A sustainable approach to the city implies the activation of citizen know-how that redefines the role and methods of the architect. For Jana Revidin, the ecological transition must drive architects to transform the theory and practice of architecture so as to move toward a world based on the idea of the radicant. While the many remaining advocates of post-functionalism continue to think in terms of simple evolutions of systems, on the contrary, we must activate a historical rupture based on the current resources and context in order to design modes of production of space where the process is not subordinate to a product or a final form. The act of building does not matter more than the thing being built, in line with a vision where the project becomes a process of amending inhabited environments over time. This vision of architecture allows us to free ourselves from the short-term pressure and to listen to the uses and users according to an iterative approach to experimentation.
Time as a resource can deepen this debate about readdressing the long-term nature of the process of the formation of habitat and of cities. In the productivist Modernist economy time is money – we can save time – and cost reduction has encroached into architecture. Indeed, wasn’t the tabula rasa itself nothing more than a means of cleansing and saving time? Razing the ground is a way of eliminating contexts and the need to take these into account; of flattening any residue left behind by history, geography or former uses – which can get in the way of a project – and of inserting this project into the context of a blank sheet of paper or a screen. It is also – and above all – a way of reducing the time lost through interactions with local inhabitants.
But if, in a characteristic inversion of the ecological approach, we stop subordinating the process to the final product and, conversely, consider that this product should be defined as a function of the nature and activation of the available resources, it is the quality of the process, its enrichment, that prevails over the design of the product. In such a situation, time is no longer a cost but a resource with multiple qualities: it is unlimited, universally available, inexpensive, shapeable.
The reintegration of time opens the way for an experimentally reformist architecture which no longer considers – and this is a new theoretical direction – the project as the design of the perfect product but, rather, as a long-term process of improving inhabited milieux. This long-term probationary approach repudiates Modernist radicalism. It suggests that construction itself matters more than the constructed, that time spent thinking, experimenting and doing matters more than the final execution of the object. And even, perhaps, that architecture is not a finished object but a collective moment of co-programming, co-conceiving and co-constructing, a phase in the continuous process by which humans make and remake – in a radicant manner – habitat, city, milieu under the complex influence of the available resources, human experience, the sedimentary timescale of the city and the long-term rhythm of geography and climate.
Albert Schweitzer stated that example was not the main thing in teaching others – it was “the only thing”. And more than being a mere pedagogical approach, example can also become a design tool. When students build their project proposals at a scale of 1:1 and develop their design not only technically but also in terms of content and meaning alongside other specialists: structural, mechanical and energy engineers, landscape and city planners, lighting designers, wood, earth, stone and recycling experts, writers, filmmakers, musicians…. the age of Gropius’ interdisciplinary “nomad-architect” has begun.
One should test and prove the capacity of project prototypes to “age well”, to meet the challenges of climate and user flexibility, urban and rural contexts – because the capacity to “age well” in such conditions is the very essence of a sustainable design approach that integrates civic practice and acceptance with the unique “social capital” of the crafts that Richard Sennett has called “that basic human impulse: the desire to do a job well for its own sake.”
Collective design tasks realised through experimental learning hope to replace, in the long term, such questionable aims as “originality” and “artistic talent” with much more aspiring standards – technical, aesthetic and artisanal perfection – as a means of starting to reverse “the marginalisation of those who truly know their job, and know it as something more interesting than themselves.”
Vitruvius, the ancient Roman design theorist, expressed the very same educational concern at the beginning of his treatise, suggesting that the architect should discover a broad cultural understanding in, at least, philosophy, medicine, law and astronomy, the four disciplines that, for him, were at the core of human survival and dignity. His inter- and trans-disciplinary education of the architect formed a framework of knowledge and architectural skills in which designing and building were only the final, the experimental destination of a long journey of initiation. He approached architecture from outside, from the wider world, as the culmination of a programme of universal training: “Let him be educated, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens.”
“Let him be skilful with the pencil” was the final skill requested by Vitruvius, the last, recapitulatory expertise to be learned by the architect. Leon Battista Alberti, around 1,500 years later, confirmed this “hands-on” practice as the summum in architectural learning, so to say, “from within” the discipline of the crafts.
