15 Key aspects of architecture & design
This article is part of The Second Studio Podcast hosted by FAME Architecture & Design.
Rolling Huts by Olson Kundig - Photography ©TimBies
4 physical aspects of architecture.
DL: In the study of architecture, there's form, space, materiality, and tectonics. The term form is used by architects really often. And the actual word form has a lot of different meanings depending on what the conversation is. Plato defines form in a very theoretical way, but form, most of the time when architects are talking about it, means shape. The two words are used synonymously and interchangeably. It’s the shape of the building. The next is the inverse of that which is the space obviously, which is created by the form. A room has four walls and they're outlining space.
MB: That's how architects think and design architecture. They think about both together.
DL: The next thing is materiality. Materiality just means the study of materials. This is another important component of a building. Obviously, the material of something affects greatly how a person feels related to that thing. On an interior scale, it's easy for people to imagine if you have a standard hallway and it's lined with gyp, it's painted white, it's a solid wall, It's flat, and it goes up 10 feet. When you're walking by it, it's just a wall. You change that wall to being made of brick, it’s now a completely different space. Now, change that to being glass… completely different again because now you're seeing through to whatever's on the other side. Change it to a screen, make it out of foam, make it out of sponges, make it out of a bunch of wood, slats, concrete, whatever. It becomes a completely different thing.
Fourth, is tectonics. Tectonics is another term used by architects and it basically means, the study of how physical things interact and relate to each other. So if we have a floor and a wall or a roof, how do those two things meet physically in terms of design and aesthetics? How do they meet in terms of structure? How do they meet in terms of detail? That's tectonics.
11 non-physical aspects of architecture.
DL: Next, there are nonphysical aspects of architecture: program, space planning, function, light (as in daylight), scale, proportion, and circulation.
Program: I don't know if non-architects understand this term but it essentially means the activities that are going to happen. So if an architect comes to you and says “Give me your program.” That means three bathrooms, one living room, that kind of thing.
Space planning. It's more about how these spaces live and interact with each other. Spatially is the living room adjacent to the bedroom? How do they connect and exchange, basically, and the flow of the people within this space?
“If there’s going to be a remodel, one of the first things we look at is circulation. ”
That gets to actually the one other point which is circulation. We all understand what the word circulation means. Within architecture, we're generally talking about the circulation of people, the flow and movement of people. That's obviously related to the void that we're walking through, the space that we're walking through—if it's tight, if it's narrow, if it's wide, if it's short, if it's tall, or if it's curved. For example, if we're talking about a house and we're looking at an existing house and there's going to be a remodel, one of the first things we look at is circulation. If the circulation is really convoluted, that's probably not a good thing. There's been a tendency since I don't know what decade, for houses and all other types of buildings to become much more open. At one point in time, there were a lot of hallways and a lot of individual rooms, and everything was a different room: room for the kitchen, room for the dining room, room, room, room, room. Now things are much more open, but in plan view—with a floor plan—we can look and see what's the circulation like. If there are a lot of hallways for no reason, then that's probably a poor experience.
Next is function, which is perhaps a little bit different from the program. Function would be like pragmatic things. There's a common phrase in architecture, that people may have heard. It's called “form follows function”, which means the form—or the shape—let's say of the building, should be a result or expression of and follows the function of that building. Now, “form follows function” actually is kind of misinterpreted and interpreted in a variety of ways. One of the common misinterpretations of the phrase is that if a building has a certain function, then it should look like other buildings that have that same function. If the function of a room is to be an office space, then the room doesn’t have to look like other office spaces, instead, there are certain design strategies that we can do, which would create a space that's more conducive for office productivity and in a workplace.
Kimbell Art Museum by Louis Kahn - Photography ©IwanBaan
Light is another big thing that's talked about very often. When you are in school as an architect, light is another component that we learn to play with in the design of architecture. It is considered a tool or a material to design with. How does the natural daylight flow into a space or not? That poses the question of the openings in the walls and the facade and the materials and direction of the sun during the day, and at night. Light is a really big one and it's something that I think a lot of nonarchitects don’t think about.
MB: I remember when I was in architecture school, we did have an exercise where we had to design a space based on how the light was going to reflect inside. I think that's something that is probably a lot of time lost in a lot of architecture offices. We just put windows when we need them because we need some light in the room so people don't go crazy. We need a way to escape in case of a fire or an emergency, but we don't necessarily think about the path of the light.
DL: There is an assumption when we think about when people think about the design of a building, they jump to “What does it look like? I want it to look nice. I want square windows. I don't like round windows.“ But the idea that you would design architecture based on the material of light, I think that's one of the points that makes really clear the difference between an architect versus a draftsman or someone pretending to be an architect.
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, and 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.
Proportion and scale
DL: The next one I wrote down was proportion and scale.
MB: A lot of non-architects probably know Frank Lloyd Wright. He was known for doing the compression and expansion of spaces. Playing with ceiling heights and the feeling of the body within a certain scale of space. And how do you emotionally respond to that? How does it make you feel? The scale is actually very important in the human sensibility of the building. Your human perception of space is through scale.
