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OAA Perspectives The Journal of the Ontario Association of Architects Volume 20, Number 3 Fall 2012 $5.00 WHY ARE (SOME) BUILDINGS SO UGLY? Built to impress. Built to last. Hanson Brick has been making brick in Ontario for nearly 60 years. Let our products inspire you to create beautiful, sustainable communities and leave your own impressive legacy. Call or visit us online today. 1 800 263 6229 hansonbrick.com From the simplest of ideas, comes our advanced off-site building technology. Sophistication, strength, speed and sustainability are the four cornerstones of buildings by NRB. Designed to meet your exact architectural needs, our advanced building technology and project delivery method gives you the permanence and performance of conventional construction, but in half the time. Building in our controlled environment means better waste management, less downtime and improved quality during construction. When an NRB building arrives at your site it is up to 90% complete. This means less on-site construction time and activity for cleaner and safer sites with minimal disturbance to staff, customers and the surrounding community. Find out all your possibilities today, call 1-888-469-3640 NRB Inc. 115 South Service Road W., P.O. Box 129, Grimsby, Ontario L3M 4G3 NRB (USA) Inc. 440 Wenger Drive, Ephrata, PA 17522 Web: www.nrb-inc.com Email: [email protected] BU ILD O FF- SITE ... SIMPLIF Y YO U R CON S T RU C T ION WHY ARE SOME BUILDINGS SO Ugly? IN ThIS ISSuE EDITORIAL “beAut y is iN the e ye of the beholder.”1 This resilient phrase has been around, in one form or another, for nearly 2300 years. It has survived for one simple reason: beauty (and its absence, ugliness) cannot be objectively defined, much as we might try. To restate it in the words of those anonymous medieval scholars: De gustibus non est disputandum (“There must not be debate concerning tastes”).2 But that may be about to change. Recent work in the fields of neuroscience and behavioural psychology has begun to confirm that there are indeed means for measuring beauty, objectively, by studying human responses and preferences. In other words, beauty may not lie “in the eye of the beholder,” but rather in his or her brain. Now consider, for a moment, a second interpretation of the proverb: not only do we make individual judgments about what we find beautiful, but we also hold within us predetermined criteria that lead each of us to make decisions that are not as personal as we might suppose. To a large degree, researchers tell us, our judgments may be predicted. Factors influencing these judgments may be as diverse as cultural predisposition (including, especially, sub-cultures, such as the architectural profession), prevailing fashions and trends, general mood (political, economic), education and age and physical condition (of the beholder and the beheld). The problem is that so little of this work is being done, or even followed, by the architectural community. Do you find the OAA headquarters building ugly? The new AGO addition? The Sharp Centre at OCADU? All of these buildings break traditional moulds and challenge popular norms of beauty, with the result that many people are displeased and the word “ugly” enters the discussion. Frequently, the taste-battle line is drawn between the architecturally astute and the rest of the world, which encourages the popular view that architects don’t consider the sensibilities of the general populace when they design buildings, especially prominent ones. In this issue’s feature, we discuss this discrepancy between popular and architectural tastes and what, if anything, might be done to bridge the gap. You may be encouraged to know that, according to an unofficial poll,3 only a tiny minority of the general populace finds the OAA headquarters ugly. Architects, as a group, were not polled. ❚ NOTES: 1. “In the eyes of love, that which is not beautiful often seems beautiful.” — Theocritus, c. 308–c. 240 BC — http://www.scribd.com/doc/28048572/Dictionary-of-Proverbs. The current form is generally attributed to Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, who uses the sentence in her novel Molly Bawn, 1878. — http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder.html 2. A search for the source of this quotation has so far proved fruitless. A Web reference offers a possible explanation: “I think that the axiom ‘De gustibus non est disputandum,’ which is not a quotation from any Latin author, dates back to Scholasticism, i.e. ‘the methods and doctrines of the leading academic philosophers and theologians of the late Middle Ages in Europe,’ simply because, in philosophy such a maxim was coined and used to distinguish discussions of subjective versus objective truth.” — http://en.allexperts.com/q/Latin-2145/2009/7/de-gustibus.htm 3. The poll was conducted over a period of several years by an OAA staff member. The subjects were a random sampling of the cab drivers who delivered the staff member to the OAA building. 8 OAA Perspectives is the official journal of the Ontario Association of Architects Published Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ©2012 EDITOR Gordon S. Grice ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES Alana Place Tel: 800.665.2456 ADMINISTRATOR, WEBSITE AND COMMUNICATIONS Tamara King w w w. o a a . o n . c a EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Ian Ellingham, Chair Bill Birdsell, Council Liaison Herb Klassen, Rick Mateljan, Christopher Moise, Gary Pask, Anthony Provenzano, Greg Reuter, Barbara Ross, Alexander Temporale REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS Mary Ellen Lynch Comisso, Toronto; Amanda Fraser, London, UK; Debbie Friesen, Toronto; Stig Harvor, Toronto; Errol Hugh, Hong Kong; Evangelo Kalmantis, Windsor; Tom Leung, Ottawa; Vivian Lo, Toronto; Lucian Nan, Toronto; David Parker, St. Catharines; Natalie Tan, Toronto 15 PUBLISHED BY Naylor (Canada), Inc. 1630 Ness Avenue, Suite 300 Winnipeg MB R3J 3X1 Tel: 204.947.0222 Toll-Free: 800.665.2456 www.naylor.com PUBLISHER Robert Phillips NAYLOR EDITOR Andrea Németh PROJECT MANAGER Alana Place BOOK LEADER Robyn Mourant 06 07 08 22 24 30 PresiDeNt’s MessAGe OAA President Sheena Sharp considers ugliness, as it relates to politics and society. resPONse A brief OAA Perspectives update and synopsis in this, our 26th year of publication. feAture Surprisingly, de gustibus there is perhaps some disputandum. From both an objective and a subjective standpoint, we present a number of possible answers to our cover question: Why are some buildings so ugly? iNterNAtiONAL Three graduate students present their own candidates for Ugly Building status—three buildings that, with any luck, you will never see. PrActice Paul Hastings, a big name in small practice, presents the first of a twopart series on the joys and sorrows of sole practice. ONtAriO PLAces Heritage—or simply old—windows are slowly being lost in the name of efficiency and modernization, replaced by sterile, institutional and frequently unattractive newer versions that will need replacement again in 20 years. 22 SALES REPRESENTATIVES Anook Commandeur, Brenda Ezinicki, Candace Dyck, Cheryll Oland, David S. Evans, Michelle Dalrymple, Norma Walchuk, Tracy Goltsman LAYOUT & DESIGN Emma Law & Irene Pohoreçka COVER IMAGE CREDITS Scratchboard illustration by David Gillett Articles from OAA Perspectives may be reproduced with appropriate credit and written permission. The OAA does not verify, endorse or take responsibility for claims made by advertisers. 30 The Ontario Association of Architects is an open and responsive professional association of members which regulates, supports, represents and promotes the practice and appreciation of architecture in the interest of all Ontarians. The Association was founded in 1889 and its primary role is to serve and protect the public interest through administration of the Architects Act, and through leadership of the profession in Ontario. For further information, contact the Administrator, Website and Communications, Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) 111 Moatfield Drive Toronto, Ontario M3B 3L6 Tel: 416.449.6898 Fax: 416.449.5756 e-mail: [email protected] Website: www.oaa.on.ca Publication Mail Agreement #40064978 OCTOBER 2012/OAA-Q0312/6878 5 OAA PersPectives|FALL 2012 PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE I have two thoughts on ugly. T h e f i r s t i s t h at b e au t y is related to meaning. I once did a study on public hearings and found that people’s opinions of the beauty of a project almost always coincided with their opinion of the organization proposing it. Large industrial companies could do no right and non-profits no wrong. Unfortunately, true beauty was usually just road kill on the highway of public opinion. To the extent that we can divorce the physical from the political, true beauty is related to more pedestrian associations: the proportions of vernacular