Architectural learning through the resources of time, needs and experimentation is thus a theory of process in which construction is understood not as a factor which one sub-contracts but as a civic, creative and performative ability which the aspiring architect has to develop over many years.
This article was initially published in Stream 04, in 2017.
Albert Schweitzer stated that example was not the main thing in teaching others — it was “the only thing”. And more than being a mere pedagogical approach, an example can also become a design tool. When students build their project proposals at a scale of 1:1 and develop their design not only technically but also in terms of content and meaning alongside other specialists: structural, mechanical and energy engineers, landscape and city planners, lighting designers, wood, earth, stone and recycling experts, writers, filmmakers, musicians … the age of Gropius’ interdisciplinary “nomad-architect” has begun.
One should test and prove the capacity of project prototypes to “age well”, to meet the challenges of climate and user flexibility, urban and rural contexts — because the capacity to “age well” in such conditions is the very essence of a sustainable design approach that integrates civic practice and acceptance with the unique “social capital” of the crafts that Richard Sennett has called “that basic human impulse: the desire to do a job well for its own sake.” Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, Allan Lane, New York 2008.
Collective design tasks realized through experimental learningDavid A. Kolb, Experiential Learning: experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall 1984. The theory states that a per-son would learn through discovery and experience. It was called “experiential” due to the fact that, having its intellectual origins in the experiential work of Lewin, Piaget, Dewey, Freire and James, it forms a unique perspective on human development and emphasises the central role that experience plays in the learning process. hope to replace, in the long term, such questionable aims as “originality” and “artistic talent” The well-known confusion between talent and tradition overshadowed the “Beaux-arts” system of architectural teaching: it highlights an overvaluation of individual “artistic” talent and the lack of a holistic ethical overview and true technical knowledge. In Tradition and the Individual Talent, T.S. Eliot wrote sharply of the uncritical encouragement of “talent without tradition and termination of talent rather than its continuation”.
with much more aspiring standards — technical, aesthetic and artisanal perfection — as a means of starting to reverse “the marginalization of those who truly know their job, and know it as something more interesting than themselves.”Roger Scruton, The Craftsman by Richard Sennett, in The Sunday Times, 10th February 2008.
This article was initially published in Stream 04 – The Paradoxes of the living in November 2017.
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“We are told that we have entered the era of cultural globalization. We live in the era of multiculturalism, in an age of hybridizations, of cross-fertilization between traditions and modus operandi, of global networks. ” Nicolas Bourriaud is an art historian, art critic, theorist and exhibition curator. Since 2016, he is the director of the future Montpellier Contemporain (MoCo).
Urban density, though challenged by the pandemic, remains beneficial in mitigating sprawl. As urbanization nevertheless impacts the climate, the challenge, for Jeffrey Raven, lies in working on the actual shape and configuration of this density to make it sustainable and sound. Running counter to technological solutionism, this involves measures such as creating microclimates which provide ecosystem services following a holistic approach. He views the district as the proper spatial scale to operate at, due to its specific metabolism and because it is one of the most nimble scales to experiment at, through intermediate forms of governance. Architects gain a central role in coordinating synergies between the stakeholders involved, pragmatically understanding their interests, and, thanks to their skills in prototyping, offering a shareable narrative around “zero carbon” demonstration projects.
As the living increasingly emerges as the conceptual horizon of urban production, philosopher Chris Younès analyses the dynamics of an architecture of environments. Whether biotope or architecture, environments are the product of the interactions that constitute them and continuously transform them. Considering environments in this way allows us to emphasize “the in-between,” with every metabolism being both self-organized and porous, operating within a system of relationships. In this way, it insists upon the fecundity of the “reliances” that exist between city and nature as the condition for a symbolic reestablishment of urban environments through an increased coexistence with nature. Developing urban environments’ capacities for resilience requires that we no longer step outside of our environment, as modern thinking would encourage, but rather drives us to understand and establish alliances with the environment, with the goal of revealing, managing, and revitalizing it. In this way, we will see the reemergence of new ways of thinking and doing, in order to “renature” both architecture and the city.