I've been noticing fashion a lot more lately, perhaps because I have more time to notice it and spend a lot of time on public transit. While designers have spoken on fashion and its connection with architecture in the past, I see some interesting parallels currently that are worth noting.
The trends of the past century have been ones of stripping away. In fashion, women have gone from wearing corsets and full-length dresses to barely appropriate skin-tight and revealing clothes. Where there was once a standard of class which was assumed by all, there is now a hodgepodge of confusion where imitation is the only thing left to rely on but is masked by other means.
There are two extremes in people: those who have stopped caring about fashion altogether, and those who are completely obsessed with appearance. Similarly, in the history of architecture, when the accepted standards of Historicism were broken, people either stopped caring and did what they already knew how to do, or contrived something that was trying to be original. Now, in order to try not to copy anymore, both fashionistas and architects use the shock and awe path to be different. Copying is condescended upon by intellectuals and artists, but is the bread and butter of the masses. Strip malls and grocery stores, non-brand name and discount kitsch; most of us live in it. "Designers", while they claim that they are doing something new, have revolutionized their fields of expertise as much as an ant hill revolutionized someone's back yard. The aim is no longer quality or class, but by shocking an audience into thinking that they are somehow different because they are wearing the latest Louis Vuitton bag, or visited the newest Gehry museum.
Whether we realize it or not, we have only been copying ourselves since Post-Modernism. The only way to change this is to completely renovate our thoughts and products. We can no longer rely upon traditional means of construction, design and decorating in both fashion and architecture (and any other artistic field for that matter). We must remember when concrete was rediscovered, when steel was first used. If we want to be truly revolutionary, everything must change. Most of all, we must care.
Once, our societal standards permeated all levels of class and creed; now, there is an elite caste of people who think they are original while the rest don't have time to worry about originality. We must find a happy medium where everyone can access good design. This design will be logical and practical, but beautiful and becoming. The systems and thought processes supporting this design must first change, and our contemporaries must do it.

I was reading some of "Kindergarten Chats" for my theory class, and something dawned on me: with analogies of architectural design and nature, each successful architect is like a divine designer. Whether you believe in God or not, the requirements for an architect in designing and building what I believe is a successful building are similar or the same.

If we look at any plant, animal, or organism on the planet, it is apparent that the necessary function has always taken precedent, but through evolution has made some extremely beautiful outcomes. A swan, a lily, and even an amoeba can be considered aesthetically beautiful, but their designer (evolution, divine intervention, whatever you want to call it) created a living, functioning organism whose beauty only supports its functionality. I think that Louis Sullivan alludes to this in his writings about ornamentation; that the way ornamentation was approached historically was by overlaying a veneer of decoration, but he argues that ornamentation must be an inherent part of the building itself.

If we look at the three main parts of any building (and any organism as well), one notices that these components must be integrated in order to be successful:

Form

Construction

Materiality

A bird's shape is made for aerodynamics, its bones are hollow to be light and flexible, and its feathers are waterproof and lightweight to repel rain and allow for flight. In comparison, there are many buildings that do not understand the rules of choosing a form, construction method and materials that will suit its individuality. Every tower should not just be a glass block and every house should not be wood-sided. Every building should not be steel, nor should it be stick-framed. Today we have an infinite combination of forms, materials and construction methods, but an architect's responsibility (if somewhat inordinate) is to understand these combinations and be able to made unique decisions for every building they design. Anything less than making appropriate decisions in these three categories in response to environment, program, usage, sustainability and site is not living up to the responsibility of the architect.

I had to read an article for class, a theory class that I can't say that I think is really valuable to my education, except in that it only provides me of more examples of things I disagree with. One issue I would like to address is the idea of meaning in design. So many planners, designers, and architects feel the need to place some external importance or meaning in their works, which I don't completely understand.

