A Dialog on Authentic Architecture

Authentic Architecture

d i a l o g - iteration three

If you have not, I recommend that you read iterations one and two of this d i a l o g before the material presented below.

• GoTo part One • GoTo part Two •

This is the “third” set of questions - they came in on September 26th two days before the “second set” which I addressed in iteration two. Somehow, the e-mail got lost in my mailbox and I discovered it today (October 8, 2007). These are excellent questions which go deep into what this team is wanting to understand and they actually follow and are better addressed after the first two sets. I am afraid that I missed the deadline request in the letter yet I am answering them anyway. School project deadlines are important but the subject matter addressed here will remain significant for decades long after grades have faded from memory.

The nature of these questions and how they were put along with where we are in this dialog compels me to answer them as a single thesis while incorporating issues remaining from iterations one and two.

It was one of our most privileged moments when we received your reply to the queries that we posted and we would not have imagined that they would have been addressed so comprehensively and clearly.

It has actually helped us think clear and deep into our topic of concern and has raised questions previously incomprehensible. So it leaves me no choice but to post more questions for you, to help us carry through with this quest.

The present line of query looks deep into the possibility of having good architecture. what is the scope of an architect to actually "preach" good architecture in between the constraints of the driving market forces, and in between the laws passed by the authorities which standardize all new thinking into a formula?

Also what role does a critic play in re-establishing good architecture to its former self?

While looking for these answers we came across the question that at which point in time and for which reasons that architecture had this fall to becoming mere buildings, and why did the architects, students and patrons of it gave in to this “phenomenon?”

We are also looking at replication - both as a necessity in terms of development and as an evil (copy paste architecture, buildings without context), so we would also like your opinion on "is replication necessary?,” or let me rephrase "is replication” the only way to create an architectural brand name, is it necessary to have an architect replicate his own buildings in order to continue the quest for good architecture?

Is it in the hands of these architects that the future of this endangered species we call "architecture" rests on?

I know that our present line of query is a lot more specific and will require deep thoughts of yours to comment on, but to the practicality of college submissions which requires us to submit our draft reports this Monday, which would be incomplete without your comments. I know that is is a huge imposition but we are now desperate to get your comments on the above queries after we read your previous ones.

Thanking you

Frank Lloyd Wright said on numerous occasions that “America will never have an organic architecture until is has an organic culture.” In terms of your questions, this is the good news and the bad news. What Wright meant is that architecture is the expression of a culture. Even a great and innovative architect emanates from a culture even if rejecting it and ultimately capable of effecting it. The predominate culture will have a great influence on what you will be able to build - or not. The market place - to the extent it is free - reflects its culture. Now, as you have pointed out, we have the emergence of a global market which is overlaying a planet made up of many cultures. This is producing many anomalies and some interesting synergies. The global market is not totally free and is greatly influenced, out of proportion in terms of representation and value produced, by special interests groups. Even as it smothers, however, this globlism opens many avenues for direct person-to-person contact and value exchange. On a personal level, you need 300 to 500 clients to make a lifetime of great work. In times past, you had to work mostly within the confines - both limiting and supporting - of the culture you happened to have been born into. Or, you had to leave home to seek better conditions. Now, you can “reach” out to a globe and find minds and souls of like kind. The best strategy is to promote freedom for all and exercise your franchise within this expanding universe of options and opportunity.

There is not doubt that we are in a period of cultural confusion and that a great deal of damage is being done in the name of the global economy. Thus far in human history, popular culture as tended to be crass and crude. And this is popular culture on steroids. It is a reflection of the general WILL which you have discussed. We have today, as imperfect as it is, more billions with the ability to exercise more degrees of freedom than ever before. Along with exploitation, we are experiencing the gusto of these billions as they exercise these freedoms in ways perhaps immature and damaging in the long run. People do learn and they learn quickly. And, you can only truly learn when you are free. If you are free you can vote poorly be it an election or the spending of your money. If you are truly free, within the limits of directly harming others, you cannot be forced to act in certain ways or to do or not do certain things. If you are free, however, you can choose not to get captured by it all and present better alternatives to this market place. You can trust your perception and skill and you can learn to trust your fellow humans. New markets can be created. New ideas can be sent out into the world. New (and very old) values can be lived and thus demonstrated. Find those of like mind and put your vision out into the world and build all that you can to exemplify it. Do not conform and compromise because this is the slow death. This is the only way you can fail.