buildings often seem right to us, occasionally new forms can express the mood of the populace and, when it is right, most people recognize it. And yes, the populace is important because architecture is a public art, a group effort. We must express the feelings of communities, not of individuals. But instead, we are teaching our young a vocabulary of outlandishness that is completely divorced from any language our fellow we are teaching our young a citizens might recognize, and devoid of aspirational meaning vocabulary of outlandishness to their lives. When they are that is completely divorced not thrilled with the results, we imply that they are uneducated from any language our fellow and stupid. The truth is we are citizens might recognize, … offering nothing. My second thought on ugly is that it is a reflection of our society, with its rote following of the rules, its greed and the disconnection of labour from management, rich from poor, business from urban design. The environments societies create are always a reflection of their values, so if our cities are ugly it’s because we are ugly. If you agree with me, the situation is not as insurmountable as it seems. Start small. Pay attention to architectural programming and include your client’s purpose and goals in your programming requirements. Do not be embarrassed to give them meaningful aspirational buildings. And ignore the magazines. ❚ Sheena Sharp, OAA, FRAIC, President 6 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 response OAA AROUND THE WORLD The July issue of Architectural Review features a full-page OAA Awards ad on page 28. The ad is part of a reciprocal arrangement between OAA Perspectives and the publishers AR. A full-page AR ad appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of our magazine. For further information and to get an AR subscription, go to: www.architectural-review.com X-REF A QUARTER-CENTURY OF WRITERSHIP Most magazines communicate in one direction: they write, you read. OAA Perspectives is a little different. Since we started out, approximately 300 architects (and interested others) have written for the magazine. That’s a lot of volunteer contributions, but we started before e-zines, blogs and tweets and even before the Internet had been invented, so we’ve had a head start. OAA Perspectives, as with all print-based magazines, has faced continuous change over the past 20 years. Our name has been modified to differentiate ourselves from a world full of other Perspectives. Our on-line presence has expanded, so you can now read 24 years of past issues on the OAA website. And, where most architectural publications talk about the latest designs, we have carved out our own niche by looking into seldom-visited corners of the built environment and exploring what it means to be an architect. Still, our most significant accomplishment by far is our “interactive” connection with our writer/readership. Beginning about 10 years ago, we increased readership participation by enlisting the OAA e-bulletin and stepping up our personal contacts. Since that time, we have been sometimes overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the response. Enough of you submitted material for our “Drawing” and “Food” issues to fill several issues, even prompting us to publish a “leftovers” issue. In this, our 26th year of publication, we thank all of our contributors, and if you haven’t sent us something yet, we’re waiting. www.oaa.on.ca When Italian architect Nicola Rizzoli goes into the field, he may be observed by hundreds of millions of people, as he was on June 17 of this year, when the Netherlands faced Portugal in the Euro Cup. Rizzoli is a soccer referee who, for the past ten years, has worked with the Italian Serie A league. Known for his stern enforcement of the rules and his steely nerves, Rizzoli is highly respected on the pitch. But since soccer referees are frequently required to make decisions that disappoint many people, the various web sites where his name appears divulge very little about his life off the field, stating simply, “When not refereeing, Rizzoli works as an architect.” ❚ CAPE SPEAR IN THE MORNING When visiting the easternmost tip of North America, just as the summer solstice sun is coming up, there is nothing more exhilarating than reading a copy of OAA Perspectives, as Barbara Ross discovers. PHOTO: Barbara Ross 7 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 WHY ARE SOME BUILDINGS SO Ugly? headquarters, memorable and impressive, but inoffensive is usually de rigeur. But cultural buildings, as we have seen most recently, don’t need to be attractive; noticeable, controversial, challenging, even unsettling, are more useful qualities, hence, the impressive volume of letters to the editor and animated sidewalk conversations. Perceived ugliness gets people’s blood up. For this feature, we decided to approach the topic of architectural ugliness from two separate directions, with the possibility of meeting in the middle: the objective (quantitative) and the subjective (qualitative). In the following essays, you will find that these two extremes are not always easy to separate. QUANTITATIVE Therm Bad Blumau/14.08.2009/Bad Blumau, Austria Original 4288x2848 photo: ©Enrico Carcasci Creative Commons INTRODUCTION By Gordon S. Grice OAA, FRAIC “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” — Francis Bacon, essay “Of Beauty,” 1625 There is a divide between the way an architect sees the world and the way that other people see it. This divide is responsible for a lot of great architecture, since architects see creative possibilities that others don’t. But it can also lead to disagreement when an architectural vision leads to a solution that is incomprehensible to non-architects. Such solutions sometimes lead to complex, thought-provoking, challenging, ground-breaking, perfectly brilliant architectural forms or, in a term that non-architects like to use, ugly buildings. “Ugly” is not a word that architects use to describe buildings. It’s too un-nuanced. Other people use it because it’s powerful, immediate and finite; it demands no further qualification. You will rarely find the word “ugly” in architectural publications, except in the rare 8 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 circumstance where the writer wishes to suggest that the object of criticism unworthy of any thoughtful comment. Is ugly necessarily a bad thing? It’s a purely subjective word expressing a personal opinion. Since architects have no obligation or burning desire to “beautify” the built environment by trying to appease everybody, there will always be detractors. And the more brilliant the concept, the more daring the execution, the more the likelihood that someone will be deeply offended. We are not advocating design panels or aesthetic standards. Our goal is only to remind architects that public opinion exists and that it is unremitting, visceral, often thoughtless and, yet, extremely important. Do architects have any responsibility at all to design buildings that the general public will find attractive? Here’s an easy answer: some of the time. As it is, there are already plenty of practitioners who execute commissions that gain popular approval. Spec buildings—houses, condos, office towers—all need to find enough buyers to guarantee sales. And for corporate What makes people prefer the things they do? Research into this subject is ongoing, particularly in the fields of neuroscience and behavioural psychology. Preferences for shape, colour, texture, materials and various other criteria can be tabulated and even ascribed to human qualities such as age, gender, cultural background and experience. Too little is known about the quantitative aspects of human preference, but more knowledge on the subject continues to be gained every day. Our profession should be better acquainted and more involved with this research. QUALITATIVE Possibly far too much has been written on this topic already, by aesthetic philosophers, by architectural critics, and by the popular press, where superficial architectural criticism is the norm. Although most people would concur that there is no accounting for taste, the topic manages to provoke constant discussion. Our goal is not to define beauty, but to try to discover why ideas of beauty and ugliness so frequently vary between our profession and the public we serve. Gordon S. Grice is editor of OAA Perspectives. WUNDERKAMMER OF ARCHITECTURAL CURIOSITIES By Lucian Nan … the crayfish is the most admirable architecture that exists, and the form which best goes with it is that of an onion, and if this form is done in silver and placed next to the crayfish the effect will be excellent, … — Salvador Dalí, “Fifty Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship” Whisk together plenty of architectural elements of a minimum of three historic periods and add various zoomorphic crusts, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Do not over-process: small pieces of each style should remain easily recognizable. While all ingredients sauté, spoon in colour juice to taste. This will thicken to a consistency similar to that of soft cream cheese. Serve topped with shiny objects. This is one of many recipes that might be used to build houses fit for a Wunderkammer collection of architectural oddities—a distinctive category of bizarre architecture. Like everything else in the collection, the bizarre buildings are ephemeral. Traces of their daring madness are left behind in photographs and ironic accounts, and sometimes their spirit can be recognized in slogans such as Venturi’s “Viva vulgar, or at least messy, vitality!” 