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Holley House by hanrahan Meyers architects: bio-morphic design: bringing outside inside and using glass to connect interior to the exterior space. built using sustainable, local materials

ON THE EDUCATION OF THE ARCHITECT

This past December I sat on juries at a few different schools of architecture, a bi-annual rite of passage that happens across the country in December and again in May.  For those who never studied architecture, this bi-annual event is a time of maximum anticipation and anxiety for students of architecture, when they are all required to withstand the rigours of a ritual not unlike defending a Ph.D.

After a full semester of sorting through issues of an investigation set by a studio critic – either a life-long academician, or a practicing architect who has chosen to return to academia for a semester or two of intellectual renewal –  students are required to draw up a building based on a program and site, and defend their designs.  Inevitably, after visiting these reviews, visitors leave with a profound appreciation for a younger generation of architects coming through the ranks.

As I visited various programs and studios, what struck me was the work of one student who had chosen a highly anthropomorphic language of design.  For me it was a non-starter from the get-go, and I had to recuse myself from the discussion.

  left: a biomorphic airplane design; right: Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building in midtown Manhattan

For me, anthropomorphism in design (not to be confused with bio-morphism – an area of research that hMa endorses and pursues in their work) is akin to religious fundamentalism.  That sort of design takes me back to Post-Modernism and its worst sins against intelligent design.

For the general public who may not remember post-modernism or know what this refers to, this was a sad period of design that dominated architecture during the 1970’s and 80’s.  It was a sad, disconnected period of design wherein the practitioners inveighed in highly emotional terms for a return to Renaissance and Baroque inspired decorative elements on buildings, many of which were built out of a degraded material called ‘Dryvit’.

I still on occasion see buildings from this period (many of them have been torn down or remodeled), the saddest of which is the Portland Building, a building that resulted from a competition won by Michael Graves in the late 1970’s. At the Portland Building a decision was made – based on the post-modernist aesthetic in fashion at the time –  to make the (already overly small) windows in the facade of Graves’ competition-winning building design – a very dark green tint.  The result was (and is) not pretty.  A multi-story monument to the foibles that architectural practitioners have and will fall prey to when they allow the language of academicians interested in aesthetic philosophies to lead their design thinking.

The Portland Building was built in 1980 with a facade ‘criticized for unpleasantness’. ‘The building’s failings are the subject of ..contempt by the civil servants who work there who describe it as cheaply built (ie: Dryvit) … and difficult to work in (because they can’t see out the tiny windows that are tinted almost black…).

For me – this period of design can be likened to the political extremism of religious fundamentalists. It’s an extremist point of view about design that comes out of an emotional and reactionary way of creating design, with no grounding in intelligent or rational thinking.

I view myself as a benign secular thinker and maker, and attempt to apply logical ideas and improvements to architecture.  I’m not interested in architectural dogma.  My interest – even when it’s aesthetically driven – relates back to abstract, non-anthropomorphic places of origination.  By going to that place of formal origination it places my work within a mileau stripped of the baggage of humanist associations, and frees the work to incorporate sustainable design forms and materials.

I started my practice in architecture as an engineer, after growing up reading and believing the writings of Frank Lloyd Wright, my hero.  I had the fortune or handicap of knowing who and what I wanted to do and be from the time I could speak.  I announced that I was going to be ‘an architect’ by the time I was 5 years old. I collected and read through the writings of Wright, the most famous architect when I was growing up, and it was through Wright that I determined how I would pursue my architectural education.  Wright never went to architecture school but instead graduated from an engineering program because he was convinced that schools of architecture were places of brain-washing, and not very good at educating future architects.  Following in Wright’s footsteps, my undergraduate degree was in Civil Engineering / Art History. 

Which takes me back to my experience at the recent reviews and my reaction to that anthropomorphic project.

  left: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, a building floated over water
right: hanrahan Meyers architects’ Pratt Design Center, a building floated over the lobby below

For me,  the strongest educational stance a student in architecture can take today is to leave the architecture studio, walk over to the engineering quad, and engage the engineers in a discourse around materiality, energy use, and ways that we might envision taking architecture toward a future that is moving –  much like the car industry – toward a model based less on hype and fashion –  and more on a maximization of sustainable techniques for energy use and materiality. 

Whereas hMa will always support the intelligence of bio-morphic design – we oppose academic fashions whenever they rear their ugly heads and take charge of the field of architecture.  When the academicians rule, there is no longer an appreciation for intelligent areas of investigation.  Architects can and must lead the way into a sustainable future.  This is my advice to the architecture students of today.  Read widely, experience the world first-hand, and design environments that respect our limited resources.