You can see now why I asked the questions I did of each of you at the end of iteration two [link: iteration two questions]. Remember what is a compromise for one of you is not necessarily the same for another. Compromise is solely an issue of personal integrity. Did you follow you vision and live your beliefs - or not? Do not try to compare yourself to one another or to any architect. Compare your actions to your true intent.

With these preliminary comments, I will tackle some of the issues you have raised and the finish with a summary.

What IS the Role of the Architect

First, the steward of a long and great tradition. Second, an artist who builds examples which objectify and extend that tradition. Third, a theorist and teacher who freely passes on what has been learned, what the art is and how it can be advanced. Fourth, an exemplar of a practice model that is one way to do the art in the reality of a specific time and place.

In the making of architecture there are many valid practice models. No matter the model that any architect may choose to practice, however, the architect must have the ability to act as a system integrator across the entire scope of tasks requires to take a concept from inception to built reality. In that this role can also be fulfilled by a number of others in the complex web which is required to do a project, this does not mean that the architect has to be the integrator in every case. Without this skill, and without the judgment of when and to what degree to do this, a work will always be at risk of failure. Without the knowledge required to be the integrator, the architect is reduced to being a mere designer thereby giving up a great deal of what is required to produce authentic work.

In the old days this systems integration role would have been called “Master Builder” and this is as good a title as any. It implies mastery of the entire process. This also means the economics of the building which requires far more than adhering to budget. Today, the “building” process is much more than what happens on site. It requires understanding of the entire supply chain and of a complete design-build-use process. As the scope of architecture has expanded, the practical role of the modern architect has shrunk. This gap has been filled with a deterministic project management model and accountancy. The single greatest cost of a modern building is the multiple overlapping and often conflicting layers of organizations “required” to bring it into being. No one would organize a modern business the way a large construction project is “organized” by habit. In this muddle, the architect is lost and so is architecture except in extraordinary and very often super expensive cases. It is exceedingly rare to meet an “architect” who shows any interest in this subject at all. Many are hostile to the very conversation. This evasion of the legitimate role of the architect lies at the root of the problem we face.

Markets

The most important thing to remember is that markets are made not just served. Real innovation creates new markets and this act restructures old ones. This has both good and bad consequences depending on how this is done. It is one thing to praise “creative destruction” when you earn 500,0000 USD a year and it is another when it means the water you depend on to live is now owned by a multinational and costs you 30 percent of your income. Creative destruction is taking all of the consequences into account and factoring them into the solution.

Markets are not sacred nor are they Nature. The are a human invention. They are never perfect. They are the most efficient way known for large numbers of people to exercise choice in complex situations. They are a great tool of and container of economies. Markets can be much more ecological than they are today. At present, markets are far to simple, subject to control (and not just by government) and woefully lacking in adequate feedback mechanisms. They have not been designed well. Nor have they been designed for everyone. These are issues which can be redressed.

With all of there flaws and deliberately induced distortions, markets can be the most democratic social mechanism we have. They can be employed to solve problems that otherwise defy solution. Of all markets, the marketplace of ideas and commerce we call the Internet is most powerful tool that a young architect can employ to both attract and execute good work. Developing your skills with this tool is as important as learning to draw. With this tool you can research, communicate and publish. You can reach more people, authentically, in a matter of a few years, than you can in a lifetime without it. It breaks the bottleneck of publishing which is one of the biggest barriers a young architect faces. If you consider that the vast number of people in the world will never see what you build (no matter how high a profile a structure it is) - that all they well see is an image - then you realize that the making of that image is a critical aspect of the art of architecture. Media is an art. It is increasingly an integral aspect of architecture and it is the principle means by which unique architecture is experienced throughout the world.