1 Records of bizarre buildings first appeared in the legends of Ancient Greece. A structure shaped by Daedalus in the form of a cow is said to have been the first fantastic building ever constructed. The uneven development of bizarre architecture (if one can call such random occurrences “development”) reached a highpoint in late 18th-century France, when the Enlightenment introduced the architectural folly2 as an expression of eccentric design. Boullée, Ledoux and, most of all, Jean-Jacques Lequeu excelled in designs of architectural fantasies inspired by common objects, animal shapes and even anatomical parts. To the mix of these unusual sources of inspiration, the Romantic period added the unsettled atmosphere of the tormented soul. Thus the foundations of the haunted building were laid and, in 1919, Sigmund Freud categorized un-homely houses as “uncanny” (Das Unheimliche). The literature of Victor Hugo, E.T. Hoffmann and Edgar Allen Poe offers fine examples of such uncanny houses. Events in the 20th century continued to feed the imaginative character of bizarre architecture while adding the surrealistic probe of the unconscious and the randomness of the objet trouvé. Collectors of discarded objects began to mass their mundane findings into contortionist structures, an ad hoc-ism that has little to do with any theoretical background but sustains its effort through the desire of building a specific dream. Today this is the most common construction to be found among the bizarre building type. Most bizarre architecture relies for its expression on gimmicks and consumerist replications. Its main feature is often simply its unusualness—eccentricity for its own sake.3 Put together as collected fragments, the bizarre building displays a list of ill-defined architectural vocabulary. Elements are deformed and distorted by mixing different styles and scales, defying (intentionally or not) the established methods of construction. The result may have a comic or even caricature appearance4. Bizarre architecture relies on an emotional response to a visual representation. Mainly for this reason, many buildings of this type fall into the kitsch category—unexpected structures fuelled by a total lack of restraint. In architecture the category of the bizarre building may be the only one in which kitsch and bad design are accepted. The only restriction is the uniqueness: a bizarre building has to be a one-of-a-kind building. By replicating its shape, the unique building becomes ordinary, badly designed architecture and the effect of surprise and shock is lost. In a building that is part of a Wunderkammer collection, all these features are expected and desired characteristics. Tailored for the realm of imagination, architectural curiosities deflect rigorous analysis. These buildings are toys reminding us of childlike drawings. In a joyful play, bizarre buildings can be chased with the eagerness of a treasure hunter. Once found, their uniqueness is tagged and collected in an imaginary cabinet of curiosities. Lucian Nan is a writer and intern architect work- Mathews St., Berkeley, California PHOTO: Lucian Nan Webster St., San Francisco, California PHOTO: Lucian Nan walden Dr., beverly hills, California PHOTO: Lucian Nan ing with NORR Ltd., Architects and Engineers in Toronto. NOTES n 1. Robert Venturi in Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Harvard University Press, 2004, p.10 n 2. “The folly acted architecturally as folie acted mentally, to establish a state of calm and undisturbed reason. Thus it took its place beside the madhouse, the zoo, the botanical garden, the physiognomist’s cabinet of shrunken heads and the phrenologist’s shelf of skulls, as the tactile analogue to nightmare, the monster, the savage, the criminal and the insane.” Anthony Vidler, “History of the Folly” in Follies, Architecture for the Late-Twentieth-Century Landscape, Rizzoli, New York, 1983 n 3. In his book Bizarre Architecture, Charles Jenks following the construction criteria, divides bizarre buildings into: Bizarre Juxtaposition, Adhoc Juxtaposition, Fantasy Eclectism, Technological Fantasy, Animalorphic Expressionism and Zoomorphic and Delirious Trademark. Jenks revisits the subject of bizarre architecture in Daydream Houses of Los Angeles, proposing a looser and more imaginative labelling: Neo-Class, Witches’ Houses, LA Door, ‘Span Miss, etc. n 4. Caricature implies a polemical view and often denounces moral weakness. Depending on the point of view, bizarre buildings can be interpreted as mocking some of the aspects of architecture. w w w. o a a . o n . c a 9 O A A P e r s p e c t i v e s | fall 2 0 1 2 LOOKING FOR UGLY By Ian Ellingham, M.B.A., PH.D., OAA, FRAIC You have had this happen. Someone, perhaps at a party, discovers you are an architect and asks what you think about some building or other. Such people rarely seem to want to know your opinion; they just want to express their own. Not only that, if you do offer some comment, they will invariably disagree. The next time this happens to you, respond, “What do you think about it?” You might hear a pause and then some comment about the building, and then a simple statement that they believe their perceptions, attitudes and preferences should be universal and the reasons for it are obvious. But they aren’t. Architects are often criticized for creating ugly buildings, but there are few people, including architects, who would consciously undertake to build something ugly. So why are such comments made? It behooves the architect to attempt to understand what makes people regard buildings or other bits of the built environment positively or negatively— beautiful or ugly. That is the real value of asking “What do you think about it?” and following up with “Why do you think that?” In this way, some valuable, if anecdotal, information can be gained about public architectural aesthetic judgment. Architects may do with this information whatever they wish. Questions about architectural appeal are not new. It should not be surprising to learn that the great 17th-century scientist Christopher Wren wondered about the very fundamentals of architectural appearance. His interests embraced structural techniques and project management, as well as the nature of the rings of Saturn and the functioning of the spleen. Wren noted the complexities of attitudes towards buildings and speculated whether esteem for different designs was established through absolute and permanent sets of values, or whether it was a phenomenon based “on the laws of society and man.” 1 Essentially, is it epigenetic (resulting from our genetic makeup), or a manifestation of the contexts in which we have been brought up and live? Unfortunately for Wren, and for us, he could get no further because the knowledge necessary to explore this complex area had yet to be developed, so his question was put to one side. Even after suitable methods had been developed in statistics, psychology and market research, it took the development of 10 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 the computer to make complex experiments in design that, as recently as the early 1950s, took a roomful of undergraduates a whole summer of cranking adding machines to complete. They also allow different approaches for extracting meaning from the mountains of data that result from experiments. Some 300 years later, Wren’s questions are still valid. What exactly makes a building attractive—or ugly? Do rules exist that can lead us to a better architecture? Are they universal, fixed and permanent, or mutable? Where do perceptions, interpretations and preferences come from? And ultimately, how should a greater understanding inform our designs? If architects intend to convey something through their designs, it is surely important that the meaning is understood as planned. Or is the meaning intended only for those who know how to interpret it, much as a phrase in KIingon is comprehensible only to those eccentrics who have chosen to learn the language? UNDERSTANDING HUMAN RESPONSE Looking for answers involves looking into the minds of both transmitter and recipient. In this quest, we can look back at decades of experiments conducted at the centres of research that have been established in and around a number of universities. Their findings point to roads not