DL: A good example is actually a project that we had done where there was a hallway and it was really narrow because this was not in the United States, which reminds me that architecture's dependent on the culture of the city it exists within. But there was a really narrow hallway and they had tall ceilings in this place. Now, tall ceilings in a penthouse in this situation are just generally perceived as being a great thing. The taller the better, you know. It was lined with doors because the hallway led to different rooms. The way that the door trims and all the other details were done, made the hallway feel extra long and extra tight. It was like in the scene of Willy Wonka when he is walking down the hallway and then either he gets bigger or the hallway gets smaller, we can't tell, it felt like this kind of end never-ending tunnel. In that case, proportions are kind of an issue. In fact, just by changing a number of things—but not lowering the ceiling—the sensation of proportion changed, and now the hallway feels like it was more fitting to a human scale and more comfortable.
MB: The scale is something that is also a tool to design spaces and architecture that is probably under-used because we have again those standard scales… you know, those eight-foot ceilings or an assumption that the taller the ceiling the better. Period. I want tall ceilings everywhere. But that doesn't mean it's good. If you have a small bedroom and you have a 12-foot ceiling, it feels freaking tiny because the proportions are off, you feel like you're in a cartoon.
“The success of the sculpture of architecture is dependent on how people feel.”
DL: This is also interesting because it gets to architecture as sculpture and an architect as a sculptor of space. The difference between sculpture as an object that sits on a table (or even if it's the size of 10 feet tall) versus architecture, is that the success of the sculpture of architecture is dependent on how people feel. When we were talking about proportion in carving out a hallway or carving out a living room, this idea that you can actually carve out space instead of just framing it with walls is just a way of thinking about it as a sculpture. It is not just about it looking good but rather how does it feel?
Clarity, integrity, and honesty
DL: The last thing on this list of the non-physical aspects of architecture is the clarity, integrity, or honesty of the architecture. Now, the idea that architecture has integrity, clarity, or honesty is weird. How can architecture be honest? This gets to the idea of a concept behind the design of a piece of architecture. Any piece of architecture has to have some kind of big idea or concept behind it. We can think about architecture as being parallel to a story. A story has to have some kind of big intent behind it. You can think of it as a thesis behind the story. There's some kind of statement that sums it up. The story is an elaboration and expression of that core statement, that core idea. This is what a concept is in architecture. When architecture is pure and honest in expressing that concept, then it is more successful. Versus when it starts doing things or incorporating things that are not true to the concept, it starts to fall apart. If a building doesn't have a central idea, it's very difficult to design it successfully, because what's guiding the decisions? You could go down the list that we went through. It has the program and the scale and stuff. But those are again, just components. So the concept is a thing that ties the whole thing together.
Sustainability, structural integrity, site response
DL: There are a couple of miscellaneous things too, which I listed as more performative aspects. There's sustainability, structural integrity, and site response. Sustainability is quite obvious. Essentially, it's really about being efficient in the way we construct and consume, and use the building. Structural integrity means it's not going to fall down. And then the site response. We should talk about that because I don't know if it's something that people understand as being really important to architecture. It's one of the first things you learn about one of the first things you do as an architect. How is the building going to be placed on the land? What is the relationship with the context, the neighbors, the street, the orientation of the sun, and the topography? You don't just start constructing things without thinking about what makes the most sense and how to put it and where it's supposed to go.
MB: Oftentimes, people want to maximize numbers and build to the property line and the setbacks. That might be great on the financial aspect of things but for architecture, it's never one thing that dictates what the building should be. As the architect, you have to establish what has priority.
How the architect and designer think
DL: This gets to another question that the clients often have. They’ll point to a specific thing and they'll ask us, “What about this? Do you like this? Do you think that's good?” Maybe it’s a photograph of a building, maybe it's a couch, maybe it's a style of building or something. A lot of times it is difficult to answer that question because it depends on the concept. It depends on a lot of other factors that I don't know about for this thing there showing me. As an architect, you’re never designing a building from one perspective. You're trying to look at it through a thousand different lenses and that's how you're looking at the building. There's never just one reason that makes something a good or bad decision.
So when we are walking through a space and the client or whoever else is throwing out a bunch of ideas, talking about turning this thing into something else or putting this piece of furniture over there instead, and a lot of random ideas are being thrown out… a lot of times those ideas sound great to clients, but for any architect, it's like, “Let’s pump the brakes. There are at least six other reasons or six other categories of thought that I'm thinking about immediately. And I can tell you just within two seconds, that's not a good idea. And in addition to the six, I've thought of another like 10 reasons as to whether or not it's good or bad.” This gets to the thoughtfulness that's required to create architecture.
MB: A good architect is gonna try and find the best solution because the goal is to propose the best building. It's not just to go with the easy route. That's not what we do, that's not why you hire an architect
DL: Sometimes the correct solution comes first and it's obvious. You might even end up circling back to one of your first instincts, but you don't just say yes to the first thing. You question others. Going back to the site response and response to context is essential because nothing that we create exists in a vacuum. No piece of architecture is in a vacuum. Even architecture that's a chapel on a hillside still has context. It might not be other buildings and things, but it still has context. Even if you are floating in the air, there’s context. There are things and forces that you're responding to and how successful a piece of architecture first depends on how it replies to the givens that it is embedded within.