Old marketing ideas are beginning to dominate the web. The web is about conversation not selling. Do not use it a tool to hype your work - this is be only a short term advantage which will accrue a long term liability. The principles of authenticity that apply to making architecture apply to making your web site. Share yourself and your ideas. Let your site grow organically not by lists and seeking to manipulate the search engines. Show your work - explain it. Stake out a place in the future world where you can contribute. Build your real brand not what someone tells you will sell. Be patient. Your ValueWeb will form naturally and it will be a strong one.

Both the words ecology and economic come from the same Greek root which means “house.” This is why to pit ecology and economy against one another is a show of ignorance. The soul-body dichotomy is an equally dangerous meme as it plays out through the mind of Humanity. Likewise virtual reality and reality are not to be treated differently. Your presence on the web is you and to vast number of people it is the only you they will even know. In the past one’s public persona was made up by reporters and other members of broadcast media. Some choose to hire P.R. people to “create” an image. Now, this is yours to do and to be responsible for the result. Of course, you cannot control what others think or do with what you publish. This is the global market of ideas. You do control how you respond to their response. It is the engagement which matters. Even those who disagree yet engage one another effect one another.

The web also serves another important social function. It is memory. No matter your contribution now the greater part of it may be decades even centuries in the future. Something you publish may spark another mind and an idea long latent will spring to life in a new time and context to be rendered in a new way. What we know of our legacy is a few buildings and some texts. What if we had their full message. Of course, it still is here/now but few have taken the time and practiced the discipline to see/remember it. Everything speaks and the web - even in its infant state - increasingly speaks to the whole world in a language they can now employ.

Laws and Codes

Laws and codes become necessary when practices descend to such a level that individual health and commonwealth becomes endangered. This is unfortunate as these same laws and codes become minimum standards which define a mediocrity that the unimaginative and unethical can hide behind. Innovation becomes stifled and the architectural product becomes stagnant and reduced to a commercial commodity of narrow dimensions.

There two ways out of this Catch 22; one is to turn rigid codes which are too much specific-solution oriented to measurable performance standards-specifications leaving the means more open to innovation. There is already a drift in this direction. We need to go further and much faster with this. The other is for the profession to take a much greater role in setting standards and policing itself. I know of no one who thinks the state-of-the-art is all that good yet everything built (in the “developed” parts of the world) is built by an “architect.” Has the profession sold itself short?

An alternative way would be to abandon laws and codes altogether and force the market to get much smarter with the process of buying and employing architecture. In the long run this may be the best strategy. In the short run this might be a dangerous and time consuming process that is perhaps not the highest priority to take on, at present, in regards the total human agenda. Codes have become a real barrier to progress. On a day to day basis they are not so much an obstacle. However, in terms of long range innovation they are. Laws and codes also tilt the field in favor of the large scale producer who can afford the battles. This pushes the young innovator out and makes change difficult if not impossible on the local level. Alternatives are made illegal without regard to merit. Innovation is killed before it can get started.

I have to say, however, that laws and codes are often everyone’s whipping boy and used for a convenient excuse for lack of diligence and performance. Like taxes, they become the reason why everything is wrong. This is a fallacy. There may be - and there are - better ways to deal with the issues important to codes but removing them without having a better system in place will cause things to decline not improve. My policy is to work with, as colleagues - not enemies, the people whose job it is to enforce codes and seek better codes within the existing system. Eventually, when our profession grows up, we may be able to eliminate codes and find better ways to ensure standards and safety while supporting responsible experiment and innovation.

The Critic and the Rules of Proper Criticism

Art requires critics yet is rarely graced with good ones.

T.S. Elliot, writing a criticism on criticism, said that there are four steps that must be taken to render a proper criticism: First, the good (ideal) must be stated in clear terms. Second, this definition must be supported by works of long standing which have endured because of their intrinsic values. Third, the work in question has to be shown in regards how it meets or exceeds these ideal standards and also how it fails to do so. Last, the critic must suggest, in specific terms, how the work can be improved to better achieve the ideal. This is, of course, a complete process the aim of which is improvement of the art, and the process of making it, not tearing down the maker or enforcing a narrow dogma on the population.

