fractured spaces and corporate identity

Starbucks is a leader in the creation of the warm and inviting environment. Taking clues from coffee bars in Italy, it established a pallet and a style that asked people to dwell and enjoy themselves. It is enormously effective and is now everywhere. 

All is good, right? Well, it is, if you don't mind the notion that it is only a stage set, that it is ubiquitous – everywhere yet anywhere – independent and separate from its immediate surroundings. No matter where I am on the street, when I enter into an environment like this, I have severed my relationship with how I got there. I have arrived in Shangri-La. Now the Shangri-La I've just stepped into, I can find in any place many times over. One Shangri-La is not any different than any other. One place could be in any place.

If the goal is, as I think it should be, to remind you of who you are and where you are, and how that strengthens your identity; if it is to help you recognize that the unfolding of spaces is just as important as the arrival; if it is to deepen your understanding and relationship with space, then events like this, suffocate that. The corporate identity is now more important then your unique personal experience. You enter into a corporate environment and you become of that corporate buyer. You are meant to be amused. How it relates to who you are is only momentary, independent of how you got there and indifferent to its place within the city fabric. 

the number one second choice

A client would tell me that, at some earlier time in their life, they too wished to be an architect. I’ve heard it a number of times. I suppose this should not be surprising, since we were all working on some building project together. They were just working at it from a different angle. 

But I would also hear it from acquaintances at dinner parties and from doctors during check-ups. “I carefully considered it, early in my career,” they will say, “but it seemed to be too daunting, just too much work for not a lot of money.“ Or they would say, “I saw what it was like inside an architect's office and realized it wasn't really for me.” 

One of these people told me that architecture was the number one second choice among professionals and I think I believe it. It takes a certain kind of person to want work that hard for someone else, willing to slave away for someone else's work and recognition. You have to take the long view and hope it’s worth it.

large scale stewardship

Maybe an example of great stewardship on a large scale can be found in 19th century New York City. 

Consider the aggressive infrastructure developed there. The scope, scale and audacity of development was unprecedented. The railway and subway systems, the expansion of the urban grid and below grade utility systems, the aqueduct systems, Central and Prospect Parks. 

These people were thinking speculatively but on such a grand scale that they were assuming a very responsible role, in my opinion, towards land stewardship. They were providing the infrastructure and amenities for a well functioning city. They assume the responsibility to provide that skeleton that would support a great urban environment to flourish.

aesthetics, technology and style

Design aesthetics and building technology are intertwined. The style of the building comes in response to the technical. That is, in the case of the Modern and the Gothic especially, the style evolved through an initial dialogue between the building technology and the aesthetics. From the beginning of both of these styles, their unique technical requirements became a driving force in its esthetic expression.

The impulse to solve a problem in a new technological way and to do it in a way that is beautiful may initiate the establishment of a new and exceptional style. That particular solution to the problem at hand, at that moment, creates a look and feel with which people can identify. It is of their time and is accepted as a building language they can trust.

stewardship

I know someone who owns a farm in northern Vermont. It came to him through his great great grandfather and he grew up on it. He worked there until his late teens but had to find additional work as a handyman in order to support himself and not be a burden to his family. Over the years, he made his way down to Massachusetts and worked there for over 25 years as a handyman, jack of all trades, for one of the small towns outside Boston. He did well there. He is resourceful and physically fit. Over the years he learned carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and general contracting. He has remained a devoted reader and long-tern learner. 

He was then called back to his farm. It had deteriorated quite a bit after years in the hands of others in his family. With the skills that he had acquired over the years, he was able to farm, rebuild and maintain the homestead. 

I take this as a small scale stewardship. He appreciated its value, he planned well and worked hard to improve its value. He was lucky to have such a piece of property in the first place but he was additionally fortunate to acquire the skills to maintain it. With his limited resources and his attitude of taking responsibility, he maintained his property well and with limited resources. His approach, as I saw it, was methodical, he never got ahead of himself. He didn’t leverage anything. 

This is one model of stewardship. It takes a lot of work and a lot of forethought to keep a piece of property like this producing. Sustainability and stewardship can take place with hard-working people such as he. It's where the fullest expression of stewardship gets played out.

memory

Memory is a tricky thing, if you consider it. Or, if you just take me as an example.