taken in the world of architecture. Rather than examining the apparently endless rhetoric about architectural intent and meaning, we can conduct serious experiments to collect the evidence that can lead to a better architecture. One ongoing initiative has been to explore the ways in which people are different from one another. This has been especially rewarding with respect to the differences between architects and the wider population. One landmark study, “A study of meaning and architecture,” was conducted in the 1960s by Robert Hershberger2 of the University of Pennsylvania, who explored responses from a range of students: pre-architecture, graduating from architecture, and those studying other subjects altogether. He used “semantic scales” to capture opinion, and asked respondents to use words to describe images of buildings. Is it simple or complex, interesting or boring, welcoming or forbidding, tight or loose, gloomy or cheerful, superficial or profound and, indeed, beautiful or ugly? The fundamental inquiry was whether the meaning that architects were trying to convey was likely to be interpreted the same way by other population groups. To fully understand the findings, you will have to read the paper,3 as well as papers describing subsequent experiments. The important thing is that response can be explored and, to some extent, explained. The practitioners of market research, in their eternal quest to sell, have also developed techniques that can be used to explore architecture. In the marketing world, the attempt is usually to understand how people choose one thing over another. Take jam, for example. Is it the label, the brand, the colour of the jam, the shape of the bottle, the price, or something the marketeers have not thought about yet? Such techniques are particularly useful in assessing responses to products that have multiple attributes. And few human creations have as many attributes as buildings. There is another new and promising route of investigation emerging from the area of neuroscience. It is now possible to peek inside the brain using such techniques as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures blood oxygenation levels and blood flow. Changes in blood flow reflect brain activity and identify elements that are working hardest, because of the additional oxygen they demand to support their activity. Some experiments in this area do indeed ask the same question as did Wren: how much of human perception and preference relates to “nature versus nurture”? While work in this area is still exploratory, and often bewildering, interesting findings are beginning to appear. Some experiments, seeking to understand the “processing of subjective pleasantness,”4 confirm the existence of a biological mechanism that processes reactions, different areas being associated with our positive and negative reactions. Kuhn and Gallinat (2012) conclude “...subjective pleasantness judgments are directly related to brain regions that have been described as part of the reward circuitry.” The results of other experiments5 have shown that aesthetics share elements of the brain network with social and moral judgments. One of the OAA Perspectives committee members commented, “That explains why when I see a building I don’t like, I feel that it is not just ugly, but it is somehow wrong.” In the brain, do beauty and ugliness become fundamental moral questions? More research is obviously required, but it may be decades before we understand how fundamentally the brain develops and processes attitudes and preferences about architecture. A neuroscientist who was contacted suggested that this did not matter: what architects really need to know has already been uncovered by psychologists. ordinary” 20th-century interwar houses,10 and found that individual evaluations of “unsympathetic” window replacements related closely to age cohort and social status, and reflected the conditions under which individuals were brought up. People brought up in deprivation (depression and war) put greater weight on functionality, whereas those brought up in more affluent circumstances focus more on the social-aesthetic aspects, such as authenticity. WHAT HAVE WE FOUND OUT? Architects’ evaluations can be very different from those of other people. Perhaps the most important finding is that repeated experiments have found that architects assess building design very differently than do other population groups. It would be surprising if, after their years of education, this were not the case. This strand of research tells us that architects should never assume that the wider population reacts to buildings in the same way they do. It is not just that architects prefer different things, but they consider more things. Think of the last party you attended. You were probably offered a choice: red or white wine. If you ask for more information, you may encounter perplexity. The reason is that almost anyone can tell if wine is red or white, but more knowledge is required to tell a merlot from a shiraz. Ultimately, there are amazing connoisseurs who can discern the subtle nuances of colour, density and taste. Similar nuances in building design may be expected to escape the notice of those who are not architecture “connoisseurs.” One experiment found that for the wider user population, most esteem for small suburban office buildings related to whether the building had a flat or a pitched roof.11 Roof pitch is also a simple judgment that almost anyone can make. Individuals with more training, such as architects and planners, used more attributes to form their evaluation, and took longer to make their assessments. We now know quite a bit about human response to building design, but little of this, it seems, leaks into the world of the architectural practitioner. Some important realizations include the following. This is a very complex area. Why do we have architectural preferences at all? One possibility outlined by Levitin (2006) is that evolutionary pressure endowed us with preferences for factors that lead to our survival as a species; hence we find food and sex pleasurable (beautiful), but rotten meat disgusting (ugly). He suggests that music, something we also subjectively classify on a beautiful/ugly continuum, is “auditory cheesecake…. It just happens to tickle several important parts of the brain in a highly pleasurable way, as cheesecake tickles the palate.” 6 Perhaps a beautiful building somehow stimulates the same parts of the brain as a desirable potential mate.7 Experiments have shown that, among many other things, both males and females have an inherent preference for symmetrical faces.8 Through human history we have tended to build symmetrical buildings. Is this why, and is it possibly one epigenetic factor that is associated with architectural beauty? Perhaps, but findings are often enigmatic: successive overlays of culture obscure any fundamentals. 1 2 People vary in opinion and Individual backgrounds are important. One interesting study explored opinion about what distinguished happy and depressing places, by surveying people in both Finland and Arizona. Finns found depressing places to be cold and dark (think Helsinki in January), factors that barely registered among the Arizona respondents who presumably don’t think about Nordic winters.9 Another research initiative explored the question of window replacements in “old but w w w. o a a . o n . c a 3 Porumbaru, Bucharest, Romania PHOTO: Lucian Nan Indian Institute of Management, by Louis Kahn, Ahmedabad, India. PHOTO: Mary Ellen Lynch 4 If buildings are not legible, they confuse people and tend to be seen as ugly. We learn to read buildings, much as we learn a language. This has been explored relative to other stimuli. Children start by preferring simple music and games, and, as they develop, come to prefer greater complexity, becoming bored continued on page 12 Former Post Office, Canal St. and Church St., NYC PHOTO: Perspectives 11 O A A P e r s p e c t i v e s | fall 2 0 1 2 with what they once found exciting. Few adults play Snakes and Ladders or tic-tac-toe unless with a child. The games are either too predictable or completely random—things that intrigue a four-year-old. Research has shown that the fundamental preferences of most people tend to have formed by their early twenties and thereafter tend to remain reasonably stable.12 As with verbal languages, the best learning occurs early in life. 5 Buildings need to be interesting—but not too interesting. Kaplan (1992)13 proposed four variables—coherence, complexity, legibility and mystery—that “capture the features” that are predictors of preference, and that these variables are linked with the process of acquiring and processing knowledge. Uniform and repetitive features have high coherence, so result in immediate understanding; this can be contrasted on a continuum with mystery or complexity. However, buildings that are highly ordered can be boring, and those that are too complex can