For the masthead of this paper I choose a very famous building. One of a few that almost everyone in the world would recognize. It is generally regarded as one of the most beautiful and well executed buildings in the world. Works like this from the history of the world and from modern times, when studied together, allow little opportunity for dogma. The principles which make them great can be derived and generalized, and, applied to work in progress. New principles, new idioms and new expressions can be tested by this legacy without the old dominating or excluding the new. It is the internal essence which must be understood not the exterior manifestation.

Modern criticism fails to meet Elliot’s criteria. This is especially true in the majority of architectural schools. In the public realm there are too many hidden agendas and axes to grind - a sane discourse does not exist. This condition casts architecture loose on the seas of change without a rudder. Architects are too often defending false and unsubstantiated attacks rather than getting systematic, useful and intelligent feedback. The public is caught in the middle of this also cut adrift with no way to navigate the cultural storms. “Taste” rules.

It will be a great day when the true critic returns.

The Phenomenon of Mere Buildings

There are historical examples where “mere buildings” have made fine environments. There is no reason why this cannot be true today. We have many industries where there product design is of the highest quality and we have a thriving crafts community working everywhere on earth.

There is no reason and no excuse for ugly, poorly constructed, unhealthy and sub-standard habitats. They exist because we accept them. They exist because we dishonor those who in many cases are forced to live in them. In many of these cases, people are not allowed to build themselves and the cannot afford to live in works built by true professionals. So, they get the architectural dregs. It should be noted that “indigenous” architecture requires a healthy culture and a long tradition in a stable ecology. The average home or workplace is not indigenous it is a commodity to be bought and sold a condition which accurately reflects the circumstance of its occupants.

We have to ask ourselves if we support the actions - and there are many of them - which give rise to “mere buildings.” And, we have to ask who is responsible for the conditions which give rise to these actions. Building affordable housing, while worthy and an improvement of sorts, changes little. Why in this period of great affluence cannot people house themselves with dignity, comfort and safety? Why cannot this work be serine and beautiful? Humans have been building shelter for 10,000 years - is this process still a mystery?

A building does not have to be expensive to be beautiful. It does not have to be great in size and features to have amenity. Little that we have learned recently, as distinct from the several millennia before, prepares us to better set a building gently upon the Earth. The purpose of a system is its output. Ghettos are one out put of our cultural-economic system although we do not like to admit this. We have different kinds. We have the displaced millions. The ghettos of chronic poverty. We have low income working-poor and middle class subdivisions and high income gated “communities.” These are all ghettos. Admittedly the later ones more preferable, healthy and self-imposed. Nevertheless, they have more in common than differences. Architecture remains, after all these thousands of years, the province of the elite and a few very determined individuals will to take substantial risks to accomplish their dream. The Architect earns by what is essentially still a patronage system. Is this strange in a society where a world class computer can be manufactured for a 100 USD? Where slums have TVs? I think we have different models operating here. It is 2007 and architects, the housing “industry” and governments have run out of excuses and are merely coasting on social inertia. Our problem is not technical. Our problem is not knowledge. Our problem is organizational and it is is ethical.

In the 1960s I was able to get the time to build for a standard 20 foot by 40 foot swimming pool, with heating and automatic cleaning, down to 22 crew hours. The size of the crew ranged from 1 to 7 for different phases of the work and averaged three. Completion of the work was guaranteed to be finished in a week and was of very high quality. The cost of the pool was 4,000 USD in 1970. I concluded from this and nearly 20 years of building experience that 75 percent of the time and 50 percent of the cost of housing was non-value-added expense. Today this same pool costs 40,000 USD and typically takes three months to build. In 1999 the head of the North American Honda Supply Chain organization told me they still considered 30 percent of the cost of a new Honda to be pure waste. Honda is generally considered to be a good manufacturing company. I do not believe anyone would claim that the building industry is anywhere near as efficient as a world class car company. My claim of 75 percent time waste and 50 percent cost was has be dismissed for 35 years even though the point was demonstrated over several years by building over 2,500 pools a year. Until we take the waste out of “mere building” here will be no chance for architecture in the majority of buildings built on this planet. The wealthy will always get architecture - they can afford it and they know how to buy it. If the architect does not learn how to build, and to bring systematic innovation to the building process, conditions will remain as they are. “Mere Buildings” may be one of the great opportunities for architecture in the 21st century.