I'm wondering how I can have any clear-sighted take on reality or any solid memories, when I'm so confused most of the time. Don't you need to know what's going on at the time a memory forms to have a clear recollection?

I don't think I am either the dumbest or the brightest person in the world. I like to think I'm somewhere in the middle, and that my experiences are not that much different than most anybody else’s. Yet, if I have a hard time keeping track of what's going on around me at the time, following the storyline being told to me, digesting in a reasonable way all the information that's being thrown at me, then how am I to sort out some event 15 years later, as some strong personal moment, as a memory?

Somehow, through all this, I still have memories. Some of them are strong and mean very much to me.

Absalom Absalom! is Faulkner's tale about memory. It is one of the most confusing stories I know of. And as near as I can understand it, he dealt with memory in a way that I’m thinking of here. His approach seems to be pretty realistic to me. Memory is pretty slippery stuff. It’s like a water balloon. No, that's not it, water balloons have real edges. Maybe it's sort of like a blob of Jell-O floating in a hot tub. (Sorry, that’s the best I can do.)

What I'm getting at is, the more you look at memory, the less you know what it is. Memory just doesn't stand up to rigor. It seems illogical. Probably that’s why it's good to write things down, 

But if you consider the difficulty you have in deciphering what it is that’s really going on around you at the moment, then, you must admit, that what you write down is not very likely to be something that will inspire confidence. Can it be in any real way,”accurate”?

Still, we claim to have memories. 

We all think that we have a past and that there is a story to our lives. We may even believe there is a plot. These moments and memories are very important to us, they help us define the world and where we are in it. 

Maybe, however, memory is not memory at all, maybe it's just context. Maybe we don't have a consistent memory. Maybe it keeps shifting and warping as we make new friends, grow older and change where we live.

But memory defines us. It defines who we are. It gives us our identity and we hold onto that, sometimes quite dearly. We identify with the world through our memories. Regardless of how fragmentary or blatantly false they may be, we think they are meaningful and real. But if you think about it, as your memories shift, and is your context changes, your identity warps as well. What seems so important to you, your identity, maybe as vacuous and as vaporous as a blob of Jell-O floating in a hot tub.

criticizing space

There may be only three kinds of spaces. Those that are absolutely terrific, and they are very rare. Then there are those that are just plain vanilla, and that's most of the time.  And then, there are those that just completely suck. I mean, they even hurt, they are so bad. They make you get really angry.  

If you want to hone your skills in judging what’s around you, you may want to start with the last example. Go with the most offensive case first. The more extreme, the better. Deal with the successful spaces last, it may be easier to work backwards. 

Find that really insultingly lousy space. Ask yourself, "What is that just drives me nuts about this space?"  Analyze it, as cold bloodily as you can. Now, you’re not analyzing the space itself, your analyzing your reaction to the space. It's your emotions, your thoughts, what you are physically feeling, that matters. How are these things coming at me? I’m hurting now. Why am I hurting? How does it hurt? When did it start? When will it end? Why is this thing pulling my attention away from myself?  

You may then ask yourself, almost immediately, “Who the hell is in charge here? How did this thing ever happen? What SOB did this to me? What's his name and what does he look like?” Be outraged. This stuff happens to us all the time, but we never seem to think we have the right to deal with it. 

My point is that if you just jot down your thoughts, note what it is that drives you nuts about something (and believe me, there’s an endless variety of offensive spaces out there to draw from), you'll come up with a set of observations that will lead you, working backwards, to a better understanding of the really good. 

Forget about talent. You don’t have to design the solution, but you can be a reasonable, sophisticated judge of your own environment. And that's what I'm asking you to do here. Stop, pause, and collect your own reactions to what's in front of you, of what you are passing through. and then apply that to your criticism and make the necessary changes. Right now, you only need to understand the problem. You have to feel the question, “Why is this happening to me?” and realize you are not the cause of your distress. Someone else is.

the character of space

The character of the space is important. It informs and strengthens its identity. Now, Identity is something Corporate Retail America knows very well. It is extremely valuable to them - it's a commodity - it's their Brand. You can put a price on it. I just feel sometimes that they don't do it as well as they could.

Let's take a look at a suburban shopping area. 

Impressions of the Wayside Commons in Burlington, Massachusetts. 

