Letters To A Young Architect

by Christopher Benninger

  The legitimacy of symbols is an area of debate. I believe that our architectural language must emerge from the themes of construction. Quite simply these themes are Support, Span and Enclosure.

  To explain this let us consider the theme of Support. We are limited to bearing walls, on the one hand, and columns on the other. There are geodesic and hyperbolic alternatives, but their application is limited by cost, labor and constraints of technique.

  We basically have to choose between a frame structure and a bearing wall. But within these limited options there are numerous choices of material, geometry and configuration. At the CDSA campus I chose a simple system of parallel stone bearing walls. But their orientation, rigor of spacing, and play against one another build a higher order of positive-negative rhythm.

  Likewise Span is a simple system of beams running across these walls with tiles above. Enclosure is in the form of sliding glass panels. It is in the simultaneous choice of themes and their interrelationship that imagination is required. Motifs are stuck on later. At CDSA the motifs support the themes by locating vistas (windows), modulating wall planes (window boxes) and directing movement in space (ottas, stairs, low walls). Direction and orientation are confirmed (only confirmed, mind you) by statues, decorative pots and various antiques. But all of the motifs applied are incidental to the overall effect of the building cluster. We could have successfully used a totally different set of motifs while maintaining the essential themes.

  Architecture – true architecture – emanates from a language of themes, not motifs, decoration or applied styles. Post-modernism is constructed on a language of motifs. It does not qualify as architecture. It is exterior decoration wherein motifs are applied to wall surfaces just as interiors are ‘finished’. Architects are not in the business of decoration. God knows, however, that there is a great need for many buildings (inside and out) to be hidden under decoration. But this is a kind of cosmetics rather than a search for raw beauty. Intellectually, the manipulation of motifs is child’s play. It would be better to design as bees and birds do: they use a single-minded fabric of build (wax honeycomb or woven nest) and stick to their theme. Yes, bees and birds who are not ‘rational’ thinkers, instinctively build architecture, while the thinking mind makes a mess out of motifs – decoration!

  We are not the doyens of a fashion industry. We are not the slaves of an ignorant quick-rich clientele that knows nothing of architecture. We are the guardians of an intellectual tradition in which principles of proportion, structural systems, human scale, appropriate use of materials, and choice of meaningful motifs are the essence of art. It is from the ability to make ‘components of build’ into symbols and configure them through interrelationships that architecture emerges: architecture of some lasting value; architecture which represents man’s higher aspirations.

  Architecture – true architecture – emanates from a language of themes, not motifs, decoration or applied styles.

  Style is the sickness of the feeble mind, the opiate of the tasteless. Be it post-modernist, ‘Punjabi Baroque’ or Ethnic – style is merely an excuse for something which has not been conceived.

  Letter

  Back to Basics

  We live today in the new economy based on the ‘bottom line.’ The bottom line means profit. No matter what unique selling point city builders advertise, be it green buildings or hi-tech environments, their bottom line is harvesting the maximum profit, even at the cost of the public good. Paying lip service to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is part of the new public relations strategy, while the reality is cutting costs and increasing Floor Space Index at the cost of society. This ‘new economy’ has spawned a new architecture (quite different from the ‘New Architecture’ I have myself advocated elsewhere, in my letter on Architecture as a Social Tool).

  Like all living creatures architects are driven by the quest for survival and the urge to dominate. There are two paths they can take:

  Promote their own value-based professional agenda, creating the ‘best fit’ between it and the agenda of the new economy; or

  Degrade themselves into a vocation, where their skills are offered to the captains of industry to consolidate the bottom line.

  Willy-nilly architects are taking the second course, perhaps without even realizing what they are doing. Young professionals watch their peers in the IT and management sectors jump to high salaries soon after graduation. They see their own classmates joining MNCs and bringing in large pay packets. What they do not realize is that they are comparing themselves – professionals – with skilled workers practicing vocations. They are comparing professions with service industries.

  We must get back to basics and ask ourselves fundamental questions. Who is a professional? What distinguishes a professional from workers in vocations? What is vocational education and what is professional education? At the same time, let us not fool ourselves. Vocations are needed and we must respect them. But we have chosen a more difficult and a more arduous path in life. As professionals we ‘profess values’ to which we are bound. This means that we have a professional credo (Latin for I believe); that there are fundamental values and principles which no professional can breach. We have an unwritten code of practice which we have to stick by. As professionals we have locked ourselves into this belief system, and we have to navigate our work within it.

