Architecture for Us - Stories - Prelude
One of the most difficult things for any of us to accomplish is to escape the tyranny of what we believe and the habits we have formed. On one hand established habits and beliefs are helpful as they allow us to engage the world without starting from scratch everyday. For example, I know how to brush my teeth and don’t need to think about it every morning. I know how to make coffee and don’t need to ponder the process. Pretty mundane stuff, perhaps not important.
Similarly, I’ve played guitar long enough that much of what I know is rooted in muscle memory, in theory allowing a higher order to follow. Same with tennis where I've clocked in enough hours to have a decent sense of what I’m doing. Still mundane? Maybe.
But there are bigger ticket items. For example, life may lead us to have certain political views which can become so ingrained that we no longer give them much thought. Same thing with concepts of God. Such beliefs can be very deeply rooted, operating at a tacit level and driving us rather than we driving them. Unexamined they may lead us to sincerely believe things like, “If you disagree with my politics it is very clear that God has a slot waiting for you in hell.”
This is not mundane.
And so it is that the way I engage the political world or the manner in which I play tennis is little different from the way I brush my teeth: unexamined. This works pretty well until my dentist tells me that the firm bristle brush I’ve been using in a back and forth motion has destroyed my gums. Or when playing tennis I learn that the backhand my granddad taught me is actually horrible and that if I stay with it I will never be a particularly good player.
Ouch! I don’t like this as I discover that many of the things which have allowed me to easily move through the world are actually limiting me. Unexamined, my poor tennis backhand got me to a certain point and then dropped me. If I am going to continue playing I’m going to have to unlearn my old ways and develop new ones. This is going to hurt.
Such is life, and so it is with design.
We all know what a bedroom should be like, right? Hmmm… turns out that my understanding of a bedroom began to engrain itself in me at a very early age and little has happened to challenge that understanding. Oh sure, these days I might have a larger version of the bedroom with nicer furniture, but at the end of the day it’s the same old bedroom and like a bad backhand in tennis it is completely limiting my ability to entertain the possibility of something better or more appropriate.
Similarly, I don’t challenge the character of the place I work. I mean, this is what a workplace looks like, right? Oh, the lights might be more energy efficient these days and the flooring material less toxic, but at it’s core it’s the same old place. It doesn’t even occur to me that my workplace could be designed in a manner that might make my work day more enjoyable and life-affirming. As a “decision maker” it may never occur to me that good design might promote employee longevity, increase productivity, decreases absenteeism, and, well, make people happier.
All of which leads me to suggest that we reflect on this well-engrained tacit knowledge we are carrying. Let’s take our beliefs and habits, put them on a metaphorical table and see if they still make sense. Let’s change and improve our backhand. Let’s reflect on a better way to brush. Let’s deconstruct our old understandings of “bedroom” and consider what a truly good bedroom might be. What is a good workplace? How can the built world make our lives better?
As a way of making this shift I suggest a story. This story is about teaching, but there are innumerable stories to be told from worship to work, cooking to sleep, reading to socializing.
We begin with a question: how does teaching/learning occur and what would be a good environment to support that process? At the most basic level we have a relationship between the teacher, the student(s), and some learning materials. There are going to be some lectures, some experimenting, and some times for reflection. Seems pretty straightforward.
Hmmm… do we really need architecture for this teaching to occur? It would be quite easy for my class to meet outside, perhaps under a tree. The light is nice, the air comparatively clean, we’ve got plenty of space, and there is wi-fi. I can lecture or move from student to student considering the work they are doing. Students can pair up and work in teams. No problems! We have achieved the basic human activity of teaching / learning and it works great. No architecture needed.
Well, unless it rains. That could be an issue. Easy - instead of meeting under the tree lets put up a tarp and meet under that. No problems with rain now. (Note: with the tarp we have now started to create architecture.) Again, basic human activity met, and it works pretty well until it turns cold. Uh oh. We could consider bringing in some space heaters and perhaps dropping the edges of our tarp to form walls and resist the cold. But then the space becomes a bit dark for students to work. We need some lighting. By now we are well into architecture and design.
Unable to continue our class outside we might ask what a good built teaching space would be like. This being academia, we immediately assemble a group of teachers, administrators, and perhaps a student or two to serve as a focus group! Great idea. One teacher suggests that when she was in school her classrooms always had the teacher up front with rows of desks for students all facing forward. Another teacher notes that years ago in her son’s school they did away with windows so the students wouldn’t be distracted by what was going on outside. Another teacher notes that in his daughter’s school they don’t even have desks.