Replication, Brand Name and Copy and Paste “Architecture”

We live in an over-hyped, winner-take-all economy. We have adapted the false belief that people compete with another in this economy. They do not. We each seek to find the buyer who is looking for what we have uniquely to offer. As creatives, we do not complete because each of use is unique and different and therefore - when we are exercising our specific and greatest gifts - competition is impossible. Work and products which have been reduced to being a commodity “compete” only in the sense that they best match the buyer’s wishes. Anything which has become completely a commodity can compete only on cost. Truly creative work stands outside this definition and circumstance.

Professionals - of all kinds - have a fiduciary duty to their clients and, on certain levels, to society at large. In this sense they are not a business and cannot succumb to functioning as such even by the rules of good business practices. Their duty is higher than this. This includes how they treat one another. The relationship between architects should be helpful, sharing and non combative. Criticism should be professional, authentic and designed to encourage and help not demean and destroy. I, personally, do not believe that architects should advertise, promote, market nor sell their work. Nor, should they compete with one another for work. They should educate and build the best they can and allow the client to choose unbiased by propaganda of any kind. This is, of course, not considered practical in today’s world. It certainly will cost anyone who follows this aspect of practice a great deal of work. Ends and means, however, cannot be separated. Architecture, of all enterprises, is the concrete expression of this principle. A great work does not start with a distorted beginning. Means are the beginning and the end.

When a architect creates a work deemed to be great - and lets assume for the moment that it truly is a great work - s/he becomes - often, not always - famous. Then the pressures mount. Rewards, invitations, acceptance, more work. Like an actor who has become “typed” by a famous role, each client wants another like the great one - only more so. There is pressure to produce more and more. Firms grow quickly with little adequate training. The normal desire to achieve gives way to the lust for more and more success. One tries to make up for the “wasted” years. The pressure mounts until you become a clishe of yourself. One starts to believe their own P.R. In Cybernetics this is called a positive feedback loop - the enemy of stability.

Some start down this path and pull out in time. Some avoid it all together. Many get sucked into the vortex. Too often, authenticity and creativity are the first victims of fame. It is a sad affair in our society because without fame you do not get good work - often you do not get any work at all. Worst perhaps, you get many projects with little time and resource to do them well and then you are “dropped” as the crowd goes on to to the next novelty. These factors temp architects to employ extraordinary means to attract attention and thus work. It drives the star system. It rewards, grand gestures. And, it leads to the great “corporate” firms which base their brand on being the antithesis of all this: safe, normal, good but rarely spectacular; profitable, solid, corporate. It is often saddening and more often amusing when the “Signature” architects team up with the corporate architects to do a complex work like Ground Zero.

This is a system. It is wired into the fabric of the consumer society. What could be said to someone who became trapped in this way? You bought into, perhaps, the “lone-wolf, great-man” myth. You believed you had to “win” and others “lose.” You thought that architecture was only the sum of the individual great works and that the trash could be ignored. You adapted, uncritically, the manners and values of those who brought you the opportunities. You thought that just a few more projects and you could “get back” to what you truly loved. In the West, you were taught these things and now these social memes are spreading throughout the world not unlike the diseases the Europeans brought to the “Americas” and with the same consequences: the loss of cultures.

The making of Authentic Architecture is extremely hard work. Making cliches of great works gets easier and easier. The mediocre requires just mediocre effort. In a world of flash and splash guess what prevails. What is needed now is practical idealism based on first hand experience. How is it that it is possible to get a Master’s degree in architecture without even ever having built a building let alone a work of architecture by an measure of it?