be seen as chaotic, illegible and meaningless. If the building is too complex, special knowledge may be necessary to understand it. CONCLUSIONS For the past half-century, psychologists have been quantitatively exploring perceptions and preferences within the built environment, and a considerable amount of interesting and relevant work is available. Neuroimaging is in its infancy, but techniques continue to advance, and new insights into how brains respond at a fundamental level are appearing. It is likely that the scientists will eventually develop a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between human beings and the built environment, including the universals that are intrinsic to our species, the things that we acquire because of the way we are brought up, how they relate to each other and, ultimately, how we, as architects, have to respond. Could this mean the end of architecture as we know it? The future may embrace a more evidence-based architecture. The environmental psychologists have long lamented the limited impact of their findings. Now a second discipline has appeared to offer more understandings—of a very physical sort. How will architects integrate this flow of findings about the nature of architectural meaning (including ugliness)? Will the marketing people or the neuroscientists increasingly dominate design? One might postulate that in the near future architects will remain important, and that the intent that is to be conveyed through design will remain the architect’s decision, but there has to be a reasonable expectation that the audience will “get it,” and not end up perceiving the end product as just plain ugly. Research can help us. Wren would have approved. ARCHITECTURE AND THE GOLDEN SECTION By Christopher D. Green, Ph.D., York University The golden section is a numerical expression that is often said to be the foundation of visual beauty. It is commonly claimed that objects incorporating the golden section into their proportions, such as the façade of a building, are more beautiful than those bearing other proportions. What is the golden section? .62 .38 Originally, it was just the answer to an obscure geometrical question: “What division of a line results in the ratio of the shorter segment to the longer segment being the same as the ratio of the longer segment to the whole line?” The answer turns out to be an irrational number near 0.62… (1±√5)/2, if you want to be picky. That is, if you divide a line so that the longer segment is 0.62 and the shorter one is 0.38 (1–0.62), the ratio of the shorter to the longer (0.38/0.62) will also equal 0.62, and the ratio of the longer to the whole (0.62/1) will, obviously, be 0.62 as well. Part of the fascination with the “golden section” (or “golden ratio,” or “golden number”) is that it seems to pop up in all kinds of unexpected places. For instance, if you draw two diagonals inside a regular pentagon, they will naturally divide each other into the golden section. Further, if you divide a line Ian Ellingham is a member of the Cambridge Architectural Research Group in Cambridge, UK and Chair of the Perspective Editorial Committee. NOTES n 1. Soo, L.M. (1998). Wren’s ‘Tracts’ on Architecture and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 127. n 2. Hershberger, Robert (1969) A study of Meaning in Architecture pp.86–100 in Sanoff, Henry and Cohn, Sidney (eds.) EDRA 1: Proceedings of the 1st Annual Environmental Design Research Association Conference. n 3. It can be found at: http://edra.org/sites/default/files/publications/EDRA01-Hershberger-86-100_0.pdf n 4. Kuhn, Simone and Gallinat, Jurgen (2012) The neural correlates of subjective pleasantness, NeuroImage, Vol.61, pp.289-294. n 5. Jacobsen, Thomas; Schubotz, Ricarda I; Hofel, Lea; and V. Cramon, D. Yves (2006) Brain correlates of aesthetic judgment of beauty, NeuroImage, Vol.29, pp.276–285. n 6. Levitin, Daniel (2006) This is Your Brain on Music, New York: Plume-Penguin. P. 24 n 7. One potential article that stimulated a great debate amongst the OAA Perspectives Editorial Committee dealt with the Marilyn buildings in Mississauga. That article has not appeared (yet). n 8. Research referenced in: Senior, Carl (2003) Beauty in the Brain of the Beholder, Neuron, Vol.38, pp.525–528. n 9. Bechtel, R.B., and Korpela K..M. (1995). Most Happy and Most Depressing Places: A Finnish-U.S. Comparison. In Nasar, J.L., Grannis P., and Hanyu K. (Eds.), EDRA 26 Conference 1995, Oklahoma City, pp.80–86. n 10. Fawcett, William. and Ellingham, Ian (2007) The Modern and the Perceptions of the Wider Populace, p.55–66 in Algie, Susan, and Ashby, James (eds) Conserving the Modern in Canada: Buildings, ensembles and sites: 1945–2005. Winnipeg Architecture Foundation. Paper presented at the “Conserving the Modern in Canada” conference at Trent University, Peterborough, Canada, 6–8 May, 2005. n 11. Some of the results were published as: Fawcett, William; Ellingham, Ian; and Platt, Stephen (2008) Reconciling the Architectural Preferences of Architects and the Public: The Ordered Preference Model, Environment and Behavior, Vol.40, No. 5. n 12. Schultz D.P. and Schultz, S.E. (2000) A History of Modern Psychology, Fort Worth: Harcourt, Brace. p.174 n 13. S. Kaplan. (1992) Environmental preference in a knowledge seeking knowledge using organism. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby (Eds.) The adaptive mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 535–552. 12 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 .62 .38 into the golden section, and then “fold” the shorter segment upwards to vertical, and build a rectangle on that L-shaped base, you will get a figure called the golden rectangle. If you divide a square off that rectangle, the remaining figure will be another, smaller golden rectangle, though in the vertical orientation. .38 .62 The early 20th-century architect Le Corbusier thought that the human body is naturally divided into the golden section (if you take the navel as the dividing point) and this became the basis of his “Modulor” architectural system. He believed that he was following in the tradition of Leonardo Da Vinci who, among his many great achievements, had illustrated a 1509 book about artistic proportion that was authored by a Renaissance mathematician named Luca Pacioli. The book was called De Divina Proportione (Concerning the Divine Proportion) and its thrust was to promote the use of (what would only later be called) the golden section in art. As if he were following Pacioli’s advice, Leonardo’s famous drawing of the “Vitruvian Man” appears to be filled with examples of the golden rectangle, though Leonardo did not comment on the matter explicitly. The Renaissance was, of course, a time when it was common to draw on Ancient Greek and Roman sources, as well as to dubiously attribute contemporary ideas to the towering figures of Classical civilization. Thus began a tradition that continues on to the present day, of claiming that the Ancients explicitly incorporated the golden section into their artworks and into the designs of their buildings. For instance, it is frequently said that Pheidias designed the façade of the Parthenon to the proportions of the golden rectangle. In the early 20th century, some especially enthusiastic promoters of the golden section tried to memorialize this presumed fact by renaming the golden section “o| ” (phi), after the initial Greek letter of Pheidias’s name. Some have “found” the golden section in the designs of Grecian urns. It has even been claimed that the Ancient Egyptians incorporated the golden section into the design for the Great Pyramid of Giza. There is no historical evidence for any of these claims, though. It is true that Ancient Greek mathematicians such as Euclid knew about the golden section (though they called it the “mean and extreme ratio”), but their interest w w w. o a a . o n . c a in it seems to have grown primarily from their consuming fascination with the problem of irrational numbers generally (the length of the hypotenuse, squaring the circle, etc.). There is nothing in the archival record, however, to support the notion that the Ancient Greeks, or any Ancient peoples, connected the golden section to art or visual beauty. That idea seems to have been an invention of Renaissance artists themselves, though to give it extra intellectual “heft” they often re-imagined it as the legacy of their Ancient forebears. After the Renaissance, the connection between the golden section and art (and the idea that it might be related to the “ideal” human body) percolated along, popping up here and there. But it wasn’t until the 19th century that the idea really took off. The term “golden section” (the German goldener Schnitt, more precisely) was first used in 1835, in the second edition of a mathematics textbook by Martin Ohm (brother to the famed electricity researcher, George Ohm). And then, in the middle of the 19th century, an author named Adolf Zeising elevated the