Up until Modern architecture, the world as a whole was seeking meaning in architecture, landscape, and art. It was all about references, metaphors, and footnotes. Everything related to everything else, and everyone knew it. The purpose of this was to exclaim upon this foreknowledge, to underscore the fact that the designer or owner knew the historical basis for their designs and were flaunting it. The Renaissance was the 'rebirth', but really it was just a rediscovery of what the Greeks and Romans knew thousands of years before them. The Industrial Revolution was a time of great development, but while engineers and scientists were creating and using Bessemer steel and new forms of concrete, architects were (for the most part) taking these new or rediscovered technologies and covering them up with Historicist facades. The Romans were the first to copy the Greeks, and the rest of the world did the same until the turn of the 20th century.

A few designers have managed to break through this trend and create things that have been really original, not seeking 'meaning' from any external source by referencing or alluding. No prior knowledge was needed to see the beauty in these things, other than an understanding of practicality, usage, beauty and craft.

Today, I feel that we are on a threshold (another term theorists love to use) of determining what 'meaning' means to us. I think the majority of designers are still stuck in old ideas of making symbols, arcane ideas of things, and methods that contrive meaning in purpose, program, or process. Part of this problem, as I always contend, is society. This type of design is what they have come to expect and what they value (and therefore, pay for!). But we as designers have to direct the way that architecture and other forms of design come about. It is not only our right, but our responsibility.

'Meaning' is now being taught (at least to me) as something abstract that has many definitions, can only be found in eccentric yet vague terms, and is most definitely and certainly apart (and better than) science or practicality. We are now told that we must forsake our basis of making an architecture upon utilitarian principles first and foremost. I have heard more than one person say that it is in the inherent nature of humans to search for meaning. I do not disagree with this, not in the least. Why else would there be religion? Science? Math? We will forever and always try to find order, reason, and explicability for things in our world, but I only think that in the realm of design, as designers we must look to the effect upon the users of the things we make to find our meaning.

Instead of designing a building to reflect undulating water, or echo a boat sail, I think we must understand that the people who look at the building are in most cases not the people who use the building. The users will appreciate usability, comfort, practicality, and intuitiveness. By creating a space or an object or a landscape that fulfills these things, I believe that has 'meaning'. What is derived from the creation of a thoughtful design is what it means to the people that use it. No one else can truly have a valid opinion about the design without this knowledge.

Meaning will always have a different definition for every designer and every user, but I think the best that we can hope for in terms of this ambiguous term that we all seem to be in search of is that the things we design might bring meaning to the lives of those who use them.