  The most important characteristic of a professional is his or her intellectual honesty. All professionals, be they architects, lawyers, doctors or accountants face a continuous and painful internal ‘dialogue with self,’ challenging themselves to be truthful to their core principles. The world’s most respected accounting firm went bankrupt and closed its doors within days after it was revealed that it put the bottom line of its clients before its professional commitment to society. As corporate auditors they cooked up annual reports to wrongly project as hugely profitable an energy company, Enron, that was in huge losses. While the accountants were doing this the corporate managers quietly sold off their worthless shares at inflated prices. Their vocational bookkeepers, software operators and managers all kept quiet. No one blew the whistle until millions of workers lost their pensions when their funds were brought down to bankruptcy along with Enron as the true share values were exposed. All of the vocational managers, software engineers and bookkeepers quietly shifted to new jobs. The professionals, the auditors, ruined their careers and professional reputations. Why? They lost their professional credibility when they sold out their credo, their professional values, and their intellectual honesty to an employer to help protect the bottom line at the cost of the society to whom they must ultimately answer. They put the bottom line above the social contract that binds all professionals to serve society, above those who pay their fees.

  As professionals we ‘profess values’ to which we are bound.

  Like those in vocations, we professionals also have technical responsibilities, procedural responsibilities and a duty to continually increase our awareness and knowledge. Like those in vocations we have to answer to clients, employers and seniors. Like vocational employees we have to deliver cost-effective solutions that meet performance standards. But we are not just producing deliverables and making something bad work better, or making something started with the wrong assumptions reach optimality within a flawed problem solving environment. We always have to go back to question the underlying assumptions and the starting points. If these starting points do not fit our credo, or if our clients really do not want professional advice, but merely want vocational servants, then we have to opt out. Quit!

  We must be clear about ourselves. We are not a service industry. We are not delivering goods and services at the doorsteps of our clients. ‘Profit’ is a business bottom line, but we are no more ‘in business’ than is a heart or brain surgeon. Like surgeons we have to put the hard facts before our clients and tell them th
e correct path to follow in order to achieve the best outcome. What we tell clients may not be sweet words. The procedures we recommend and the technical mechanisms we propose may not be what they want to hear. Our deliverables are the physical manifestations of our professional values and advice.

  Many young architects and other professionals in the construction industry are opting to work under non-professionals in MNCs, real estate firms, and investment companies as their personal bottom lines rule over their professional bottom lines. Often we see young professionals with two or three years of professional work opening small practices, in which they lack both the experience and the confident maturity to convince clients to change their concepts of what the bottom line is. When dealing with life-threatening medical challenges patients seek the most seasoned professional advice. For a common cold they go to a MBBS round the corner. They tell the young doctor what their illness is and ask for the prescription they think is right. They are happy with the young doctor because he does what he is told like a waiter in a restaurant or like a computer operator.

  Young architects and designers must realize that they too are prey to business whims and preconceived solutions. As youngsters they lack the credibility to be taken seriously when balancing social costs and benefits before clients. They may lack the finesse to illustrate options where public benefit becomes a factor in bottom line calculations. Senior architects need to create career options for juniors within more established professional firms, making it economically gratifying for young professionals to spend a decade preparing for private practice, or even a life-long partnership within a branded design house.

  Neither our educational system nor the design profession is addressing this issue. It is high time we got back to basics and saved our profession.

  (Lecture delivered to alumni of Malnad College of Architecture, Bangalore on April 12, 2008)

  Letter

  Looking Back and Forward

  In this interview Benninger answers questions about the role of the client in the evolution of an architecture for the future.

  The new millennium has raised a number of questions and a lot of expectations. In a field like architecture, what should we expect?

  Architecture does not change overnight. It drifts – behind techniques, behind economics, and behind social trends. But most of all it drifts behind the ‘vision’ of clients. We should be more concerned about the kind of clients emerging in the new millennium than about the kind of architecture. Architecture will follow. But good architects would be good soothsayers. They would be in tune with issues and the social and economic trends the issues generate.

  You would not say this unless you considered it a crucial point. Can you elaborate?

  Unlike many arts, architecture requires clients as a starting point! Painting, music, poetry, sculpture and many other artistic endeavors are driven by the artists’ efforts, and can even be based on their personal whims. They get inspired, they create something and someone later buys it. Not so with the mother art. For architecture to flourish, a society must have patrons, not clients.

  How would you distinguish between a client and a patron? Isn’t the latter a manifestation of the former?

  Clients merely want a vehicle to achieve their functional ends, at the least cost. They lack ‘vision’. They fail to understand the potential of architecture to lend them identity, or for a key building to be a kind of icon which communicates transcendental values for which the client stands. Clients who want to use their structure as a vehicle to lend grace and poetry to the larger society are called ‘patrons,’ not clients. They repose faith in an artist and allow him the freedom to explore all the lyrical potentials tied up in the nature of their building.