golden section to nothing short of cosmic proportions by declaring it to be: The universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form. The appeal of this grand idea was strong in the era of German Romanticism and Idealism. It was picked up not only by artists and mathematicians, but also by scientists—particularly by the men who were, at that very moment in time, labouring to convert the discipline of psychology into an experimental science. Aesthetics was an important strand of psychology in those days and, although the new psychological laboratories could not do much to illuminate Zeising’s more exotic claims, they could explore the narrower question of whether the golden section was the hidden source of visual beauty. Some of the earliest and most influential research on that question was conducted by a Leipzig physicist named Gustav Fechner. His results indicated that people did prefer the golden rectangle to other rectangles. But the evidence afterwards was inconsistent, and it remains inconsistent to this very day. “Arbitrary design is ugly.” “A building design of arbitrary forms and elements in which its architectural purpose and meaning cannot be understood is ugly.” — Fernando Lima, B.Arch., OAA If one simply presents people with a large number of rectangles and asks directly which one they prefer, most tend toward simple ratios, like the square or the rectangle with 2:1 proportions. However, if one goes through a less abrupt, more gradual procedure, allowing the aesthetic sensibilities time to come forward, a preference for rectangles around the golden sometimes re-appears. For instance, in one such procedure, people are shown more than a dozen rectangles and asked not which one they like best but, rather, just to divide them into two equal groups: those that they like more, and those that they like less. The less-liked ones are discarded, and then each person is asked to divide the rectangles they liked more into two equal groups: those that they especially like, and those that are not especially liked. The procedure continues in this manner until the person is brought to select a single rectangle from the final two as the most liked rectangle. Here, the golden section regularly re-emerges as the favourite. But this outcome is not wholly consistent. It comes and goes—not regular enough to command assent, but not so infrequently as to be definitively refuted. So it seems that if there is an underlying preference for objects involving the golden section, it is a weak one that is easily overcome by other competing factors. There are many other properties, both obvious and subtle, that compete for our aesthetic attention. The golden section may be among these, but if it is, it remains elusive and tantalizing. And that, more than the size of its alleged impact, may be the most fascinating thing about it. Christopher Green is a Professor of Psychology at York University and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. His research interests include History of American experimental psychology (ca. 1880–1930); Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, and his Analytical Engine; Research methods and statistics; and Development and delivery of electronic research and educational materials. He is the author of many articles and has co-authored three books, the most recent of which is Psychology gets into the game: A prehistory of sport psychology. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. [email protected] 13 O A A P e r s p e c t i v e s | fall 2 0 1 2 THOUGHTLESS WORDS CAN WOUND 1 By Gordon S. Grice OAA, FRAIC If our goal is not to define beauty, but to try to discover why ideas of beauty and ugliness so frequently vary between our profession and the public we serve, there are many ways to examine the impasse. One glaring problem—the one I would like to consider here—is the part played by diction: the choice of words that we—architects and non-architects— use when we talk about buildings. Architecture flourishes in a climate of thoughtful discussion. When architects discuss buildings, they prefer to use words that reflect thoughtfulness rather than raw emotion—the cerebral rather than the visceral. But while we architects are busy developing our design skills and refining our vocabularies, removed from polite society, behind the walls of drawing studios, design labs and libraries, non-architects are pursuing a healthy outdoor lifestyle, observing and responding to what surrounds them. They rarely feel any need to develop architectural vocabularies beyond their immediate response to the built environment: either they like it or they don’t. No special vocabulary is needed, since for them, architecture occupies no unique category. The same words suffice for people, landscapes, clothing, paintings and buildings. At one end of the scale, there is brilliant, awesome, spectacular (words that indicate unthinking attraction). At the other end, are hideous, revolting, grotesque, offensive, disturbing and just plain ugly (words that indicate repulsion). There are few circumstances in which people feel the need to use words that are constructive and might lead to thoughtful changes in the built environment. One of the most frequently disparaged buildings in recent Ontario history is Toronto’s Michael “Last week, for the first time in months, my work responsibilities took me to Bloor St. I walked along, aghast at the ugly, cheap-looking monstrosity that is the new Royal Ontario Museum.” — Nicholas Mawer, Toronto, May 5, 2007 www.thestar.com/article/210627 Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum. The media have been unrelenting in their criticism of the building. Voting it “worst of the decade,” Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post (“Best of the decade: Architecture,” December 27, 2009) adds, “Daniel Libeskind’s addition to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto surpasses the ugliness of bland functional buildings by being both ugly and useless.” 2 The website virtualtourist.com placed the Crystal in the number eight spot in its annual “World’s Top 10 Ugly Buildings” poll.3 For the most part, the comments come from the general public, where an uncompromising vocabulary of disapproval can be expected. To one observer, it represents an “ugly, cheaplooking monstrosity,” to another, a “new visually ugly Dagger to the Heart of an old Lady.” 4 But even columnists, with thesauruses presumably at the ready, chimed in with “it’s ugly as sin.” 5 It was the verbal mastery of award-winning (and frequently controversial) columnist Heather Mallick that coined the phrase that attached itself to the structure like a barnacle, even before it was built: “crystal excrescence.” 6 Our traditional architectural education has taught us, sometimes harshly, that an unconsidered or ill-considered decision will not result in either good architecture or passing grades. We architects have developed an elaborate vocabulary to describe our thoughts, so that our classmates, instructors and professional colleagues will understand precisely what we mean. But without the benefit of this education, the general public often has no idea what we’re talking about. “A fecund terrain of engagement”? “An implied narrative”? The word “fecund” doesn’t even sound nice. For further obfuscations like this, I urge you to consult Barbara Ross’s chart “You Architects Talk Funny” and Bill Birdsell’s parody “The Public RFP Opening,” both in Perspectives, Winter 2010.7 Jargon is a perfectly appropriate way to communicate within the profession, but beyond professional boundaries, it is counterproductive: not only do non-professionals not understand the language, they also mistrust it and the motives behind it. They are compelled to ask themselves: What important information is being obscured? But the danger in using architectural language goes slightly further than merely excluding the public from architectural discussion. It also sometimes reveals that the very process of design can be alienating. Take as an example a building profile that appeared in an on-line architectural journal.8 In this profile, a building was described as “a vibrant typological experiment, transforming the intellectual/social agitator.” The words were intended to point out the building’s virtues. But without even making judgments about the building, it’s not difficult to see where “a vibrant typological experiment” might put some people off. The building’s lack of popular appeal is evident in the terms used by observers to describe it. In fact, the building has attracted a number of uncomplimentary comments: “a monstrosity,” 9 “an affront,” 10 a “wretched building” 11 and, from an architectural critic, who has an immense architectural vocabulary at her immediate disposal, “an eyesore.” 