The Big 5 – Building with an Attitude
All of us, whether we are architects or not, have a choice: to continue interfacing with the world in the way we have become accustomed to, or to reinvent our way through the world by trying new and sometimes irrational ways of doing things. This choice applies in equal measure to our life as individuals, to our work as professionals, or to our destiny as a community or a nation.
The overall context for our practice as architects, in a global community of creatives, is the relentless resource pressure brought about by the growing global population. This has brought us into closer contact with the developing knowledge field that deals with Sustainable Design. I believe that this direction of practice and knowledge development will govern the remainder of our professional lives and guide the way we grow and develop our own knowledge.
Our work is already becoming increasingly scientific and calculated, and dependent on technology and virtual communication networks. Our ability to deliver value to clients will increase: we will be more necessary and more needed, as a community of professionals.
Our professional work and the information we process in our businesses will deal more and more often with concrete issues, with empirical data, with performance measures, with material questions and with measurable things. We will, as a profession, be faced with more and more complex decisions that we will be paid to make on behalf of our clients and the end user communities we also work for.
I want to focus here on the ‘missing link’ that is easily and conveniently overlooked in the sustainability debate as it applies to architectural practice, which is the daily business process of making discretionary decisions about buildings and communicating those decisions.
I believe that the value we add to the world will increasingly be defined by the questions we ask. These, in turn, are informed directly by the values we hold and the opinions we have. Our work will be validated less by the aesthetic qualities of our buildings, and more by the ethical principles that underpin our conduct as professionals in our working world.
Our professional journey in the world is a long one, and if we are to retain some sense of direction on the long road we travel as architects, we will need a stronger and resilient set of principles to guide us, going forward. This is especially so, given that the world is changing more and more, and faster and faster, and becoming less of a nice place.
I have identified five ideas or values or attitudes that I believe should form part of our own understanding and participation in the Sustainable Design debate. I think that if we get comfortable with these Ideas, turn them into Values that we hold and believe in, and act them out with an Attitude that informs our work and our relationship with others in our working world, we will add more value and be more valued as architects.
My Big Five Ideas are:
1. The Future
There is a long history of architects being connected to The Future. We are the purveyors of visions, the creators of dreams. People have eternally been coming to architects to obtain a picture of what the future could be like. Sometimes, these visions remain visionary, and sometimes these visions are built of partly built. Architecture forms the backdrop to all heroic depictions of The Future. At a fundamental level, architects should be connected to The Future. As South Africans, we are particularly challenged in the relationship we have to The Future. I have a personal theory that, back in 1994, the average South African had a ‘future horizon’ of about six months. By 1999, this horizon has crept outwards to perhaps two years. By 2004, it had become a possible hazy guesstimate territory of perhaps three years. Now, in 2011, I have a sense that South Africans, on average, have a Future Horizon of about five years. More and more, the world is expecting us to provide answers and solutions to its challenges in a Future Horizon that is of the order of magnitude of 30, 50, 100 or more years. I firmly believe that there is hardly a South African that can conceive of the idea of a Future that has a dimension of 100 years. This is partly due to the fact as a nation and a community, we have finally advanced to the point where we acknowledge that we should have a problematic relationship to our History, stretching back 6 months, two years, three years, five years, or 30, 50 or 100 years. Our conflictual relationship with the Past and the Future is a positive thing, and we should learn not to be afraid of the Future. We need to learn to love The Future as an idea, and to be aware that we need to think of it as a real dimension in our work, our life, our community, our country. If we do not change our attitude towards The Future, we will not be properly able to participate as designers of the sustainable future we all agree we should be creating.
