Greetings YouTube viewers.
My name is Andrew Richard Gipe.
And today, I present to you, the illustrated
polemic which I submitted as a thesis to qualify
for the degree of Masters of Architecture
at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in
the spring of 2015.
The title of this work is “Architecture
of Community: an Advocation for the Preservation
of Culture” and it was conceived as a product
of three distinct operational priorities.
The first was to clarify the nature of my
relationship with contemporary modes of teaching
and practicing the discipline of architecture;
to understand my position as a designer, in
context, by developing a proposition about
the role and significance of my professional
capabilities.
My second priority was to propose an alternative
method of educating aspiring architectural
professionals.
And my third priority was to take this course
myself and to administer a workshop with design
students from local architecture schools,
implementing experimental exercises distilled
from the course program.
After passing out a syllabus and the two project
briefs which constitute the whole of my alternative
course proposal, I began my presentation.
It was 5pm on May 15th in Room 123 of Gund
Hall.
Today, I’d like to explain the history of
this course, its reason for being, and the
relevance of its position to your education
as professionals, and, more importantly, to
your own personal quests for self-awareness.
I designed this course as a reaction to the
evident deficits of contemporary architectural
education,
particularly here, at the Harvard Graduate
School of Design.
But before I elaborate, I’d like to give
some clarity and precision to my communication.
When I talk about “architecture”
I’m talking about a human mastery, αρχηγία,
Of tectonic elements, τεκτόνων,
Made possible by technology.
I’m suggesting that we experience architecture
physically, sensorially, as the built environment,
that it first of all satisfies our basic human
needs for survival, as defined by 20th Century
American psychologist Abraham Maslow in his
Theory of Human Motivation,
For shelter, safety, hygiene, and comfort,
And that when it does, we call it functional,
utilitarian.
Architecture can also perform as a medium
for the expression of human values, those
relationships we have with activities, concepts,
or other living things which fulfill us physically
AND psychologically.
As in man’s relationship with nature.
Evidenced by the cultivation of the Corinthian
order in Ancient Greece,
Or by traditional Chinese construction methods,
which, similar to their two-dimensional, hieroglyphic
derivatives, capitalize architecturally on
the meaningfulness of the relationship between
man and local botanies.
This is Ekphrasis, the Greek word for the
physical expression of an idea.
Architecture is utilitarian when it is satisfying
basic human needs.
And ekphrastic when it is physically expressing
a human value.
By the way, I’m deliberately not using the
word “form” because form is an existential
imperative; whereas both “utility” and
“ekphrasis” imply an intent.
In other words, every thing has a form; but
not every form expresses an idea.
The emphasis of this course will be on ekphrasis,
and its relationship to human values.
For the purposes of our discussion, we will
consider the culture of community to be the
stronghold of human values.
In the words of Lewis Mumford, “if the sciences
are to be cultivated anew with respect for
a definite hierarchy of human values… the
sciences [architecture included] must be focused
again upon particular local communities, and
the problems which they offer for solution.”
Like a perpetual peer review of what’s right
and wrong, or beyond good and evil, culture
is the product of man’s collaborative attempt
to define what is meaningful.
It’s important to note that cultural values
can only be cultivated by a community of people.
And this condition is inherent to the definition
of community.
A community of people first of all shares
common purpose and common sense.
People working together because they need
each other to produce enough food to survive
is an exhibition of common purpose.
A homeless man returning a lost wallet full
of credit cards and pin numbers is an exhibition
of common sense.
Individuals in a community develop these shared
characteristics by regularly and spontaneously
communicating and communing directly with
one another.
If they don’t, it’s not a community.
Moreover, a community must be limited in size.
In order for people to know one another in
an intimate way, and to be considered as one
entity, there can’t be too many of them.
According to Aristotle, “ten people would
not make a city, and with a hundred thousand
it is a city no longer… it is quite clear
that is not possible to live with and to share
oneself among a large number of people.”
And the reason for this is self-evident; “the
cognitive limit to the number of individuals
with whom any one person can maintain stable
relationships is around one-hundred and fifty.”
Simply put, you can’t know everyone.
Lastly, and most importantly, in this age
of mass media,
we have to be very aware and critical of the
distinction between culture and propaganda.