MB: That's why you need an architect. You now know 15 reasons why. The trick is, it's never about just one of these things.
DL: Even if you decide as a client, “I'm really only concerned with form, space, materiality, and program, I want it to be functional and I want it to look good”, don’t think that you are not gonna be impacted by the other 15 things that we talked about.
MB: It's like going to the doctor for an annual checkup. You are expecting that he's going to look at everything and see if anything is wrong. Versus he or she just looking at one thing and being like “This is what I'm prescribing you because that's what I've been prescribing for the last 15 patients. And that's what you need because that's what I need to sell to make money”.
DL: This gets to another issue but in terms of marketing and selling. It’s much easier to sell a few things or one thing rather than a bunch of stuff. So we would say a good architect is able to design something that addresses all of these in some manner and hopefully high-level success across the board. Why is this important for people to know? I think it's because clients tend to be more easily sold by designers and architects who focus on just one of these few things. “Wow. Such beautiful shapes. I want them.” Okay. But there's a lot of other aspects that are gonna be there that are part of the problem of building, part of the problem of architecture.
The study of architecture and its theory, criticism, and discourse.
DL: I want to talk about some key aspects of architecture as a study or profession. Obviously, there's a learning of how to draw things, how to make things by hand, and do models but there's also the theory of architecture and the philosophy behind it. And then the learning of how to critique buildings and to take criticism, the discourse of architecture, all the talking and debating about what's good or bad.
MB: We need all of this theory, philosophy, criticism, and concepts to get moving to what the building should be.
DL: One question is, “Why would an architect have to read philosophy? Your job is to design nice buildings that follow all these things.” The answer is that we don't design museums or buildings for robots. We design for people. So that's where philosophy is super important, because, to do good design, you need to be good at understanding people and reading people and coming up with things that make sense for specific people. You have to have the ability to think.
“To do good design, you need to be good at understanding people”
Styles in architecture.
DL: One word on here that we haven't brought up yet, and that is Style. And this topic highlights common misconceptions or misunderstandings between architects and clients. Most people think of architecture in terms of style. So common question we would get is, “What style of architecture do you do?” There are a lot of styles: traditional craftsman, craftsman, modern, Industrial, Midcentury,
MB: What are those styles? Those are just categories for Pinterest and search engines to put you in a box. I don't wanna be in any style.
DL: As Bruce Lee would say, “Be water, my friend. My style is no style.” I think there are two takeaways. Styles are very useful to rule out bad client architect pairings, right? Most clients think of it in terms of style, and I get it. And people only think that way because this is what's been shoved down their throats. In California, we have the Spanish colonial style, like pseudo-adobe-looking things. If you're a client and you want that kind of building, then that does filter out a bunch of architects. In terms of having these categories to quickly know who you should pair with, it's productive in that sense. But what I think most clients don't realize is that in architecture school, you don't learn about styles. Yes, there are some very rare schools that teach styles, classical things, or whatever. But mostly, we don't think about those styles because architecture is much more philosophical. And we're talking about philosophical issues and don't really think about superficial things like style.
MB: Let's say you're a painter and your style is impressionist. Who came up with the impressionist style? Like that was that person's style. You cannot take on something that someone else has created and apply it to your design. If you put things back in context, like a house or architecture that lives within a city, the style is oftentimes part of a time. People who are like” I want a traditional Southern French house”, well this was existing at a certain time in a certain place. And it’s not that you cannot have any of it, you can probably have some of it, but you have to question what it meant then to the people and what does it mean to you now where you're at?
“Be water, my friend. My style is no style.”
DL: Let's say I'm an architect, and I specialize in southern French-style homes to be done in the United States. My issue really is that a lot of times designers who focus on a style, are able to be successful, and clients like them, not because it's good design, but because there's an alignment of style. It has the components they like. You were talking about Home Depot and these components, the same thing applies. So they're classical style, traditional, Southern French, whatever. There's a set of rules, a set of materials, a way for things to go together. As long as I have that, people are gonna like it, but that does not mean it's good architecture. And the problem is that non-architects don't know the difference.
MB: At this point, you're just a composer, but you're not a creator.
DL: The big issue I have with the style conversation is what you brought up, which is that these styles came around at a certain period of time, a certain place for certain people, for certain reasons. And at some point, they were categorized as being X-style. We’re no longer in that situation. This is also why in architecture school, we don't design classical buildings because we're not in the era when this was the thing to do. The buildings were done a certain way in response to certain things, and they could be specific problems, or they could be large forces behind society, economics, culture, etc. When you just transplanted them, it's like a dinosaur walking around today. It doesn't really belong. The question for architects and what we think about in school, in the study, and in practice is and should be, what is an appropriate architecture for this specific place, people, and time I'm designing and building within? That's the key question.
The more important criteria for selecting an architect has not to do with style, but more to do with all the other stuff we mentioned. Architecture is about questioning and thinking at a core fundamental level. It's not about copying and pasting a superficial layer of aesthetics, or whatever onto a building.