A little bit of a description of the surrounding area is needed. There is a parking lot, with some pleasant planting throughout. The lot may hold up to 500 cars. Surrounding the parking is an almost continuous wall of retail, divided into storefronts. Each outlet is of the size of a conventional small scale building built before the turn of the last century. They are made of designs and materials that would've been found in a quaint late 19th century Main Street. The rooftops vary. Some have false mansards, some have false hip roofs, some have false cornices.  Some have false second floor windows. Some have false turrets. The materials vary between wood and brick and Drivit and wood again. What it all has in common is it's falseness. 

But let's suspend our disbelief. Let's just drop it and have a good time. After all, we're here to shop. The purpose of all of this falseness is just to remind me, if only in some shallow or superficial way, to feel at home. And to buy. It is to remind me of that time that never was, of that pleasant experience I had, or maybe it was my grandparents, or maybe nobody, of shopping on a quaint Main Street. The easy term for this, is Disneyland. The question is: is this the best we can do? 

There are some things that work well here, however. The parking lot is of a reasonable scale. The sequences of spaces in the middle of the parking areas are broken down into a collection of smaller scale spaces by high vegetation and are well sized for the pedestrian traffic. Every storefront is visible while driving through, but, because of the landscaping, does not feel like a vast barren plain of asphalt. The retail wall is low, a story and a half, and sits in front of much taller buildings beyond. This breakdown of scale from the high-rise to the pedestrian low rise works well and feels comfortable. It’s a device that is used often in good urban design. 

Just as we want to avoid an abrupt change in building scale, we need to consider proper changes in speed.  As we make our way from the arterial road to the parking lot, to the parking space to the when we leave our car and walk to the storefront - each reduction in speed needs to have a recognizable point of transition. They seemed to do this well. The paths into the central parking areas are twisting, causing us to slow down. The parking areas are, as stated before, broken into clusters.

The tricks of the trade are there. They understand how to make all the necessary transitions in speed and scale and they do it successfully. It’s just inauthentic. Its character is weak and, as a consequence, so is its brand.  Its value is diminished.

when the system breaks down

Thinking about Trump. 

There may be a connection between the complete meltdown of a system and the emergence of a new style in architecture. I'm sure you are wondering why anyone would even care about the subject of "style" when the whole freaking system has become unglued. Well, it is just an observation. Take it for what it's worth. 

Let's look at the Gothic, or maybe the Modern Movement. Two great styles that materialized out of chaos. Granted, each "chaos" had their own individual characteristics - the first was out of a slow speed implosion taking over a eight or nine hundred years to play out. The second, out of - and after - the strikingly swift annihilation of the European country side along with its complete economic melt-down. 

Gothic grew out of an optimism fueled by an emerging intellectual order, nurtured by a new respect for knowledge and learning. The university and the book was its source of inspiration. Its perspective or view, was perched from an angle that was high and wide. It knew the chaos of the previous age first hand and it responded with an approach that required a deep and sophisticated knowledge of multiple disciplines. The Gothic cathedral required the influence of the universities exploring new found mathematics and natural science of the Greeks, along with the theology of Averroes, Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas. A fusion of religion, physics and aesthetics, a merging of the Guilds, the Church and the State, created these magical forms - with a lot of help from the Arabs.

If we look at the Modern Movement during the first 40 years of the 20th Century, we can see a quicker implosion. It takes a while to understand the forces behind all this, especially the First World War. Consider Dylan's line in With God on Our Side "The First World War came and it went, the reason for fighting, I never did get".

If you read Thomas Pickitty, it turns out to be quite straightforward and it had a lot to do with an excessive concentration of wealth. Yet, the focus of this note is architecture.

A lot of great 'isms' came out of that turmoil; Italian Futurism, Dutch Neoplasticism/De Style, French Purism, German Expressionism/Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism. All were aiming at more or less the same thing, a break from the oppression of the past. And it was easy to make that break when powers holding it together were collapsing. Gone were the slavish attachments to historicism and eclecticism, both being more of an amusement than a movement. But what would take its place? What would the future look like?

In its place would be a real movement, they said. It will take in the real world. it will update and modify itself to respond creatively to the constantly changing conditions, whether technological or political. It called for a violent and complete break from the past yet it would be optimistic. It would espouse the freedom of democracy, the efficiency of the Fascist or the power of the socialist worker. Modernism meant there was no past, only the future. How it evolved is another story.

