So… I get it. Trying to start a conversation about architecture doesn’t always get the juices flowing with most people. Architecture is one of those subjects that tends to be rather interesting when you’re standing in the physical presence of great design, but rather dry when discussed in the abstract. That’s understandable. Art should be that way - much more engaging and meaningful when seen in person rather than studied academically.
But architecture is different from most other forms of art. To truly appreciate its profound affects, you can’t simply look at it, you must occupy it. Approach it, enter it, travel through it. And it is everywhere. We all work, play, worship, escape to, relax and simply live the vast majority of our lives in buildings, whether we realize it or not. Some of those buildings are of fantastic, unique and special design. 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.
And yet so many of those buildings where we spend so much of 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, much like the movie Office Space, You might have arrived there after walking down a featureless 5 foot wide double-loaded corridor (more on those at another time), having climbed up the stairs to your second floor office after walking through a standard suburban office park atrium lobby, typically an open-air two story space with some pathetic little 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 echoing hard surfaces made of mostly metamorphic stones and tiles, each of these spaces looking so drearily like so many others.
My point is that we don’t have to accept mediocrity in our lives so passively, especially in the public realm. 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? What does it mean to have an environmentally sustainable structure? I want to begin sharing some ideas about all of these things and more over the next few entries because they affect all of us in ways subtle and not so subtle. And maybe in the meantime, some of you can share your favorite buildings and your experiences with them.
Architecture is everywhere around you. In order to take it in, you only need to open up your eyes and open up your mind. Let’s all start looking up.