At work in the past week or two, I've been doing a bit of research on LEED for Homes here in the Philadelphia region. I got a complete listing of the homes that have been certified in the US, and realized how pitiful it really is in some areas, especially Pennsylvania.
The non-profit that I work for, the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, is home to the people that are trying to get sustainable practices going in Philadelphia and the state. They have commissioned a Green Infrastructure Report, to help the City government learn how to pay for green streets, parks and other sustainable municipal projects. They are the advocates for the East Coast Greenway in Pennsylvania. But sometimes it really seems that they are the only ones that are doing anything about anything. Mayor Nutter said that he wants to make Philadelphia the "Greenest City in America". They have submitted a plan called Greenworks, which is ambitious in its ideas of what the City wants to accomplish. I think the idea and effort are admirable, but I can't help but wonder how this change is really going to occur.
Part of the research that I'm doing is evaluating how LEED for Homes has been used in Philadelphia and other cities, as well as what incentives and bonuses are given to encourage or require people to build with LEED or other green measures on a residential and commercial/industrial basis. The results are quite a mixture: some cities have succeeded in creating a program that encourages and nurtures green building, such as Chicago, IL and Portland, OR. The main problem with regulation to date is that local governments can really only be responsible for the buildings that they design themselves, and buildings that they have somewhat of a say in (i.e. buildings by developers that have to get permits). And the result is that the only regulation that is left for the residential sector is incentives.
LEED for Homes is one of the most popular and widely-known of these incentives. But obtaining LEED certification is a costly process, not only in fulfilling the requirements, but also in paying for the registration and for people to help you finish the processing (providers). Because of the cost of LEED, and the up-front cost of measures that increase the sustainability of a home, most people do not have the investment capitol to put into such a project. Another weakness of LEED is that it is mainly geared towards new homes or fully-renovated homes, leaving out the people that want to do smaller sustainable projects.
In Pennsylvania, there are grant programs that help to pay for these small things, but the homeowner still has to go out of their way to apply and get financing to do these projects, and for what gain? They might save a bit in energy costs, but how would they even know? They would have to strictly monitor their consumption to even see a difference. Most people don't have the motivation for that.
I think the point that I'm trying to make here is that most homeowners, at least in Philadelphia, do not have much incentive to try and green their current homes, or to build new green homes. From what I've seen, most LEED for Homes certifications in the Philly area have been by developers, who can then use the LEED sticker as a marketing tool when they sell their properties. Not to say this is a bad idea, but how else can we encourage people to make their homes more sustainable?
This is a question that environmental organizations struggle with all the time. Some try implementing programs that help to finance, such as TIFs (Tax Increment Financing), and help people to pay for green projects in their areas. Some people change the zoning code (an idea Philly and PEC are trying to pursue) to encourage larger-scale buildings to build LEED and green. One solution is giving tax credits to homes that have made green renovations, but this can be a thorny issue, and incentives for the residential sector are much harder to create.
The point is that making it desirable for people to build green homes is difficult. Right now, people are only building green if they see that there is something in it for them: tax abatement, bonuses, a certificate that says you have a green home. The root of the problem is that people need to understand that they don't need these incentives to build a green home, because the home is an incentive on its own. Building a home that saves energy and materials, promotes natural light and good air quality, and saves the owner money in the long-run is something that everyone should want. But right now, no one grasps this concept, and one thing that Americans are quite good at is deferment of responsibility. As with many other issues in out country, if our citizens were better educated on the issues, they would be able to act upon them. Most people don't know about solar panels or water-saving faucets, better insulation or double-paned windows. Before we can expect people to change their behavior, we have to educate them on how, and more importantly, why they should. People will see that it is not only their responsibility to themselves and their environment to build better homes, but that there are a lot of advantages to doing so.
Hopefully one day, after we can figure out a way to tell the average joe about sustainable building practices, people won't need a checklist and a sticker to get them to build an environmentally friendly house.

One thought that has been on my mind for quite some time is the idea of skyscrapers. Some of the most famous and iconic buildings in the world are skyscrapers: the Sears Tower, the Empire State Building, the Pelli Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Space Needle. One interesting thought when it comes to these buildings is that the balance between the function of the building (for most: mixed-use retail, office and residential) and the form of the building is far skewed from other buildings. The look and resonance of the building is weighed to be far more important than what the building actually accomplishes on a programmatic basis, and therefore we see that the program becomes meaningless.
Rem Koolhaas took on this idea in his book from the 70's, Delirious New York. As I'm sitting in New York at the moment, I think that I can understand some of the thoughts that he was trying to convey in that publication. A skyscraper has no program, and therefore can be anything. A skyscraper can take on whatever form it likes, and yet the spaces created within it will still serve a function for whatever purpose it is used for, regardless of the decrease in practicality. Buildings that are going up now in China and Dubai, the centers of most large-scale architecture, are meant to BE something, not DO something, and there is quite a difference in how they function.
One theory for this is that it is a product of mass production. Because a building that has 60 or 90 or 120 floors could obviously not be tailored to its every need, every floor is the same and therefore has no program. This makes sense in a logical way, but I think there are limits to this idea. When architects design a building that is in the form of a giant sphere, for example, the idea that this building has no program because it cannot be specified falls though. Then, why do architects do this? I think it is because this idea of iconic architecture has run rampant in our contemporary world. Frank Gehry could be easily pinned with starting this trend, but I have no doubts that it started earlier than his heyday, and that it will continue past his time. We as a society value something that is flashy and memorable rather than something that doesn't leak, has good natural lighting, and makes its users more productive.
Some of this argument is related to my previous post, but I think that on a large scale, there is nothing that can really be done to change how these buildings are designed and made. There is no way to add craft to a 1200 foot tower. There is no way to program and building that has no program. I think that with the recent economic downturn, as so many like to call it, that a lot of these ideals will change, and the 'era of extravagance' will come to an end. Design will be forced to consider new ideas, such as sustainability, responsibility, and practicality. Skyscrapers will always be the exception, however, and I think that it will always be a niche design field that will never truly have meaning. Skyscrapers are built for two reasons: to maximize the amount of space that we have, and to make an icon. Maybe one day the latter will become less important, but I think that sentiment will take a long time to die.