Between a community of people and a mass of
individuals.
What do I mean?
Well culture, is a dynamic value system, measured
at the scale of generations, and of which
a community of people is the generative medium.
It is cultivated through intimate and spontaneous
social interaction by individuals in the community,
and manifested in the cultural media which
characterize the identity of a place.
Essentially, many people, in communion with
one another, one entity, knowing what they
want and how they collectively identify, produces
a cultural expression.
Propaganda, on the other hand, is also a dynamic
value system,
measured at the scale of whatever turnaround
time its technological medium is capable of
(for architecture it may be years, for TV
months or days, and for the Internet, hours
and minutes).
Its qualities are determined by whichever
individuals control and influence social media,
so that the process is reversed.
If this individual were a modern developer,
for example, he might propagate his own idea
about what the architecture of the place should
be and the people living there, though free
to express their opinions about it, have little
to no influence over its outcome.
Jacques Ellul, French philosopher and sociologist
of the mid 20th Century, writes in his book
Propaganda, that “When individuals are not
held together by local structures, the only
form in which they can live together is in
an unstructured mass society.”
Liberated from community, in other words,
the individual is directly exposed to integration
into society, psychologically overwhelmed,
and subsequently becomes an eager beneficiary
of propaganda, or gets the hell out of Dodge,
or some combination of the two.
Propaganda is also intended to be provocative
and superficial.
“The problem,” writes Ellul, “is to
create an irrational response on the basis
of rational and factual elements.
Then, the facts, the data, the reasoning – are
all forgotten, and only the impression remains.”
The GSD’s ongoing advertising campaign is
a convincing exhibition of these qualities.
And, very importantly, these catch phrases,
and this slogan, which are intended to characterize
the influence of the school, weren’t cultivated
here by the students.
They were generated by a graphic design firm
in Canada.
Which brings us back to a key point; alternatively,
you have a mass of individuals, without a
collective identity, facing the entire society,
each on his own, sorting through answers which
propaganda makes readily available.
If you live in such a social context, you
will be used to hearing, “I have my opinion,
you have your opinion.
I live in the way that I want.
You live in the way that you want.”
Or in the context of architectural discourse,
“I have my opinion about what constitutes
good design.
I design how I want.”
“You have your opinion about what constitutes
good design.
You design how you want.”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is context without
culture.
So what does this have to do with architecture?
Well today, I’m advocating that architecture
ought to be an expression of cultural values.
I’m proposing that the profession furthermore
endeavor to generate its own value system.
And most importantly, that these two considerations
be taught as fundamental components of an
architect’s education.
On the GSD’s website, are available the
syllabi of the four studios that constitute
the core curriculum of the architecture program.
They are replete with pedagogies which emphasize
various methodologies but show no trace of
a qualitative evaluation of the relevance
of those methodologies to human needs and
values.
How to design a hidden room between spaces,
How to generate a coherent geometric logic
by examining thermodynamic principles,
How to exercise the tensions between fenestration,
shading, interior room plans, and circulatory
logics,
How to achieve a sense of the civic,
How to increase the vitality of the collective
ecology.
To name a few.
Why are these things important for an architect
to be able to do?
What relationship do these methodologies have
to basic human needs and motivations?
How will these capabilities enable us as designers
to express cultural values?
You’ve already thought of answers.
I thought of some myself actually.
But this is precisely my point.
These questions and the speculation they provoke
should be explicitly addressed in the core
curriculum of this profession.
OR
We stop claiming to have influence in areas
for which we have no deliberate professional
and academic training or experience.
Because we can’t seriously address the inequities
between the rich and poor nations of the world,
for example, by parametrically designing a
hidden room.
Can we?
Maybe.
Let’s talk about how.
The importance of re-considering the relationship
between architecture and the needs and values
of the people it purports to serve is paramount.
Consider the anecdote of the architect and
the hallway.
A client seeks out an architect and asks him
for help with a problem.
“I’m the superintendent of a school,”
the client says.
“And every day at 3 o’clock,”
“the hallways fill with students and the
result is chaos.”
You can barely move through the hall.”
“Don’t worry,” the architect says.
“I’m the right guy for you.”