Regardless, when the stuff hits the fan, the styles change.  Not just change, but morph into something never seen before.

considering style as a language

Buildings speak to us using all of the tools normally found in language: structure (Syntax), vocabulary (Semantics), grammar (Morphology), and, hopefully, a concept (Pragmatics). I think it's interesting to consider this because, while we instinctively referred to buildings as in a style, it may not cover it well enough. "Style" is too limiting. It implies something temporal, frivolous and unimportant. Its first, and probably most common, association is in connection with the fashion industry. And while architecture can often have a lot in common with fashion, there is something a bit more substantial to a building design then to an article of clothing. (It could be a simple matter of what each is made of. Haute Couture may entail as much craftsmanship and design thinking as any building, and may cost as much per square foot but it tends to go out of style or deteriorate a bit more quickly). I see a resistance on the part of architects to refer to their work as being in certain "Style". Their work is deeper and more meaningful than that. Or, ironically, they may dislike the notion of style so much, they feel the need to create one of their own, as a means of true self expression. In any event, the term "Style" has a slightly different connotation from other genres, when applied to architecture.

But, there are two points I want to make here: one is the limited respect for "Style" in architecture, how the architect tries to avoid the question as much as possible while designing and how that limits ones ability to get to a better solution. The second is: the questions around design approach and how it focuses one's investigation. A good way to probe these questions, perhaps, is through the lens of language.

expectation in the experience of space

We get what we deserve. If we expect nothing, we get nothing. If we demand nothing, we receive nothing. But before we can demand anything, we have to know, at least to some degree, what it is we want. 

The focus of this note is space creation and how to get to something great. Like any other thing that is worth doing, it is hard work. It takes time, interest and effort to get there. We cannot be passive, but active and aware of our surrounding. It calls for quiet observation. When we pass from one moment to another, we want to be aware of our environment and what is going on inside us. How am I changing and what do I think is causing it? What is my relationship with what is around me?

There is a relationship that we have with our built world whether we are aware of it or not. And it may not be that much different from our daily personal interactions.

In order to maintain a civil society, we are expected to treat others well - including, and perhaps especially, strangers. Conversely, we should expect to be treated appropriately, also. This should go for more than just our daily personal interactions. It is the base state of affairs, the lowest of expectations. When things are really going well, we are strongly connected to one another. We learn from the one we are engaged with. They can learn from us. We feel fulfilled, because we know that we are growing, changing for the better.

We should demand the same respect from and relationship with our built environment. And we don't often get it, largely because we do not demand it. We don't even expect it. The focus of the design should be on your experience and not about the conceit of the architect or the power of the client. Too often we are thrown into environments that are meant to serve someone else other than ourselves. If we are exposed continuously to such abuse, we run the risk of shutting down, if only to protect ourselves. The assaults, and that is what they are, come with everyday life and often times cannot be avoided. But there should be a balance. Our interaction with build world depends upon our attitude and what we bring to it. We should not be passive but instead, active and aware of how our surroundings is effecting us.

You need to be enticed if you wish to be properly engaged with your surroundings. You should be beguiled as if you were listening to great music. You should be brought in, manipulated and nurtured. It should be in a way that expands your understanding of yourself and others around you. You would demand this of any other art form. So why not architecture? Why not of the city that you live in? Why not during all those moments, along the highway, dwelling with friends, or going on daily chores, or any other moment when you are placed within the public realm? 

Wherever you go, expect your environment to be exceptional. It should respond to your needs, not the other way around. Every moment you pass through a space that has been designed by someone else, they should be giving you moments where you are in the limelight. 

We should expect excellence.

between

This is the story about those spaces that lay between areas we deem important. These are areas that you pass through in order to get to your final destination. They can be analogous to those quiet moments between pitches, the recitative between arias, or the long definitions of the leviathan between the hunting of Moby Dick.  The argument here is that those spaces are as valuable as the "important" spaces between them. They are the supporting background fabric. They give a deeper meaning to those "important spaces" and they have their own criteria for excellence. 

spatial literacy

We are defined by the spaces we’re in. While our mental narratives may guide us, our feelings may drive us or our responsibilities may direct us, the spaces we are traveling through may have a stronger, though more silent effect. 

