To start, this is the quote that offered the biggest insight for me:
A train track’s trajectory might, for example, set the angle of a bathroom urinal wall; but — regardless if the original alignment is visible or not — that wall experienced in place won’t necessarily bring a Johnny Cash rail song to mind while one is taking a leak.
Understanding architectural form has always been a huge challenge for me. Maybe that’s why I latched onto typography; typography offers such clear perspective on the “why” and “how” based on all of the various historical and cultural influences. But I still find myself grappling with questions about why things look the way they do, and how that those forms — fundamentally and experientially — relate to how the thing works, or where it is.
It’s the translation from diagram/landscape to building that still gets me, and this piece touches on that connection. How is the “influencing” landscape eventually affected by the structures that are built into it? Are those structures (and infrastructures) changing that landscape, and if so, is it in a way that feels integral to the origins?
I appreciate the disclaimer at the end of the essay where the author states that “architects are not required to be intellectually rigorous.” Practically speaking, there seem to be very few opportunities where are “real-life” architects — the ones not being displayed and discussed in essays like this — have a chance to be completely rigorous with their intellectual intentions. Compromises have to be made, and budgets are always a reality.
This is actually my biggest problem with the development of Manhattan’s Midtown West area. I would argue that most of NYC’s authenticity stems from lots of localized agendas being driven by people and organizations with good taste. Those individual interests help reinforce lots of different identities in a small space, without the feeling of a single tyrannical developer just putting up condos with the hope of selling units ASAP. Space is at a premium, and that tension seems to have worked well for Manhattan so far.
We’re now at a point where Midtown West — approximately between 23rd and 50th, west of 8th Ave. — is one of the few remaining spaces ripe for development on the island. We’re also at a point where a few major development companies (namely, Vornado) have lots of control that is mainly in the corporate interest. Do their architects have any interest in upholding that architectural/historical integrity when it comes to making the most of this space?
It seems like a lot of responsibility to give to these architects, and this is where this essay rings true. How much attention should be paid to uncovering and creating these forms that embody the “last frontier” of Manhattan? How practical is it to think that they’ll be able to overcome the “impossibility of common interpretation,” as the author calls it, when putting up these buildings? Manhattan is dripping with influential “landscape” that could easily inform a building, and I wonder how much effort will be spent into addressing those influences.
In the end, does it matter? I don’t say this with exasperation, but more with pragmatism in mind. Which concerns and powers get balanced in a project that involves so much money, in such an important city? Will the investors be lured by the tales of “landscape,” and if so, will that landscape even be legible, without explicit explanation?
That is, you cannot understand what generates the order by simple inhabitation. You have to be told.
Public legibility has always been incredibly important to me, and it has always felt like diagrams and history were a good place to start. From those roots (or, parameters), you can develop a project that feels right and makes sense. It upholds that responsibility to be “intellectually rigorous,” a burden that I hope many architects feel everyday. However, if the end result is just an illegible abstraction of those original seeds of intellect, how does the public actually understand the project?
These are questions and concerns addressed by architects throughout a project, and my intention isn’t to say that too much time is being put into justification, rather than end result. Instead, it’s an issue of communication between the origins of a project with the end result, especially as perceived by the public. I’m making some sweeping generalizations, even with the use of “public,” but this essay points to a very real problem I have always had with architectural communication: In the end, who cares? Who is the audience, and where does that connection to “landscape” become clear? For who? When? Importantly: why?
At the office, I do lots of “communication” work for the company. There is always this problem of distillation when it comes to communicating the final project, and much of it comes from suppressing the juicy details of process, and highlighting the eventual value proposition for the user. The end users don’t care about engineering challenges, they just want something that works.
I see this as very much the same problem. Even if your final product is directly influenced by something, and even if you make design decisions for very explicit reasons, how much of it matters in the end? Whether it be landscape, engineering resources, or time constraints, you have to ship something in the end. How that shipped or built project communicates the process is a tenuous issue.