The architect studies the hallway.
In plan.
In section.
In elevation.
In cognito.
(Site-visit).
And finally, he presents his designs.
“We could expand the hallway,” he says.
“We could raise the roof to let in more
light.
Students could see more clearly and get around
better.”
“We could consider parametric surfacing
on the interior walls to discreetly convey
a sense of urgency.”
“We could build a second hallway!”
“And divert some of the traffic from this
hallway, to that one!”
“We could…”
“Actually,” says the client.
“We don’t need your help anymore.”
“We’re just going to change the students’
schedules so their classes end at slightly
different times.”
“Thanks anyway.”
“If the only tool you use is a hammer, you
tend to see all your problems as nails.”
The ability to creatively problem-solve constitutes
the essence of a designer’s professional
identity.
Today I’m advocating an educational method
in which this creativity conceptually engages
social needs, even before it’s certain that
the “solution” is a building.
This anecdote also recognizes that our clients
may not always understand what they want,
or fully comprehend the nature of the “problem;”
as I’ve pointed out, in a social context
such as this, that is mostly the case.
Or, and consequently, our clients may ask
us to design something superfluous, environmentally
detrimental, unethical, and so on.
Which is why, architects need a value system
of their own.
In 2008, in Athens, Greece,
In the neighborhood of Exarcheia, a parking
lot became public property.
Since 1972, this parking lot had been temporarily
leased to a private parking attendant from
the Athens city government.
The government, in the meantime, was trying
to figure out what to do with the space.
By 2008, public officials had decided they
were going to erect an office building and
started looking for an architect to design
it.
The residents of Exarcheia, on the other hand,
had, for over three decades been petitioning
their representatives to demolish the parking
lot and to create a park.
They didn’t want an office building; they
wanted access to light and air and an open
space to socialize and interact.
Put yourself for a moment in the position
of the architect for hire.
Who’s your client?
How do you begin to evaluate this situation?
Would you have accepted this commission from
the government?
If you think “sure, why not?” you’re
in good company.
In any case, the community of Exarcheia didn’t
wait around to find out.
On the 7th of March, 2009, before the government
could break ground with their office building
project, residents of the neighborhood, removed
the asphalt themselves and planted a variety
of vegetation, transforming a government parking
lot into a public park in less than 12 hours.
There’s a lesson here.
The amoral technocratic heroes of this profession
who have witnessed the death of cultural identity
in their lifetimes and done nothing, continue
to be celebrated, acclaimed, and emulated.
When I interviewed Inaki Abalos, the chair
of the GSD’s architecture department, he
insisted that the school “shouldn’t try
to have an impact on the morality or ethics
of its students; it should teach them
techniques; and they can decide for themselves
how to use them.”
To clarify his position, he had this to say
about Hitler’s architect Albert Speer,
And quickly added, “but he was a terrible
person.”
Consider the difference between saying this
and saying instead, Albert Speer was a terrible
architect, but he made some impressive designs.
When I interviewed Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean
of the GSD, about the relevance of teaching
pure parametric form-making, he stated “we
can afford to have studios that have nothing
to do with a social agenda and that’s okay.
Any forms we make here could have some future
social application.”
Is there such a thing as an architecture that
doesn’t have a social application?
Can form-making and the practical and political
relevance of those forms not be addressed
concurrently?
Should they not?
If I ran a structural engineering school and
I told you “we can afford to have classes
that have nothing to do with gravity,” would
you consider my method wise?
The Materialist claim is that design should
be divorced from a conceptual evaluation of
cultural values; because those values are
implicitly embedded in the material conditions
of a place.
I assert that this claim is naïve and untrue.
Visit the fifth floor bathroom here in Gund
hall.
You’ll find toilets, sinks, and an automated
hand dryer.
The Materialist implies therefore that the
culture of a fifth floor bathroom user, like
me, is to use the toilet, wash his hands,
dry them, and to leave.
But actually, until a few months ago, instead
of an automated hand dryer, there was a paper
towel dispenser.
So that another aspect of the culture of fifth
floor bathroom-use was to wash your hands
AND your face, to dry them both with a paper
towel, and then to leave.
