.

What is good architecture?  I didn’t come up with that question.  That query has been posed for literally thousands of years.  In fact, the earliest writings that we have on the subject of architecture discuss that very concept. 

The oldest surviving intact manuscript written about architecture dates from the first century BC and came to us from a Roman architect by the name of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, or just Vitruvius to us smarmy people in the know.  Vitruvius wrote a ten book treatise called De Architectura, Latin for “On Architecture.”  This treatise, aside from its antique novelty, was treated throughout the Renaissance and for centuries thereafter, as something akin to the architectural bible.  All great architects, and those who wished to think of themselves as great architects, considered Vitruvius’ rules and guidance as the true gospel of architectural design.

So, what did an architect who lived two thousand years ago have to say about the subject, and what made him such an authority on all things buildable?  Well, first of all, On Architecture is, in reality, a very well-written book (or, ten books, rather.)  It’s also a very long and thoroughly detailed set of ideal rules by which proper classical architecture was to be built, at least according to principals that Vitruvius believed to be correct.  The treatise encompassed instructions on the correct proportions of various room sizes, column details, structural systems and so forth.  And although there are many instances in which good classical architecture varied a bit from Vitruvius’ rules, he basically nailed it when it came to laying out beautiful buildings.  Even though he was limited stylistically within his historic period, those principals can still be applied just as easily to modern structures.

Vitruvius came of age at the height of the Roman Empire and was trained as an army engineer.  In his day and well into the Middle Ages, the definitions of professions like architect and engineer were much broader than what is acceptable today.  As he outlined in his ten books, Vitruvius roamed far and wide over numerous topics that a modern student of architecture would consider quite irrelevant to their education.  He dedicated entire chapters to music theory, military emplacements, climatic conditions and so forth.  However, Vitruvius insisted that these outlier topics were in fact relevant to the education of an architect.  To an architect working in the first century BC, a wide breadth of knowledge with a tremendous variety of experiences was absolutely vital to understanding how to build successfully.

As peculiar as that may seem today, there is a giant grain of truth to what Vitruvius said.  One must keep in mind that 2,100 years ago, building technology was in a primitive state.  There was little science on which to draw, so architects had to rely on principles that they learned from other fields.  As an example, music theory may seem like a strange requirement to understand for successful construction, but it becomes clearer when you think of it in terms of acoustics and how sound flows through a space, a very handy bit of knowledge when you’re designing a theater.  A thorough grasp of climate interpretation would certainly help one when placing a building on a site so that it was oriented properly with respect to sun exposure and the direction of the predominant breezes.  And although it may seem daunting to have to learn about all of these other fields while studying architecture, keep in mind that the grand sum of accurate knowledge in any field back then was a fraction of what we know today.

But getting back to the original question, (alright, it was the second question) what makes good architecture?  Vitruvius, as you would suspect, was well ahead of us on this issue.  He stated that good architecture must contain three basic elements: firmitas, utilitas, and venustas.  OK, it’s not my fault that you aren’t fluent in ancient Latin, but I’ll help you out anyway.  The most relevant translations into English would be: structurally sound, functionally useful and aesthetically pleasing.  (Firmness, commodity and delight were the terms that architects used during the Renaissance.)  There you have it!  That’s all you need to know to be a successful architect.  Well, that was a lot easier than we all thought, wasn’t it?

Seriously, what is so remarkable about this statement is that it is so simple and yet so profound at the same time.  And, even more importantly, it still holds true to this day, two thousand years later, through dozens, perhaps hundreds of different building styles and technologies.  If a building isn’t structurally sound, it can’t be built, period!  That’s an obvious one.  Secondly, if it isn’t functional, who will want to build or use it?  Certainly you won’t likely find someone to pay for a building that doesn’t serve its purpose, like for instance, a house that doesn’t have enough bedrooms, or a stadium that doesn’t have enough rest rooms (yes, I’m looking at you Turner Field, may you rest in purgatory!)  And lastly, a building can be buildable and functional, and maybe that’s all that you’ll ask of it, but it will never be a great building.  Aesthetics must come into play at that point.

By aesthetics, we don’t simply mean that the building must be “pretty.”  Sure, a good-looking building is a start, but the concept of building aesthetics really goes a lot deeper than mere looks.  And that is where I’d like to leave off for now because that third topic is much too substantive to treat in just a few sentences.  It will most definitely require its own blog entry.  Until next time, keep looking up.

Architecture... ahhh... alright, I suppose

So… let’s talk architecture!  Now, don’t all of you go jumping up and down in excitement.  I just want to start a dialogue about my favorite subject.  Listen in if you wish, but try to keep an open mind, because so much of our lives is affected by the structures that surround us. 

I don’t broach this subject solely because it’s my field, but primarily because it integrally affects all of us.  We all work, play, worship, escape to, relax and simply live the vast majority of our lives in buildings, whether we notice them or not.  Some of those buildings are fantastic, uniquely and specially designed.  They are buildings that enrich our lives, enlighten us through the spirit that they convey by their use of light, space, and materials.  They lift us up through the experience of just walking through them.  If you’ve ever passed through Grand Central Station in New York, or ridden to the top of the Saint Louis Arch, or walked out onto the terrace of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spectacular Fallingwater in western Pennsylvania, then you know exactly what I mean. 

Grand Central Station - photo by author

And yet so many of those buildings in our lives are rather humdrum, mediocre experiences.  You may work in a standard suburban office building, maybe spending all day inside an 8’x8’ cubicle, that you arrived at after walking down a 5 foot wide double-loaded corridor (more on those at another time), having come up to your second floor office level after walking through a standard suburban office park atrium lobby, typically an open-air two story space with some minor planter in the corner, a faux, over-designed chandelier hovering over the middle of the space, the open-tread stairs off to the side, all of it ensconced in hard surfaces made of mostly metamorphic stones and tiles.  Each of these spaces looking so similar to so many others.

My point is that we don’t have to passively accept such mediocrity in our lives.  We should demand more.  But what is more?  And how do we ask for it?  In order to get better buildings, we have to know what better buildings are.  I would like to contribute to that conversation starting now.  I don’t claim to be the leading expert on anything, but I do know a thing or two about buildings, and that’s what I want all of us to start talking about.  How do you look at a building critically?  How do you judge its timelessness and its utility?  How do you make sense of its worth vs. its cost?  And while we're at it, we'll talk about cities as well.  And maybe we'll even get sidetracked on occasion and talk about buildings in movies and other such stuff.  

I want to begin sharing some ideas about all of these things and more, because they affect all of us in ways subtle and not so subtle.  Architecture is all around you.  In order to take it in, all you have to do is open up your eyes and open up your mind.  In the end, I guess the thing that I can most hope to accomplish is that I get as many people as I can to start looking beyond themselves and truly see the structures that surround them and maybe we'll all start to appreciate the built environment just a bit more.