12 These terms are emotional, not thoughtful, words that curtail any appreciation of the building’s many merits. Fanciful jargon lies possibly at the root of why architects can sometimes convince themselves, in an attempt to cajole others, that what they are producing is just fine, when in the minds of many people, it really isn’t. The real puzzle is not why some buildings are so “ugly,” but why the word is used at all. There are much more precise, more productive, more descriptive words to describe architecture— words that, even if uncomplimentary, may lead to discussion and understanding. “Thoughtless words can wound as deeply as any sword, but” just as surely, “wisely spoken words can heal.” 13 In the ongoing word-war over the built environment, the battle lines are clearly drawn: words describing intuitive responses versus words of imagination, intention and possibility. In this battle, the victory goes to both sides or neither. NOTES n 1. Proverbs 12:18 the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. n 2. Philip Kennicott, “Best of the decade: Architecture,” Washington Post December 27, 2009) n 3. Response, Perspectives, Spring 2010. n 4. http://www.thestar.com/article/210627, May 5, 2007; retrieved 27 June, 2012 n 5. Joey Springer, “It’s okay to think it’s ugly,” Toronto Star, May 3 2007; retrieved 27 June, 2012 n 6. Heather Mallick, “The unbearable pain of Lilbeskind’s glass shards”, Globe and Mail, March 2, 2002; retrieved 27 June, 2012 n 7. http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/naylor/OAAQ0410/#/20 n 8. www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=11178 n 9. “An architectural tradition” by David Kechnie Globe and Mail, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004, page A24. n 10. Peterborough Examiner article “Design flaw - buildings are an affront to architectural achievement” Apr. 12, 2004 n 11. “An architectural tradition, by Denis Smith Globe and Mail - Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004 page A24) http://z-ourtrent.ken-brown.ca/news/archives/2004/12/many_agree_with. shtml n 12. Lisa Rochon reflects upon the structures that seduced, excited and angered in 2004. Globe and Mail, Thursday, Dec. 30, 2004 - Page R3 n 13. American Bible Society, op. cit. [253] 14 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 PERSON-CENTRIC A APPROACH TO BUILDING AESTHETICS Lily Bernheimer, B.A., Sarah Hewitt, B.A. and Clara Weber, Dipl.-Ing. Introduction Reasoned discussion about the beauty and ugliness of buildings has not gotten us very far. A major reason for this is that the traditional approach has attempted to identify elements of the buildings themselves that contribute to an overall impression of ugliness or beauty—an approach we refer to as “building-centric.” As an example of such a study, Gifford et al.,1 using images of office buildings, could not find even one out of 59 specific building features that would explain lay people’s visual preference. We propose that a radically different stance must be adopted to understand building aesthetics: a “person-centric” approach, looking at the relationships between buildings and people, architects and users, and broader social influences. Rather than focusing on the static idea of a building’s impact on the viewer, we reframe the question to examine the flows of influence that lead to aesthetic judgement and experience. We bring viewpoints from three different backgrounds to this discussion—architecture, sociology, and urban planning advocacy—to explore a personcentric approach to building aesthetics. The “Ongoing Reality of Building Use”2 While environmental psychology has often been studied from an assumption of environmental determinism (i.e., behaviour being largely determined by physical environment), the transactional approach looks at the relationship between people and environments as a dynamic and reciprocal exchange. Approaching the question from a transactional perspective, we might ask if our perception of buildings as ugly has some connection to how we act in and around them, and how this relationship takes shape over time. Perhaps ugliness can be explained through what Osmond calls “sociofugal” space: buildings that discourage human interaction by their very design.3 Studying psychiatric wards, Osmond found that certain layouts tended to isolate people and orient them away from one another.4 Further studies of airports, libraries, and supermarkets revealed that long aisles and large areas lacking definition reduced communication and increased alienation.5 Sociofugal buildings are characterized as cold, institutional, not easily adapted or personalized and disassociated from their surroundings.6 w w w. o a a . o n . c a Sommer extended Osmond’s theory to apply to material as well as form, coining the term “hard architecture” to describe buildings created to be “strong and resistant to human imprint.” 7 Trying to enhance security and prevent vandalism, institutions have mimicked prisons in using non-absorbent surfaces, fixed furniture, and minimum permeability—often letting in little natural light. Hard architecture discourages interaction not just between people, but also between people and the buildings themselves. These theories—which help us understand the psychological underpinning and impact of such structures—are complemented by Alexander’s explanation of “large lump development.” 8 Alexander explains what he perceives as the overwhelming ugliness of the modern built environment as a problem with the scale and pace of building. Much of our world is now created quickly and in large swathes. This violates a principle he considers to be key to the beauty and success of many older environments: the process of “piecemeal growth.” As he explains: Eastern Avenue, Toronto PHOTO: Lucian Nan Any living system must repair itself constantly in order to maintain its balance …. All the good environments that we know have this in common. They are whole and alive because they have grown slowly over long periods of time, piece by piece.9 Many studies have indeed suggested that the general public prefers older buildings to newer ones when the effect of building maintenance is controlled.10 But Alexander and others argue that the problem is the focus on the building as product—the perfect new building. As Duffy points out, even the language of architecture defines the work in terms of the process of building rather than the “ongoing reality of building use.” 11 In Alexander’s theory, this mindset (and the economics behind it) creates ugly buildings by encouraging replacement rather than repair and improvement. The core structure of a building is now assumed to last only 50 years in the UK, 35 in the US.12 Developers are said to expect their buildings to “ugly out” after 15 years.13 Like last season’s high heels, many buildings quickly look dated (and fall apart). Like many other products, buildings are now planned for obsolescence. continued on page 18 Ha-yarkon St., Tel Aviv, Israel PHOTO: Lucian Nan Waldspirale Darmstadt/ 27.06.2008/ Darmstadt, Germany Original 2900x2087. PHOTO: ©Armin Kübelbeck Creative Commons A house in Hillsborough, California PHOTO: Lucian Nan 15 O A A P e r s p e c t i v e s | fall 2 0 1 2 No building is ever created perfect—the most adored have usually been improved over time with modifications made possible only through use. But as Brand has observed, only some do improve: “age plus adaptivity” is the key.14 Hard architecture and lump development create structures that are not built to age gracefully, or able to grow. If developers continue to take a building-centric approach and ignore the potential for user adaptation, we will continue to see ugly buildings. Managing the Perceptual Divide between Architects and the Lay Public We now turn our attention to a consideration that may be the most fundamental in the creation of “ugly buildings,” by shifting our focus from the relationship between buildings and their users, to the relationship between architects and laypeople, to consider the perceptual rather than interactional dimension of the person-centric approach. The denotation of an “ugly building” might express a nonprofessional‘s disappointment in the difference between architects‘ perspectives and their own. This refers, for example, to reactions towards Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation in Marseille, France; Habitat 67 in Montreal, Canada by Moshe Safdie; and perhaps to the recent Royal Ontario Museum addition, which has appeared on a few “Ugliest Building in the World” lists. Whereas the difficulty in communicating between two “worlds” of expertise is a problem,15 at the same time communication carries the solution to bridge the gap of mutual understanding.16 The systematic differences in the perception of built environment between architectural experts and the lay public is a well documented phenomenon, but explanations for this difference are rather varied. There is evidence that a central aspect of differences in perception lies in the background of experiences gained through many years of architectural education, professional experience and its socialization, which leads to a difference in the cognitive state.17 This state of mind develops a frame of reference and leads architects to identify connections to current, historical, or technical contexts—to see a building as result of a design and building process. As the lay public does not wear these “knowledge goggles,” they tend not to have this capability and see a building as a surface of hypothetical use.18 Several studies have supported the existence of “image banks” 19—a mental database of buildings. For architects, these banks include a wide range of past, international and future architectural projects stored under various categories20 and are more developed than the lay public’s image banks, which refer mainly to their “housing biography.” 