In 1908 Adolf Loos published his famous and widely-studied Ornament and Crime. The purpose of this essay was to admonish his fellow architects and designers for their tendencies to hang on to Historicist ideals and decorating everything for the sake of aesthetics. He compared ornamentation to criminal acts, stating that in decorating objects of our lives, we are committing a crime by wasting the time and effort that could be used to make something more useful.
Since then, we have seen a wide variety of architectural (and design) movements that were mainly products of thinkers such as Loos, Sullivan and Le Corbusier. Modernity was founded on the principle that objects and buildings do not have to use ornamentation, and designers frowned upon any extra element that could have contributed to something that could be construed as decoration.
Now, I have to say that I think we have slipped back into our old standards of architectural decoration, though it may not be as obvious now as it was 100 years ago. While some may think that we have made tremendous progress in design over the last several decades, I have to say that I must disagree. I will attempt to not mention any names or specific projects in this blog, because as it has been pointed out to me, negativity and finger-pointing is a waste of time. However, what I see in architecture now is not an application of historic decoration, but rather a decoration of form itself. Some architects, many of the more famous and prominent ones included, it seems to me have manipulated and changed buildings from being the functional apparati that they are into a form of sculptural decoration. Some of the most famous buildings in the world seem to be to be no more than one big decoration, taking no account of the program they are built to encompass, the climate in which they are situated, or even the basics of practicality.
With that said, I know that there are exceptions to this rule, but what bothers me most is that these are the 'iconic' buildings that people want, and will pay dearly for. I wonder why this latest development in architectural history has come about, and I can see some form of logic in the progression. Despite all the upbraids and tirades that were made by early 20th century designers and architects, they were most certainly not always living up to their word. Even Mies van der Rohe used steel I-beams to 'decorate' (i.e. articulate the verticality) his Seagram Building in New York while also being the paragon of Modern design. From these small moves to emphasize or articulate, it can be understood that the line between what was good 'decoration' and what was bad became blurred, but it was understood that plastering Corinthian capitols all over a building would not do.
Nowadays, I think that buildings use the materials and formwork to make decoration, the very thing we are taught to abhor. Buildings flow like water and form spikey mountains cascading out of the ground, though for what purpose? I would argure that people can't live without decoration. Is there are architecture that can be made without ornament? Yes. Look at warehouses, parking garages, and bridges. The real question is: can we make an architecture that is without ornament but that is also inherently beautiful? Does one defy the other? I would like to think that it is possible, but it is not for the weak-hearted and not for those simply looking to impress. This architecture is comfortable yet practical, beautiful yet functioning. It is easy to sketch out a soaring skyscraper that looks as though it might take off from the ground it is rooted in, but the difficulty in designing a house, an apartment building, or a train station that comprises all of these things is limitless and can and will only be achieved by few.
One theme I will continue to underscore is balance. We tip the scales this way and that, though very few can attain true balance. Being an architect means having to master an almost infinite number of skills, but one that I feel that is constantly overlooked is that of understanding the importance of balance. While physical beauty is important, what makes a building functional and usable must always take precedence over something that will make it nicer to look at. I hope that this is where the future lies and that architects and designers will one day help the world to see that we do not need excessively designed and 'decorated' buildings, but we need buildings that are sustainable, recyclable, functional, practical, changeable, flexible and all at the same time, beautiful.

Well, here goes. I'm an architecture student at Penn, and though I don't expect anyone to read this I plan on making this a place to post all my ruminations on current and past architecture, as well as whatever else I feel like at the time.

If anyone happens to stumble across this place, don't take anything too seriously ;).
/Jess