The reason that the culture of fifth floor
bathroom users no longer includes washing
of the face, is not because no one on the
fifth floor wants to wash their face, which
is the Materialist’s conclusion, seeing
that the material culture of the bathroom
doesn’t permit this activity; in other words,
you can’t dry your face with an electric
hand dryer,
But because building services replaced the
paper towel dispenser to save money.
Even the value of academic exploration is
usurped by the severity of this separation.
So that when, instead of being encouraged
to engage in dialogous experimentation, to
create a design while simultaneously considering
its social application and value, we are frequently
urged to experiment, to design, and to post-rationalize
our work.
One is the way of culture, of the technically-adept
artist, the other of propaganda, of the overstocked
salesman.
The pedagogy that I’m proposing today re-focuses
the relationship of the architect with the
people he serves and brings political, philosophical,
moral, and ethical questions to the foreground
of academic discourse at a time when it’s
most needed.
Here is a summary of how this pedagogy is
actualized.
The curriculum that I created for this year-long
studio course, which I’ve entitled “Introduction
to Architecture,” challenges students to
design a school for a group of aspiring eutopians.
The school is located in a context with a
traditionally strong sense of community, in
this case, Naupaktos, Greece, and is intended
to be a medium for its clients, this group
of eutopians, to popularize their ideas by
integrating themselves into an existing social
framework (i.e.
Naupaktos).
During the first semester, students work collaboratively
to generate a preliminary design proposal
for the entire project, without considering
the social context of the community into which
they will eventually integrate their school
designs.
Their focus, instead, is first of all on themselves;
Assignment 1 is an investigation of theoretical
and tried utopian value systems, which challenges
students to consider the relationship of historically
diverse cultural contexts to how we live today.
Then, for the remainder of the first semester,
students focus on their relationship with
their client; for Assignment 2, they are given
a list of activities for which they must derive
program by directly engaging the relationship
between space and human activity, and are
furthermore encouraged to propose new program
in accordance with the principles and prospective
ambitions of their clients.
And finally, for Assignment 3, they are introduced
to their project sites for the first time,
and must spatially adapt and resolve the programmatic
relationships they generated in the previous
assignment, culminating in a preliminary design
proposal.
Two important notes: firstly, for the duration
of the course, the professor represents the
clients; he is a mouthpiece for their ambitions
and the reservoir of their principles and
ideologies.
And secondly, the school itself, its program,
is divided into two parts, within walking
distance, one of the other:
site I is located in the city proper, as an
urban infill project
And site II is located in a natural setting,
at the summit of a small mountain.
This dichotomy obliges students, throughout
the year, to consider the relationship of
both man and man, and man and the landscape.
During the second semester, students may choose
to work collaboratively or individually, but
must, at the end of the course, present their
progress independently of one another.
Semester 2 emphasizes the relationship of
the first semester’s design work with the
immediate social context, in this case, with
the community of Naupakto.
It begins with a comprehensive site analysis,
ideally performed on-site (Assignment 4) and
immediately transitions into two detail-oriented
studies:
students first choose specific locations within
their design proposals from Semester 1 and
develop an agenda for how the design of these
locations will integrate the school into the
community (Assignment 5).
They then zoom in even closer to scrutinize
the material and structural characteristics
of each space according to their proposed
agenda (Assignment 6).
In the last six weeks of the semester, students
develop and prepare their work for a final
presentation which is delivered as a reflection
of the entire course sequence,
i.e. “these are the cultural values that
interest and inspire me,” “these are the
conceptual and spatial ambitions of my client,”
“here’s how our team resolved them,”
“this is the context of our design proposal,”
“these selected spaces emphasize the integration
of our proposal into the community,” and
“here’s how they do so.”
And, as with each phase of the studio, the
“success” of student designs is measured
by how thoroughly what they create, embodies,
enables, or expresses the cultural values
of the eutopian community they represent.
So that if, for example, I were presenting
Assignment 6, and my studio were set in the
community of Portsmouth, New Hampshire in
the late 18th Century, (bear with me)
I might explain the relevance of my proposal’s
aesthetic characteristics to the contemporaneous
predominance of the Georgian style in colonial
America; the popular preference for a particular
proportional system or repetition of elements.