That influence shouldn’t be ignored. Instead, it should be of primary importance in the formation of any build environment. Growing up in the city, I recognized the silent, energetic dialogue that can go on between the streetscape and us. This was in Boston’s Back Bay. These structures were so thoughtfully designed that they caught our attention. They spoke to us in their own language, through their proportions, rhythm, color and patterns. We felt strong connections to the spaces they created. When tuned in, we could sense how they spoke to us and how buildings spoke to each other. 

I realized, then that buildings could also facilitate a deep interaction between people, thereby strengthening our sense of community. Through the creation of great spaces, we could form an intimate, personal conversation between us and the space we were in. Others around me might be simultaneously experiencing the same sentiment. The result of connectivity to a special space is can be both a intimate, private experience while also a very public, shared phenomenon. I understood then, that architecture has not only the power to relate to the history of itself and to speak to individuals, it can also create a strong community through shared appreciation for a space. They cultivated a public dialogue.

The Gothic architects and their patrons fully understood a building’s ability to impact and amplify a user’s sense of self, connection to others, and connection to the divine. They played with this force willingly, developing ponderously light-filled, airy, high spaces with building techniques that seemed to defy the natural strength of their materials. They would then apply an overlay of pattern, color and light of such complexity and originality that few architectural styles have since been able to duplicate this sophistication.

Under such circumstances, the spectator can easily become overwhelmed or feel dwarfed by the architecture. But the tone and scale of Gothic design established by medieval artisans was so nurturing and generous that those who traveled through these spaces did so with feelings of deep exultation and gratitude.

city streets

The Green Monster at Fenway Park is an example of a great urban moment. This is where we understand how, by respecting the hierarchy of urban spaces, magic and community can be created.

At this ballpark, the city of Boston imposes itself on the shape and form of the stadium. Not the other way around. Its streets and fabric shape the park to fit its will. The city comes first. 

This doesn't happen very often. Most times the stadium cuts through the city fabric or stands outside of it, independent of the community. They are isolated things. They are destination points that stand alone. While watching a game there, such as at Gillette Stadium, I’m alone in a large bubble. While watching a game inside Fenway, however, I never lose site of who I am and how I fit into the community. I am in the ballpark that is part of a street scape that is in the city. And the Green Monster is always there to remind me of that.

getting beyond eclecticism

From Church Building • a Study of the Principles of Architecture in their Relation to the Church, by Ralph Adams Cram, 1914:

“Some fifteen years ago, when Richardson's death removed the fictitious vitality of the alien style he had tried to make living, and it began to collapse into the follies of ‘school-house’ Romanesque, a few architects working quite independently began a kind of crusade against the chaos of styles that hitherto had inflicted architecture. They begin to study the motives and principles of medieval Christian architecture rather than the mouldings.”

There are two things I found interesting here. One of them is that, in this book by Cram, his approach to studying the motives behind forms is something that I agree with. The technical and associative reasons are important in design. Uninformed Eclecticism had created some pretty awful buildings.  His solution was more rigor. 

The second is his ability to make offhanded snide remarks. I would assume jealousy between architects has been going on for quite a while, but it's infrequent that you actually see it so clearly in print. It takes a certain amount of ‘confidence’ for Cram to say such a thing.

I guess the real point here, though, is that while it is true that Richardsonian Romanesque designs were weak after the death of H.H. Richardson, the problem is not with the style, but with the designer. There is no substitute for talent. To not give credit to Richardson for his inventiveness is to be rather blind to the force behind what it was that made Richardson - and Cram as well in many instances - great. 

aesthetics and construction

The quality and method of construction becomes an important aesthetic issue.

A strong commitment to the quality of construction expresses a commitment to the mission of the institution and thereby strengthens the community fabric. By maintaining the highest standards of construction, the structure can become an important driver in the formation of place. It's at this point that the building design comes together; where its method of construction, the technical requirements behind a particular style and the skill and talent of each individual laborer meet to create something powerful. 

The method of construction expresses a commitment to mission and community as well. The Gothic building allows for the signature of the individual craftsmen to come through. It is more than the work of a single designer. It is an interweaving of many skills, of all who have touched the project, both physical and intellectual. Here the individual craftsman plays a role in the building’s authorship, more so than with a more contemporary building.