Still, after all of this and so much more we are left with the basic question: what is a good space for teaching and learning? As I sit in this meeting I can’t help but think to myself, “but thing were going so well when we were sitting out under the tree. The students were happy, I was happy, and everyone was engaged in the reflection and practice for the day.”
In some ways the question we asked the focus group has simple, if elusive answers. We started our basic human experience of teaching and learning sitting under a tree, but for some very good reasons needed to create a built environment. We figured out how to stop the rain. We came up with ways to keep warm. We determined some ways to light the space. Other things followed: security, storage, media, and so forth. But along the way, as we developed this built environment we lost sight of what happened so easily and naturally before we built anything.
As with our bad tennis backhand, we have now created a bad learning environment.
I suggest that in so much as possible, design begin by moving outside of our well-engrained tacit knowledge. That we forget how it was “when we were younger,” and focus on the now, describing the basic human experience we are considering, be it an experience between a group of people as with teaching, or between an individual and an object, say me reading a book. Moving from that core understanding we can develop an environment that calls on our past understandings, but is not imprisoned by them. At its most essential we design in a way that does not take away from what occurs naturally. On a good day, perhaps our design takes that natural occurrence and actually improves it a bit. Maybe we contribute to the greater Good.
This is harder to do than it sounds, but it provides a solid starting point for creating a built world for everyone as opposed to the elite or trendy. It promotes an Architecture for Us.
Which brings us to to the final point. How do I escape what I already believe without throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater?
If you follow this process you’ll discover that you have the ability to improve significant parts of your built environment. Still as you move forward through the complexity of the built world you may discover that you need a professional. No problem. A quality and thoughtful architect, interior designer, or landscape architect will love it if you have gone through this process of thinking about your needs. Good professionals want to help you solve your problems and to make life better.
Again, this is not an architecture for the elite or the trendy. We can all do this. We can all create an Architecture for Us.
One of the most difficult things for any of us to accomplish is to escape the tyranny of what we believe and the habits we have formed. On one hand established habits and beliefs are helpful as they allow us to engage the world without starting from scratch everyday. For example, I know how to brush my teeth and don’t need to think about it every morning. I know how to make coffee and don’t need to ponder the process. Pretty mundane stuff, perhaps not important.
Similarly, I’ve played guitar long enough that much of what I know is rooted in muscle memory, in theory allowing a higher order to follow. Same with tennis where I've clocked in enough hours to have a decent sense of what I’m doing. Still mundane? Maybe.
But there are bigger ticket items. For example, life may lead us to have certain political views which can become so ingrained that we no longer give them much thought. Same thing with concepts of God. Such beliefs can be very deeply rooted, operating at a tacit level and driving us rather than we driving them. Unexamined they may lead us to sincerely believe things like, “If you disagree with my politics it is very clear that God has a slot waiting for you in hell.”
This is not mundane.
And so it is that the way I engage the political world or the manner in which I play tennis is little different from the way I brush my teeth: unexamined. This works pretty well until my dentist tells me that the firm bristle brush I’ve been using in a back and forth motion has destroyed my gums. Or when playing tennis I learn that the backhand my granddad taught me is actually horrible and that if I stay with it I will never be a particularly good player.
Ouch! I don’t like this as I discover that many of the things which have allowed me to easily move through the world are actually limiting me. Unexamined, my poor tennis backhand got me to a certain point and then dropped me. If I am going to continue playing I’m going to have to unlearn my old ways and develop new ones. This is going to hurt.
Such is life, and so it is with design.
We all know what a bedroom should be like, right? Hmmm… turns out that my understanding of a bedroom began to engrain itself in me at a very early age and little has happened to challenge that understanding. Oh sure, these days I might have a larger version of the bedroom with nicer furniture, but at the end of the day it’s the same old bedroom and like a bad backhand in tennis it is completely limiting my ability to entertain the possibility of something better or more appropriate.
Similarly, I don’t challenge the character of the place I work. I mean, this is what a workplace looks like, right? Oh, the lights might be more energy efficient these days and the flooring material less toxic, but at it’s core it’s the same old place. It doesn’t even occur to me that my workplace could be designed in a manner that might make my work day more enjoyable and life-affirming. As a “decision maker” it may never occur to me that good design might promote employee longevity, increase productivity, decreases absenteeism, and, well, make people happier.
All of which leads me to suggest that we reflect on this well-engrained tacit knowledge we are carrying. Let’s take our beliefs and habits, put them on a metaphorical table and see if they still make sense. Let’s change and improve our backhand. Let’s reflect on a better way to brush. Let’s deconstruct our old understandings of “bedroom” and consider what a truly good bedroom might be. What is a good workplace? How can the built world make our lives better?
As a way of making this shift I suggest a story. This story is about teaching, but there are innumerable stories to be told from worship to work, cooking to sleep, reading to socializing.