But I would also present a conceptual evaluation
of the community’s values.
I would tell you that at this period in history,
Portsmouth is a community of ship captains,
of merchantmen, who are often away from home
for long periods.
And that when they return, they desire to
spend time with their family for several weeks
without being disturbed.
I would explain that every merchantman in
Portsmouth encounters exotic goods in his
dealings, and is familiar with the pineapple
and its associated meanings of hospitality
and welcoming.
And finally, I would propose the design of
a doorway with a pedestal on the lintel above
the door and tell you that this pedestal remains
bare to signify that a captain has returned
from a voyage and is spending private time
with his family.
And that when he is ready to permit visitors,
he inserts a golden pineapple in the molding
above the door and the community is made aware
of his intentions.
A formal, architectural device cultivated
by common behavioral characteristics and a
shared evaluation of the importance of family;
by the way, this was a real project.
This is consideration of design in context.
And it follows in the fresh footsteps of current,
cutting-edge educational paradigms that challenge
the notion of subject-oriented learning with
a carefully-composed cross-disciplinary methodology.
Before I open up to questions, I’d like
to close with one last, reiterative perspective.
When I defined architecture in the beginning
of this presentation, I parenthetically mentioned
the position of technology, as a means for
achieving a mastery of tectonic elements.
Borrowing from these literary authorities,
we might define technology as the terminological
heading for all the knowledge, skills, and
arts derived from industry or implicated in
new technics, which are embodied in tools
and machines to facilitate and abridge human
labor.
The modern provisions of these tools and machines
have so thoroughly accessorized and empowered
us, and especially architects, that judging
solely by what man is capable of doing at
this period in our history, it’s almost
difficult to classify him as a human being.
But the power of advanced technology possesses
an inherent risk.
It makes the satisfaction of an outcome so
conveniently available that we are tempted
to act, to do,
without deeply understanding why, or what
for.
Michel Serres, contemporary French philosopher,
likens man’s relationship with modern technology
to the legend of St. Denis who,
after he was decapitated by the Romans in
the 3rd Century AD, half way up the road to
the peak of Montemartre in Paris,
picked up his head, washed it off,
and carried it the rest of the way up the
hill
to be sanctified at the church of Sacre Coeur.
Serres says that the 21st Century man is also
carrying his own head,
in the form of high technology,
“It is a full head,” he writes, “because
of its enormous stock of information, but
it is also a well-made head, since its search
engines bring up texts and images at a moment’s
notice, and its programs process huge amounts
of data faster than we could ever do ourselves.
We are holding, outside of ourselves, a cognition
that used to be inside us, just as St. Denis
held his head severed from his neck.”
As architects and designers we depend on this
smart, severed head, more now, than ever before;
As a platform for generating drawings and
for exploring three-dimensional space, as
a tool for more quickly and accurately creating
physical models, and now, even as a substitute
for the architect.
But the relevance of these capabilities, as
technically precocious as they may be, remains
unresolved until they are touched with a sense
of human values.
Did you know that since the construction of
Agia Sophia in the 4th Century AD, Greek Orthodox
churches have dimensioned the elements of
their interior spaces according to the physical
dimensions of members of their own community?
When the church of the Hamptons in Long Island,
New York was being designed in 2013,
the tallest man in the congregation was asked
to hold the ceremonial cross, which traditionally
leads processions through the doorway between
the nave and the narthex, and the distance
from the top of the cross (plus a few inches)
to the floor determined the height of the
door.
Why is it this way, you ask?
Because the Greek Orthodox have cultivated
the idea that every member of the community
should be able to participate in the church’s
liturgical ceremonies.
Consider the difference between dimensioning
a doorway by designing it like this and dimensioning
a doorway by, instead, selecting one from
a digital database.
A mastery of tectonic elements isn’t possible
without technology; it is therefore by defining
the terms of our dependence on technology
that we understand our relationship with architecture.
So, what then, is left between our shoulders
after our miraculous beheading?
I suggest to you today, that for the 21st
Century architect and designer, it ought to
be a deeply critical understanding of and
relationship with cultural values, why it
is that we design, what it means to us, and
its relevance to the people we’re designing for.
Thank you very much.