With most modern designs and construction methods, the laborer’s role is limited, and an honest reliance on the strength of materials may be secondary. In a modern process, building components are often factory made, pre-fabricated and assembled in the field, and hung as pre-cast panels on a structural frame. Technology of this kind diminishes the importance of an individual laborer’s contribution. In a Collegiate Gothic building, however, the construction methodology becomes an essential element in the quality of design. And by so doing, contributes to building a strong sense of community. 

gothic

The Gothic style marked a turning point in European cultural history. Emerging from the vision first realized at St. Denis in Paris during the 12th century, it sparked a creative burst of unprecedented energy and originality in the arts and architecture. It launched the first great flowering of European culture since antiquity, spreading quickly from its origins in northern France throughout the continent. 

The style is identified by its exalting spaces, inspiring verticality and dramatic use of light. It is well known and easily identified by its unique characteristics; the pointed arch, flying buttress, ribbed vault and large expanses of rich stained glass. At the heart of the Gothic style is a highly refined fusion of art and technology. 

Tagged with its spurious name during the Renaissance, it was for many years considered an inferior style. With its rebirth in the 18th century, the Gothic Revival style opened up exciting opportunities to create innovative forms and spaces with the latest emerging materials and technologies. Its principles of structural expression and the honest use of materials, acceptance of asymmetry (when called for) and its flexible proportional systems strongly influenced the early thinking of the Modern Movement.

American Collegiate Gothic is part of this long, often re-interpreted heritage. The Gothic style was chosen for college campuses as early as 1878, largely because of its associative value. The style became synonymous with an authentic -even hallowed- academic setting, evoking the respected models of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The Gothic style is an important symbol of learning and academic greatness. It can be a powerful force in representing the identity of a university campus, establishing a sense of place for students and faculty. As such, I welcome the opportunity to work with clients whose mission and organizational culture is deeply entrenched in the Gothic tradition.

the empty vessel

At Stokes Hall, the building program informs the design of the project but doesn’t drive it. The building is intended to last for a very long time and is expected to see some of its uses change within its lifetime. Therefore, its vertical and horizontal organization, the width of its floor plate, its floor-to-floor heights, and mechanical room spaces are generous, designed to accommodate changes in use over the long haul. The term we used to explain our intent was “the empty vessel.” But as we went through the design process, we discovered that such an approach also changed the weight we placed on the different design drivers. That is, our design priorities widened to included more than just program and, in deed, gave greater weight to other issues that, we felt, would created the spirit of community that we were after. Relationships between interior and exterior rooms, campus access points and axis, quality of light and materials, to name a few, were of equal or greater importance than the specific program requirements. 

politics of style

Working within the discipline of certain style requires careful consideration of the forces behind it. Nothing occurs within a vacuum. Social, technical and aesthetic forces shape the style. Access to materials, labor, and large scale economic conditions play an important role as well.

The politics of the time may feed the emergence of a style. Changing political times may starve it. Gothic Revival and the Arts and Crafts movement was motivated by a fear of the industrial revolution. The major intent behind these styles was to reawaken the honored status of the laborer and craftsman to a level, as they saw it, equal to that during the Gothic period. They felt this was a time more just and humane, when the labor of the individual had great meaning and integrity. The ironic twist to the story, where this romantic style - which required so much capital to develop and was only made possible by the accumulated wealth of the industrialists of the time - was a fine point that was entirely lost on those advancing the style. At the turn of the last century, when the political winds changed and this social and economic structure collapsed, the flaws of the style became obvious and the Modern Movement took its place

community

The Gothic architects and their patrons fully understood a building’s ability to impact and amplify a user’s sense of self, connection to others, and connection to the divine. They played with this force willingly, developing light-filled, airy, high spaces with building techniques that seemed to defy the natural strength of their materials. They would then apply an overlay of pattern, color and light of such complexity and originality that few architectural styles have since been able to duplicate its sophistication.

Under such circumstances, the spectator can easily become overwhelmed or feel dwarfed by the architecture. But the tone and scale of Gothic design established by medieval artisans was so nurturing and generous that those who traveled through these spaces did so with feelings of deep exultation and gratitude.