We begin with a question: how does teaching/learning occur and what would be a good environment to support that process? At the most basic level we have a relationship between the teacher, the student(s), and some learning materials. There are going to be some lectures, some experimenting, and some times for reflection. Seems pretty straightforward.
Hmmm… do we really need architecture for this teaching to occur? It would be quite easy for my class to meet outside, perhaps under a tree. The light is nice, the air comparatively clean, we’ve got plenty of space, and there is wi-fi. I can lecture or move from student to student considering the work they are doing. Students can pair up and work in teams. No problems! We have achieved the basic human activity of teaching / learning and it works great. No architecture needed.
Well, unless it rains. That could be an issue. Easy - instead of meeting under the tree lets put up a tarp and meet under that. No problems with rain now. (Note: with the tarp we have now started to create architecture.) Again, basic human activity met, and it works pretty well until it turns cold. Uh oh. We could consider bringing in some space heaters and perhaps dropping the edges of our tarp to form walls and resist the cold. But then the space becomes a bit dark for students to work. We need some lighting. By now we are well into architecture and design.
Unable to continue our class outside we might ask what a good built teaching space would be like. This being academia, we immediately assemble a group of teachers, administrators, and perhaps a student or two to serve as a focus group! Great idea. One teacher suggests that when she was in school her classrooms always had the teacher up front with rows of desks for students all facing forward. Another teacher notes that years ago in her son’s school they did away with windows so the students wouldn’t be distracted by what was going on outside. Another teacher notes that in his daughter’s school they don’t even have desks.
Still, after all of this and so much more we are left with the basic question: what is a good space for teaching and learning? As I sit in this meeting I can’t help but think to myself, “but thing were going so well when we were sitting out under the tree. The students were happy, I was happy, and everyone was engaged in the reflection and practice for the day.”
In some ways the question we asked the focus group has simple, if elusive answers. We started our basic human experience of teaching and learning sitting under a tree, but for some very good reasons needed to create a built environment. We figured out how to stop the rain. We came up with ways to keep warm. We determined some ways to light the space. Other things followed: security, storage, media, and so forth. But along the way, as we developed this built environment we lost sight of what happened so easily and naturally before we built anything.
As with our bad tennis backhand, we have now created a bad learning environment.
I suggest that in so much as possible, design begin by moving outside of our well-engrained tacit knowledge. That we forget how it was “when we were younger,” and focus on the now, describing the basic human experience we are considering, be it an experience between a group of people as with teaching, or between an individual and an object, say me reading a book. Moving from that core understanding we can develop an environment that calls on our past understandings, but is not imprisoned by them. At its most essential we design in a way that does not take away from what occurs naturally. On a good day, perhaps our design takes that natural occurrence and actually improves it a bit. Maybe we contribute to the greater Good.
This is harder to do than it sounds, but it provides a solid starting point for creating a built world for everyone as opposed to the elite or trendy. It promotes an Architecture for Us.
Which brings us to to the final point. How do I escape what I already believe without throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater?
- The first step for all us, perhaps me more than anyone, is to recognize that what I believe I believe may be incomplete at best and dead wrong at worst. There is always more to know.
- Next, define the core human enterprise as a way of understanding the problem we are really trying to solve.
- Avoid purely ego-based positions that are grounded exclusively in our own experiences. The classic examples of this include, “when I was a boy we did…” or “in my daughter’s school they do…”.
- Next, you are what you eat. If you have only eaten poor design, you will likely spit back poor design. You can “eat” more by visiting varied environments, reading, talking with others, and so forth.
- Remember that design is a process, not an end. Lots of people start with an image of what they want and design toward that. In real design the destination is unknown. We arrive at it through a process of reflection and inquiry.
- Finally, in of themselves images and prior understandings are not bad. Far from it, they may be quite useful. But, rather than becoming attached to the exact image in your mind, try to understand what it is about that image that you like. For example, if you loved a particular classroom, don’t copy the image of the classroom, but instead explore what is is about that classroom that is so powerful for you. What were the things that caused you to love it? Often you will find that these root ideas, which tie back strongly to our shared human experiences, will lead you to something that in its final form looks nothing like the image you started with, yet captures everything that you originally liked.
If you follow this process you’ll discover that you have the ability to improve significant parts of your built environment. Still as you move forward through the complexity of the built world you may discover that you need a professional. No problem. A quality and thoughtful architect, interior designer, or landscape architect will love it if you have gone through this process of thinking about your needs. Good professionals want to help you solve your problems and to make life better.
Again, this is not an architecture for the elite or the trendy. We can all do this. We can all create an Architecture for Us.