Another aspect of your “cut and paste” question is the vast body of mediocre work that is produced. This is almost always cut and paste work although it seems that even the copy machine is broken. This is a world of fads, fake materials, forms, styles and sometimes incompetence on a level that it seems beyond imagination. It is a place where cliches are made out of cliches which were made out of cliches. In the U.S. this arena is emerging into a “new” nostalgic style - a complete distortion and betrayal of the spirit of Pattern Language. Now, basically competent firms are beginning to design in this way. I do not know if they believe in it or if it is the simple fact that there is little work of another kind. This work is developing its own cannons. This goes beyond cut and paste. All you have to do it hack the floor plan to fit the lot size and change the name on the drawings. On the streetscape level it was once possible to go for blocks and see nothing but franchise architecture side by side. This abuse of the commons is now giving way to the new “improved” order where the franchise are more discreetly “integrated” into the master streetscape cliche discretely rendered in “Italian,” Spanish” “Colonial” or some other world that never was and - to the extent that it was - people did everything they could to get out of it. This is consumer symbolism. No awareness or thought necessary. Made for TV by TV. A Reality Show for the rest of us. A modern factory of consumption the output of which is wage-slaves who go to bed every night afraid they cannot pay their bills while living in the richest economies in the known history of the world. All this requires several SUVs per family and meanwhile the earth burns. Nero was a slacker.

Meanwhile, there is pure “modernism.” Much cleaner. Much more better done. Much more “honest.” Much more expensive. A paragon of new technology. Not, by any measure I know, more human. Just as stylistic and rigid as the “trash” and certainly more elite. This is very iconic stuff. The problem is that the first “impact” turns out to be the last. There is nothing there. And, inside the same old brands or, in the workplace, tome-like workstations. This is catalog architecture nicely wrapped in glass packages some times twisted into unbelievable contortions to prove, I can only guess, that it can be done. Technique is now to be called architecture, it seems.

In Whose Hands is Architecture?

We are all responsible for Architecture. We all create it and use it. The Architect is the steward of this craft. I do not believe that the role of the architect is to crank out, project after project, what is essentially the same kind of building over and over - no matter the setting. I believe the architect - as any professional in any field should do - is to push the state-of-the-art, set standards, teach and pass on that art to a broader population. To create habitat is a human competency that everyone should achieve a measure of success in doing. To “professionalize” architecture so that the average person is only a helpless, passive recipient of it is to demean the art and to place it into the hands of an elite who will gradually choke it to death while fighting over its control. Architecture is the most social of all the arts. It thrives when all members of society get involved in its making and use.

You asked “at which point in time and for which reasons that architecture had this fall to becoming mere buildings, and why did the architects, students and patrons of it gave in to this ‘phenomenon?’” This is a long story as I am sure that you know. I will address it in context of the time starting when I entered architecture and my experience of working predominately in the USA over the last half century. The issue is philosophical in nature not technical. It is my experience that there is a great deal more ability and desire to do good work than the results which we see around us indicate. After WWII, we lost a generation to rapid growth, consumerism, complex financial and social systems and economic hedonism which is now to be seen in a rabid case of run away globalism. This is an abuse and miss application of the idea of free markets which actually disguises the reality of state-capitalism which is not free nor is it capitalism in the original meaning of the term. Systematic exploitation has become the norm and this is not the environment for the production of authentic complex social art. This environment also drives the eco-centric, competitive, star-system of what we now call “signature architects.” After WWII, schools in the main did not teach architecture they forced students into a mold based on one opinion of it with they had to accept or fail. The role of the architect was reduced to being a designer in a complex system controlled by money and the developer. This produced a generation of frustrated and cynical practitioners most of whom had to settle of a life of doing work they neither understood not liked. Some few “escaped” to become “stars” and fell into their own traps. A few found their way to a niche where they could do good work in relative obscurity and low financial reward. Architecture gave way to real estate. Competition for the few good opportunities resulted in architects spending more effort competing with one another than working to protect and extend their art. The few great architects who survived where alternately worshiped and torn down. The complexity of the system outstripped the ability of the profession to stay on top of what was happening. To survive local groups of architects, builders, corporate project managers and suppliers form tight cabals doing everything they could to keep out completion while giving the appearance of openness and following the rules of the game as stated. This happened in a philosophical vacuum and when the doctrine of compromise was dominate.What is now called the “global economy” started in a few Western countries and was invented out of whole cloth in a matter of decades and went global in the last 20 years often destroying local traditions and culture. Modernism failed, became post-modernism, post this and that, decontructionism. And now, the nameless exaggerated gesture without meaning that we see today going up all over the world, with little care or symphony - often in economies which are going though wrenching change. This has all happened in half a century. Think of your last year in school and multiply times 50. This is how fast it has been. This has not been a time of thought, of caring, of finding and developing deep values. It has not been a time of thinking about consequences, about the value of life about our planet or our future. It has been a time of exploitation and get rich quick short term thinking. After WWII, we got our hands on some of the power of the gods while remaining children. Alternative viewpoints and paths were simply overwhelmed and ignored. Our architecture, in the generic sense, reflects these “values” brilliantly.