2. People as a Resource
In the recent past, most of us have gotten used to being aware of material things as ‘resources’. We have learnt to speak of ‘sustainable use of resources’ and to think a bit more critically about what we choose to command to be at our disposal in terms of what we choose to consume. We realise now that things like electricity do not come out of a wall socket, but that there are complicated supply chains with large environmental impact behind a simple thing like switching on a light bulb. We think of steel, wood, cement, glass, aluminium and stone as resources. And we talk of making better buildings in a globalised world. About two years ago, I was unfortunate enough to visit Kuwait, where the compression ring of the Cape Town Stadium’s roof was made. Here, in abject conditions of heat and dust, Pakistani labourers worked for a wage of a dollar a day, three meals per day, and one return flight home per year. Their living conditions and space standards were worse than those provided in apartheid-era mineworkers’ hostels. In effect, a part of our stadium was made by modern-day slaves. So are many of the buildings celebrated by the world’s architectural press and designed by the ‘starchitects’ of the present. If we are going to move forward into a more whole and more equitable future, I believe that we have both a right and an obligation to begin to ask uncomfortable questions about the whole production chain of the materials we use. Because who makes something, and under what working conditions, is as important as how dirty the production process is. We cannot think of buildings as being ;green’ without thinking about the people who make them as a resource. As something precious, and irreplaceable. And this applies not just to the building sites we work on for clients, but in equal measure to our own offices, where we employ architects to work on the designs. Exploitation of people is just as detrimental to the future of our industry, and exploitation of resources is detrimental to the future of our planet.
3. Choice is Luxury
We have been coerced, mainly by technology, into believing that the world is a Global Village and that everything is very close and very accessible. In the perverse landscape invented around the invented city of Dubai, there is even a place called ‘Global Village’, one of a never-ending series of themed escapist compounds in the dreadfulness of Dubai’s cultural context. The Global Village is one of the prime capitalist myths, and many of us have learnt to consume the world as if we had a right to all of it. This is a fundamental flaw of thinking. We do not have the right to consume the entire world and all it has to offer. We do not have universal right of access to all places and all they have to offer. Not in a world that is becoming more polarised, more unequal, more discriminatory. Going forward, we will need to sharpen our senses to the fact that choice is an immense luxury. It is not difficult to do: try to imagine away the discretionary choices you have made for yourself, as an individual, and imagine yourself having had no choice. No concept of choice. No power of choice. No information to make choices. No system to deliver the knowledge. The world unravels pretty fast, going down this road. Why is this pertinent for us as designers or architects? Quite simply because of this: others pay us to make choices on their behalf. They trust us to be their arbiters and advisors in question of choice. Yes or no. Up or down. High or low. Wide or narrow. Bright or dark. Transparent or solid. Inviting or defensive. So if one set of people in society should understand the moral burden of the concept of choice, and the extent of the freedom with which choice is acted out on the material world, it should be us as designers and architects.
4. Innovation
We have been brought up to think of innovation as residing in high-tech industries, as something driven by billion-dollar R&D budgets. We think that innovation is about making gadgets, or about making new things out of new materials or for new uses. Like the face-recognition water faucet that adjusts your bath water temperature to your personal profile, to the transparent glass-sided toaster: the list of devices is endless. Perhaps we like to think that ‘different’ is the same as ‘new’, or in fact that ‘new’ must be ‘different’ and therefore project some kind of value of desire into rather ordinary objects. The real question, going forward, is: how much value is there really in reinventing the proverbial wheel? And is the reinvention worth the material and ecological cost? Or more directly, for designers: how much of our life force and creative energy is spent on pointless work that may LOOK different, but does not make the world a better place? These are questions that will perhaps become central to how we are educated, how we think and how we act. Around us are great inventive examples of how everyday objects are transformed by combination, adaptation and subversion into other types of everyday objects. The image of a Chinese mechanised street sweeping machine using traditional grass brooms tied to a gear-driven wheelbase capsule is a case in point. The question is truly how much energy and resources need to be invested to achieve confoundingly simple goals. Perhaps adaptation and subversion could become central techniques of enquiry in design education for the future.
5. The Point of Resistance
It is my considered personal opinion that our ability to function as designers, and our value to wider society as designers, is grounded in the extent to which we can develop, hold and continually evolve a personal set of ethical standards. This is becoming, quite simply, a matter of survival in a complicated world. I believe that design is about making choices. All the time, each and every day. The responsibility that comes with the practice of design is about how we apply the luxury of choice for the benefit of the largest number of participants in our world. Are we going to make the world into a better place, if we do not know how to guide our own actions? Hardly likely.
