Are all buildings architecture?
This article is part of The Second Studio Podcast hosted by FAME Architecture & Design.
Desert Palisades guardhouse by Studio AR+D - Photography ©LanceGerber
Buildings, architecture, and Architecture.
DL: Most people think “architecture” means “building”. But there's a difference between a “building”, lowercase “a” “architecture”, and Architecture with a capital “A”. These are three different tiers of structures. What’s the difference?
It’s probably necessary to know the architect has to answer three different questions for every project and that’s the “Why”, the “How”, and the “What”.
Why: Why does the building look the way it looks? Why is it the shape it is? Why does it have the activities it has? Why does it even exist?
How: How is it gonna get constructed (this is solved through design documents and other things)?
What: This is the final building, itself.
A lot of people think of the role of the architect as being primarily about the “How” and the “What”, which is the technical stuff. They think, “You’re an architect, so you must know a lot about structures”. This is true, but I don't think people realize that most of the education of an architect and the thinking needed to produce the capital “A” Architecture, is about the “Why”.
“Really good architecture is more focused on the “Why” question.”
“Why does this thing look the way it looks like?” The answer is not subjective, but it's a much more difficult question to answer than solving a structural kind of question (a “How” question). Architects are more focused—that really good architecture is more focused—on the “Why” questions, which is perhaps, in a certain sense, the most important question because it comes at the beginning.
A “building” [not architecture] is simply that ‘thing’ people think of that has standard, squarish doors and windows. The difference between a building and architecture is when the structure has the “Why” component to it. If there’s some greater meaning behind why it looks the way it does, and why it exists, then it becomes architecture.
MB: So does it come down to how much thinking and meaning and work has been put into coming up with that structure? Let's say that makes it “architecture” versus something that just responds to a need. Like a shelter that's not being designed, it has been done quickly it was just satisfying a function.
DL: To a certain point, yes. There's a list of key aspects of architecture, which we're gonna talk about in a minute. We could say that the difference between “building” and “architecture “is the intent, the quality, and then the impact—and those are kind of chronological.
The intent behind the building has more to do with the creator who made the thing. What was their intention? If they didn't have the intention to question something beyond just solving a functional problem, then the result probably is not architecture. If you’re creating an office building and you're given the program—which is just a specific word for the function of the structure or how it's gonna be used—and you are told you need X number of desks, X number of space for those desks, X number of elevators per code, and X number of stairs in certain places (all really basic fundamental stuff) and you just drop a building based on that information and you don't think any further, then you've created a “building”, you've not created “architecture”. So the intention is important.
Then the second thing is quality. It's to say that—and this is a little more loosey-goosey—when a building goes past a certain level of quality, then it starts to become architecture.
Capital “A” architecture is probably reserved for when you are critiquing society and you're producing Architecture as a response to that… as an expression of that criticism. Let’s say you're designing an office building, and it's just a very nice, very well-done, and well-executed structure. Let’s say there's an open space floor plan and we're cutting through floors so you can see down multiple floors, so it’s a unique office space, it's well designed and well built. Those attributes are more to do with quality [and so that office building] is lowercase “a” architecture. Capital A Architecture for an office building would be if you are radically rethinking what an office building is.
MB: There is a couple of blocks away from where we are in the studio, this multifamily building of a pretty decent scale. There was a big team that worked on it, there was an architect team, an engineering team, and the construction team. There was an intent, there was some design work, and all of that. The building looks bad. It might have been done in an okay quality. Would you then qualify it just as a building and not architecture? Or would you qualify as just bad architecture?
DL: It's just bad architecture. It's architecture, but it's bad architecture. It's architecture because it was designed by an architect. A lot of buildings are not designed by architects, they’re designed by contractors or there's an architect who did drafting and they stamped it, but they didn't design it. It's not because you're a drafter, that you're a designer. That's a huge difference. Clients need to understand that a draftsman is not a designer. They're completely different things. And a lot of the buildings we have that are being built today are the result of draftsmen. The difference happens again when someone is there trying to design it to make it look or be a certain way, and it's not just a result of preconceptions. Anyone can draft up a house, or draw an office building based on preconceptions. But if you're just doing that and you're creating buildings, you're not creating architecture.
MB: It comes back to being a craftsman of some sort. For example, if you’re a woodwork, but you're just like chopping blocks. If you start carving things a little bit more intricately, a little bit more interesting, then you start making lowercase architecture, and if you really dive into mastering the woodworking skills to make something innovative and different and much more interesting, [then you start making Architecture]. Putting a building together is just the technical aspect of architecture. Lowercase architecture means you're past the technical level. You're diving more into the design aspect of it, and maybe the social impact of it, and the meaning of it. When you are capital “A” architecture, you went beyond those levels to try and reach the next one that most of the other buildings and architecture haven't reached yet.
Translucence by Fougeron Architects - Photography ©JoeFletcher
We need more architecture and less Architecture.