It all happened by default, I think. Personally, I think Humanity will look back upon this time and consider it a blight. In absolute terms we have progressed in many ways. Measured against what we could have achieved, I think it has been a great lost opportunity and collective failure, as well as, an exceedingly non-moral time.

The profession of architecture failed to act as a steward. To many of its members got caught up in the gold rush of fame, money and fabulous architectonic opportunities. There is nothing wrong with success and wealth. There is nothing wrong with the occasional building, all limits and costs set aside, that pushes the state of the art for the sake of creating new possibilities. These are consequences not causes or even means. When they become an end in themselves a profession is distorted. Genius is destroyed or corrupted. Talent is put to base tasks and the real work fads buried under a heap of mundane works sprinkled with a few over wrought efforts. Authenticity can no longer be found.

I do hope that you are not discouraged by my criticism of present circumstances. This is a world full of opportunities and it is slowly waking up. All that I have critiqued has come in 50 years. It can be replaced in 50 years. Rebuilding Planet Earth As a Work of Art - in co-design with Giaia - is our task ahead. This task means preserving - not copying - the 10,000 year legacy which we have inherited. It is a good task to have and it falls to this generation. True, we are not prepared for it. This also can be rectified. True we cannot understand and control this task. This is not necessary. It is emergent and we have to be requisite with it not dominate. This is the next cycle of Architecture and it is a critical one. It is no longer just building some lovely pieces here and there and calling it a practice. It is integrating the parts to the whole - the local to the globe - the past to the present to the future. Architecture is built philosophy and we see our philosophy all around us. It is consuming the Earth. Yet, we have so many great traditions to draw on and the ability to create new ones. We have to stop competing traditions and ideas and start synthesizing them. This is what an architect does. This is what architecture expresses. This is what we must do.

I will finish this with a personal story. A long time ago, in 1960, I wrote a letter to Bruce Goff. I asked him some questions about architecture and expressed my passion for this great art and asked may questions about the quest upon which I was embarking. He wrote back and told me of an old Japanese poem - I cannot remember it now - about seeking out those of like mind for learning and encouragement and to defeat loneliness. He invited me to his Studio - in the Price Tower in Bartlesville, Okalahoma - and gave me a week of 18 hour days of dialog about architecture, music, art and philosophy. It was the most intense and rewarding educational experience of my life. I remember, at the end, thanking him for his time and attention on my behalf. He looked at me with surprise and said “Oh no - thank you!” I did not understand this at the time and pondered his remark on the plane back to california. Upon my return I finished a design which you can see below.

It remained un built which greatly disappointed me at the time. You can read the story of the Cooper House and my week with Goff by clicking on the drawing. There is a great deal of my youth wrapped up in it. I have enjoyed responding to your questions. I hope that I have been abe to give to you a measure of what he so freely gave to me. Remember, the enterprise of ARCHITECTURE is not bound up only in any one of us. It is a tradition that goes back on this planet at least 10,000 years. It is a continuity of which we are a part. We love it, contribute to it and pass on what we have learned. In doing so we bind one time to another and one culture to another. In doing so we express what is most human about us. We express life and lift it up. Success is to be measured in these terms and these terms only. And so, I thank you for your questions and your diligence. You have refreshed me greatly.

GoTo part One • GoTo part Two • GoTo INDEX

Matt Taylor
Nashville
October 8, 2007

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• VISION • PHILOSOPHY •
• PROGRAM •

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posted: October 8, 2007

revised: October 15, 2007

• 20071008.190911.mt • 20071015.878787.mt •

note: this document is about 75% finished