The day to day issue is this: Our Cheese Is Being Moved. Every day. By everyone in our industry. For all sorts of reasons. Our ethical standards will be challenged. This is what they were made for. One of my favourite instruments in the world is a Penetrometer. It is used in various industries to determine the physical limits of materials, at the point of refusal: normally, the point at which a material cannot be easily compressed further. The Point of Refusal is one of those things we all need. We need to understand how far we are prepared to be pushed on any one issue at any given time. And as designers or architects, we need to know where we refuse to be pushed further. In essence, each of us needs to develop our own Personal Penetrometer, which can give us a gauge for the limits of negotiation and compromise. Where values rub up against each other, decision making becomes real interesting. That is my fervent belief. So with this in mind, and with the Big Five Attitudes forming our horizon, we can engage with a designed future that is complex, challenging, shifting, beautiful, contested, and filled with tough but rewarding decisions to make. All we need is a good toolbox in our hearts and minds. Or better still, our souls.
My Big Five Ideas are:
1. The Future
There is a long history of architects being connected to The Future. We are the purveyors of visions, the creators of dreams. People have eternally been coming to architects to obtain a picture of what the future could be like. Sometimes, these visions remain visionary, and sometimes these visions are built of partly built. Architecture forms the backdrop to all heroic depictions of The Future. At a fundamental level, architects should be connected to The Future. As South Africans, we are particularly challenged in the relationship we have to The Future. I have a personal theory that, back in 1994, the average South African had a ‘future horizon’ of about six months. By 1999, this horizon has crept outwards to perhaps two years. By 2004, it had become a possible hazy guesstimate territory of perhaps three years. Now, in 2011, I have a sense that South Africans, on average, have a Future Horizon of about five years. More and more, the world is expecting us to provide answers and solutions to its challenges in a Future Horizon that is of the order of magnitude of 30, 50, 100 or more years. I firmly believe that there is hardly a South African that can conceive of the idea of a Future that has a dimension of 100 years. This is partly due to the fact as a nation and a community, we have finally advanced to the point where we acknowledge that we should have a problematic relationship to our History, stretching back 6 months, two years, three years, five years, or 30, 50 or 100 years. Our conflictual relationship with the Past and the Future is a positive thing, and we should learn not to be afraid of the Future. We need to learn to love The Future as an idea, and to be aware that we need to think of it as a real dimension in our work, our life, our community, our country. If we do not change our attitude towards The Future, we will not be properly able to participate as designers of the sustainable future we all agree we should be creating.
2. People as a Resource
In the recent past, most of us have gotten used to being aware of material things as ‘resources’. We have learnt to speak of ‘sustainable use of resources’ and to think a bit more critically about what we choose to command to be at our disposal in terms of what we choose to consume. We realise now that things like electricity do not come out of a wall socket, but that there are complicated supply chains with large environmental impact behind a simple thing like switching on a light bulb. We think of steel, wood, cement, glass, aluminium and stone as resources. And we talk of making better buildings in a globalised world. About two years ago, I was unfortunate enough to visit Kuwait, where the compression ring of the Cape Town Stadium’s roof was made. Here, in abject conditions of heat and dust, Pakistani labourers worked for a wage of a dollar a day, three meals per day, and one return flight home per year. Their living conditions and space standards were worse than those provided in apartheid-era mineworkers’ hostels. In effect, a part of our stadium was made by modern-day slaves. So are many of the buildings celebrated by the world’s architectural press and designed by the ‘starchitects’ of the present. If we are going to move forward into a more whole and more equitable future, I believe that we have both a right and an obligation to begin to ask uncomfortable questions about the whole production chain of the materials we use. Because who makes something, and under what working conditions, is as important as how dirty the production process is. We cannot think of buildings as being ;green’ without thinking about the people who make them as a resource. As something precious, and irreplaceable. And this applies not just to the building sites we work on for clients, but in equal measure to our own offices, where we employ architects to work on the designs. Exploitation of people is just as detrimental to the future of our industry, and exploitation of resources is detrimental to the future of our planet.