MB: Oftentimes, you hire an architect to make something look nice. But I feel like people often think that that's just what you hire an architect for. People think “I don't need an architect. The architect is superfluous to what I need”. When really it's not just that, it's like we said, it’s about the why, how, and what.
DL: A parallel would be fashion versus just clothing. What's the difference between clothing versus fashion? A lot of people say, “I don't need nice fancy things. I just need my clothing to be comfortable and I'm good to go”. That same thinking applies to buildings and architecture. Let's talk about a house for example: “I just need a home that's comfortable and has the right program, can host the right functions and uses. I need a kitchen that has X number of cabinets for this much stuff. I need probably one refrigerator, or maybe I need two, I need an office space. I just need this stuff and it just needs to work pretty well, then I'm good. I don't need anything else, therefore I don't need an architect.” [This process would lead to a building, not architecture]
MB: I think people think of architecture as like this big A architecture, not necessarily the lower case architecture. Maybe because in this society, architecture is this big thing that's fancy—it's only for certain people. It's monuments, like the stuff you see in magazines. But lower “a” architecture is as much needed.
DL: You said that we need more lowercase “a" architecture and fewer buildings. And one could even argue that we need more lowercase “a” architecture and less capital “A” architecture. Capital “A” architecture is architecture when it's iconic and it has an impact. That's probably the third thing. So there's intent, quality, and impact. The Eiffel Tower is the capital “A" architecture. Whether or not you like it doesn't matter. That does not mean that lowercase architecture is not important or not as important because it has the potential to be 99% of the physical environment that we experience.
MB: If you look at the profile of a city, it's probably mostly composed of buildings. A couple of capital “A” architecture, and a handful of the lowercase “a” architecture. I'm not saying that every person owning a home should hire an architect. It is a professional service and you might not be able to afford it, you might not need it, or maybe your house is already great and there is a need to just fix it quickly.
Architecture is not limited by project type.
DL: I want to talk about the point you brought up of architects being useful in the programming and the functional, utilitarian, and pragmatic aspects of a building, and not just the ‘fluff’. I want to talk about that in a second, but I do want to go back to this idea of a city being composed of a bunch of buildings. Architecture cannot be defined by the project type. A table could be considered architecture if it's approached and executed in a certain way. A house is obviously architecture. The architecture of the city is buildings, but it's also the architecture of the sidewalks and the streets and the design of the public spaces. Now, essentially we're talking about urban planning and urban design. Is that different from architecture? Really debatable, right? This is also one of the aspects of the profession that I think is unique and interesting. Can architecture include everything? An art installation just exists to express an idea and there are a lot of architecture installation competitions and things that are essentially art installations done by architects. So in terms of the practice of architecture, it's more about a mentality and a skill set, and a desire to execute things in a certain way, rather than it being a focus on a project type.
The standardization of building components and materials can result in ‘buildings’ and not ‘architecture’.
MB: If you think of building components, they're kind of the enemy of architecture. Let's say you think of a door as a three-by-eight that you can get from Home Depot. If you are an architect, you are not thinking about that. You should start with how big the door should be for this particular project. Do we even need a door? What is a door? Of course, how windows are standardized for buildings, does make sense for certain reasons. It's cheaper, it's more efficient, you can buy it off the shelf versus something that's custom. It’s not to say that everyday architecture is custom. Not necessarily, you can buy those three-by-eight doors but make it amazing because of the way you put it all together, and I think sometimes that's also a misconception that architecture is expensive because it's like going outside of standards. Not necessarily, I'm saying that those standards shouldn't be dictating what architecture should be.
DL: A lot of the physical structures that we create end up being buildings and not architecture because the buildings were not designed… but rather they were put together or created based on the preconceptions of what they're going to be made of because a lot of things are standardized now. That doesn't mean architecture cannot be created from that stuff. It's just that the standardization of the components, that thinking also extends to the design or drafting of the total thing itself. Drafting a house with a living room here, bedrooms in the back, hallway down the middle of the bedrooms, bedrooms meet their size, square windows, and then call today. It's just sad.
Comparing architecture to food and clothing.
DL: If you think about food, perhaps the generic “building” would be described as junk food as one of our guests said, like Taco Bell. That building is actively doing harm, but it tastes good immediately, or it has some kind of component to it that on the face of it that looks good to uninformed people who don't know anything about architecture. Not their fault, but uninformed about architecture. And that's what you're living with then, right? And then we have “architecture” which is actually contributing to your body. It's nutritious, it has flavor, and it is doing more than just one thing. It's not just giving you calories to get through the day, but it also provides joy. There's something else happening. Interestingly, a lot of times when we get to capital-A architecture, the buildings become even more self-centered and sometimes even less responsive. They're more about this radical idea that they're pitching and they become the center. At that point, that would be like molecular cuisine—one of these deconstructed meals—or high fashion, runway fashion as opposed to basic clothing.