  By ‘freedom’ do you mean to say they just let the architect do what he wants?

  Nothing of the kind! In fact they get involved in the design process with the architect. They know what ‘quality time’ means. They review the architect’s building program, schedules, cost estimates, site layouts, concept designs, Bills of Quantities, proposals for contractors, change orders, payment certificates… the works! But different patrons have different styles. There are patrons who are busy. They know that they will destroy a project by passing it on to a manager. So they just say, “Look, it is your baby. Make it great. You are a professional. Don’t let me down!”

  That sounds very noble, but can you give examples?

  Yes, there are so many. Nehru patronized Le Corbusier at Chandigarh, and Vikram Sarabhai patronized Louis Kahn at Ahmedabad. There are many more! No doubt different patrons work around different constraints, but the intention in all cases is to make a gift to society. That is the way Harish Mahindra handled the Mahindra United World College of India, and the way B.S. Teeka handled the Samundra Institute of Maritime Studies. I have been fortunate to have patrons like Harish and Anand Mahindra, Rahul and Rajiv Bajaj, the Kirloskar family, the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management at Kolkata, Tulsi Tanti of Suzlon, the Tatas, B.S. Teeka and the Council of Ministers of the Royal Government of Bhutan.

  Do you mean to say that the kind of architecture we will have in the new millennium depends on what kind of clients, or patrons, we will have?

  Exactly! You’ve got it precisely! Unless clients have a ‘vision’ about their future – not only future profits but the kind of environments that they produce for their employees, for students and for future generations – they cannot be called patrons.

  What about the immediate future? Should we not look at the lead sectors in the economy and see what they are doing? The information technology (IT) sector, which is growing by leaps and bounds, must be great for architecture. Would they not make great patrons?

  The IT sector is an excellent case, even though it portends doom. Over the past decade infotech parks and infotech cities have come up all over. But the environments are, on the whole, dismal. The IT sector has an embarrassing track record with architecture. Since they are considered leaders in the emerging economy, they are bound to influence the way people think. Though they have invested a lot in new campuses over the past decade, none of them is notable. Where architecture is concerned they have literally ‘missed the boat.’ They are not the only losers; society has missed a great chance too!

  Do you mean the new infotech parks and cities are bad?

  I cannot really say bad because the firms are getting what they want. The designs are simply uninspired. They give nothing back to the society which created them. They say nothing positive about the future, or even something gracious about the past. At best they are comic, looking like flying saucers; at worst they mimic Roman Classical styles.

  Can you be more specific?

  Yes. Most IT projects are like babies screaming and yelling to get attention. They are mirrors of the clients who yearn for fame and popular acclaim, like rock stars. Even a single campus is a clutter of amusements, odd shapes: Greek, Roman, Early Ugly, Late Modern and Postmodern all cluttered into one walled-in and ‘gated’ campus. Even if one architect is the creator there is no thread of order and no harmony of elements; no architectural language. The architecture is desperately trying to be spectacular while actually being mundane. We get pyramids, globes, eggs, cones, huge pergolas and even a Roman Piazza. These are all jumbled together as the multiple personas of one simple technology company. This is architectural schizophrenia abusing the public. It reflects a lack of considered identity of the companies and the individuals who lead them.

  Do you feel this is a sign of future?

  I do think it is a sign, but it is not of the future. There are also people with vision, with traditions, and there are still people who understand something about art and architecture. I have had excellent experiences, and I know I will continue to have them. Patrons keep evolving and emerging. One cannot say where these patrons will come from either. Th
ey should know when to question an architect, when to praise an architect, and when to show a long face. Some institutes are also patrons. Who knows, some day an IT group may even build a marvel in architecture, or better yet, a humble, gracious campus? I think that will happen very soon; it will happen sooner than later.

  Are there any signs of this?

  If I study the evolution of IT companies there is a definite process of maturity. There is a growing interest in society, philanthropy, place making, humanity and architecture. The Azim Premji Foundation is a wonderful example.

  What can architects do?

  We talk too much about educating ourselves and have done very little to educate the public and clients. Architectural journals are trying, and I feel they have made an impact. But we are a very self-indulgent profession. We spend too much time talking to each other. We must learn to talk to others too. And we need to be tough. We need to be able to tell clients where to get off. We must enter contracts, and we must stick to the profession’s fees. I feel by being honest and direct with clients, we educate them. They may be annoyed with the first meeting, but they will remember you, and they will either come back to you later, or try to show you later that they are not the nincompoops you have shown them up to be. But they will be back to architecture somewhere, sometime, because everyone has an ego; everyone learns; and everyone is on a learning curve.