3. Choice is Luxury
We have been coerced, mainly by technology, into believing that the world is a Global Village and that everything is very close and very accessible. In the perverse landscape invented around the invented city of Dubai, there is even a place called ‘Global Village’, one of a never-ending series of themed escapist compounds in the dreadfulness of Dubai’s cultural context. The Global Village is one of the prime capitalist myths, and many of us have learnt to consume the world as if we had a right to all of it. This is a fundamental flaw of thinking. We do not have the right to consume the entire world and all it has to offer. We do not have universal right of access to all places and all they have to offer. Not in a world that is becoming more polarised, more unequal, more discriminatory. Going forward, we will need to sharpen our senses to the fact that choice is an immense luxury. It is not difficult to do: try to imagine away the discretionary choices you have made for yourself, as an individual, and imagine yourself having had no choice. No concept of choice. No power of choice. No information to make choices. No system to deliver the knowledge. The world unravels pretty fast, going down this road. Why is this pertinent for us as designers or architects? Quite simply because of this: others pay us to make choices on their behalf. They trust us to be their arbiters and advisors in question of choice. Yes or no. Up or down. High or low. Wide or narrow. Bright or dark. Transparent or solid. Inviting or defensive. So if one set of people in society should understand the moral burden of the concept of choice, and the extent of the freedom with which choice is acted out on the material world, it should be us as designers and architects.
4. Innovation
We have been brought up to think of innovation as residing in high-tech industries, as something driven by billion-dollar R&D budgets. We think that innovation is about making gadgets, or about making new things out of new materials or for new uses. Like the face-recognition water faucet that adjusts your bath water temperature to your personal profile, to the transparent glass-sided toaster: the list of devices is endless. Perhaps we like to think that ‘different’ is the same as ‘new’, or in fact that ‘new’ must be ‘different’ and therefore project some kind of value of desire into rather ordinary objects. The real question, going forward, is: how much value is there really in reinventing the proverbial wheel? And is the reinvention worth the material and ecological cost? Or more directly, for designers: how much of our life force and creative energy is spent on pointless work that may LOOK different, but does not make the world a better place? These are questions that will perhaps become central to how we are educated, how we think and how we act. Around us are great inventive examples of how everyday objects are transformed by combination, adaptation and subversion into other types of everyday objects. The image of a Chinese mechanised street sweeping machine using traditional grass brooms tied to a gear-driven wheelbase capsule is a case in point. The question is truly how much energy and resources need to be invested to achieve confoundingly simple goals. Perhaps adaptation and subversion could become central techniques of enquiry in design education for the future.
5. The Point of Resistance
It is my considered personal opinion that our ability to function as designers, and our value to wider society as designers, is grounded in the extent to which we can develop, hold and continually evolve a personal set of ethical standards. This is becoming, quite simply, a matter of survival in a complicated world. I believe that design is about making choices. All the time, each and every day. The responsibility that comes with the practice of design is about how we apply the luxury of choice for the benefit of the largest number of participants in our world. Are we going to make the world into a better place, if we do not know how to guide our own actions? Hardly likely.
The day to day issue is this: Our Cheese Is Being Moved. Every day. By everyone in our industry. For all sorts of reasons. Our ethical standards will be challenged. This is what they were made for. One of my favourite instruments in the world is a Penetrometer. It is used in various industries to determine the physical limits of materials, at the point of refusal: normally, the point at which a material cannot be easily compressed further. The Point of Refusal is one of those things we all need. We need to understand how far we are prepared to be pushed on any one issue at any given time. And as designers or architects, we need to know where we refuse to be pushed further. In essence, each of us needs to develop our own Personal Penetrometer, which can give us a gauge for the limits of negotiation and compromise. Where values rub up against each other, decision making becomes real interesting. That is my fervent belief. So with this in mind, and with the Big Five Attitudes forming our horizon, we can engage with a designed future that is complex, challenging, shifting, beautiful, contested, and filled with tough but rewarding decisions to make. All we need is a good toolbox in our hearts and minds. Or better still, our souls.
Thilo and Henning