21 There is evidence that the handling of deviation from these object schemata varies as non-experts tend to prefer buildings which are similar to their norm and experiences, whereas experts prefer innovation and the unusual. This preference for innovation is significantly linked to a professional need to participate in cultural development.22 Also a difference in the dimensions of the connotative meaning of architecture is evident.23 As recently shown by Benz & Rambow, the monolithic sculptural quality of architecture described by architects as “clear“ and “honest” is perceived by non-professionals as “naked” and “unfinished” “heavy block” architecture. The qualitative difference in perception between professionals and non-professionals comes by definition and is natural, but the difference itself is not the actual problem.24 That distinction belongs to architectural communication. In order to understand how these perceptions differ, communications must be reformed, to enhance the understanding of the public’s needs and preferences, and to raise understanding of architecture and its quality.25 Four crucial aspects generate a barrier to effective communication:26 1 2 Professionals often view architecture as self-explanatory. Many architects appear to hold the opinion that it is impossible to express architectural quality linguistically. 3 There is a lack of willingness to communicate beyond professional borders, which includes adjustments to terminology, as is the case in many professions. 4 Architects forget or fail to recognize that the public perceives and understands architecture differently and, lacking the willingness or ability to articulate these differences, misleadingly label non-professionals as philistines who are unable to recognize a building’s value. At present, the profession appears to expend too little effort in trying to understand nonprofessionals’ lack of awareness of current architectural thinking and “translating” this important information for them. Even though architectural quality is not easy to express and to explain, an effort should certainly be made to raise the public’s understanding and valuation of architecture.27 This current lack of communication and understanding between architects and laypeople has resulted in a fundamentally ugly discourse on architecture, and we arguably need to change the discourse before we can change the architectural results. Subjective Aesthetics and the Context of Taste Drawing the lens back from this specific divide in perception, we now consider the relationship between individual aesthetic judgements and the social context. When considering the various qualities of a building, some aspects lend themselves well to objective critique, such as, for example, the quality of the workmanship, where judgements may be made on more factual NOTES n 1.Gifford, R., Hine, D. W., Muller-Clemm, W., Reynolds, D. J., Shaw, J., & Shaw, K. T. (2000). Decoding modern architecture: A lens model approach for understanding the aesthetic differences of architects and laypersons. Environment and Behavior, 32(2), 163–187. n 2. Duffy, F. Measuring building performance. Facilities, 8(5), 17–20. n 3. Osmond, H. (1957). Function as the basis of psychiatric ward design. Mental Hospitals, April, 23-29. n 4. Sommer, R. (1967). Sociofugal space. American Journal of Sociology, 72(6), 654–660. n 5. Sommer (1967); Sommer, R. (1974). Tight spaces: Hard architecture and how to humanize it. Englewood Cliffs; London: Prentice-Hall.; Sommer, R. (1983). Social design: Creating buildings with people in mind. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. n 6. Sommer (1983) n 7. Sommer (1974). p. 2 n 8. Alexander, C., Silverstein, M., Angel, S., Ishikawa, S., & Abrams, D. (1975). The Oregon experiment. New York: Oxford University Press. p.84 n 9. Alexander (1975). p. 67–68 n 10. Herzog, T. R., & Shier, R. L. (2000). Complexity, age, and building preference. Environment and Behavior, 32(4), 557–575.; Frewald, D. B. (1989). Preferences for older buildings: A psychological approach to architectural design. Unpublished manuscript. n 11. Duffy (1990). p. 17 n 12. Brand, S. (2007). Shearing layers. In M. Carmona and S. Tiesdell. (Ed.), Urban design reader (pp. 302–306). Oxford: Architectural Press. n 13. Garreau, J. (1991). Edge city: Life on the new frontier. New York: Doubleday. n 14. Brand (2007). p. 306 n 15. Benz, I. & Rambow, R. (2011). Sichtbeton in der Architektur: Perspektivenunterschiede zwischen Experten und Laien. Umweltpsychologie, 15(1), 112-129; Rambow, R. (2000a). Experten-Laien-Kommunikation in der Architektur. Münster: Waxmann; Rambow, R. (2000b). Das Auge des Architekten. Der Architekt (BDA Regional Nordrhein-Westfalen), 1–4; Uzzell, D.L. & Jones, E. (2000). The development of a process-based methodology for assessing the visual impact of buildings. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 17(4), 330–343. n 16. Benz & Rambow (2011); Rambow (2000a); Rambow (2000b) n 17. Benz & Rambow (2011); Hershberger, R. G. (1988). A study of meaning and architecture. In J. L. Nasar (Ed.), Environmental aesthetics: Theory, research, and application (pp. 175–194). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Canter, D., Sanchez-Robles, J. C. & Watts, N. (1974). A scale for cross-cultural evaluation of houses. In D. Canter & T. Lee (Eds.), Psychology and the built environment (pp. 80–86). London: Architectural Press; Wilson, M. & Canter, D. V. (1991). The development of central concepts during professional education: An example of a multivariate model of the concept of architectural style. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 32, 159–172; Wilson, M. (1996). The socialization 18 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 evidence, such as leaking roofs or well ventilated rooms. However, aesthetic qualities pose more of a problem, as “there is little objective data about what makes a good-looking building.” 28 To say a building is ugly is an expression of a personal view that an individual’s aesthetic code has been violated. Aesthetic judgements are therefore inextricably linked to education, religion, exposure to and knowledge of the arts and social class.29, 30, 31 As such, when considering comments on a building’s unattractiveness, it is important to consider who is making such comments. Aesthetic evaluations are bound up in social norms as well as personal ones. Notions of beauty and ugliness are culturally specific, and different communities will have different normative views of aesthetics. Moreover, as countries have industrialized, and consumption and individuality have become great driving forces of production, the very nature of society has changed. The pluralism of western society means that there is no longer one almost-objective view of beauty, but many competing and often opposite views. As Mann argues, “no one group can claim to have ‘better’ tastes than any other group” 32 In the light of this, perhaps we should not be asking why some buildings are so ugly, but looking instead at how and why different groups see the same building in opposing terms. Our concept of beauty itself has also changed over time, and not simply as it applies to architecture. What is considered to be beautiful and ugly, whether in relation to the female form, a piece of music, or a building, differs from one era to the next. Brutalist buildings of the 1950s, for example, were greatly admired when they were first built, since they demonstrated the uncompromising use of concrete, conveyed values of honesty and integrity and marked a clear shift away from bourgeois society and culture toward a more promising socialist future. Now, buildings such as the Robin Hood Gardens in London are commonly described as ugly, as not only has the concrete weathered poorly, but, ultimately, the values built into the fabric of the buildings are no longer at the heart of society. As “buildings speak … of democracy or aristocracy, openness or arrogance, welcome or threat, a sympathy for the future or a hankering for the past,” 33 any consideration of architectural aesthetics needs to be understood with temporal context in mind. Aesthetic judgements are not separate from personal and social values, nor from the time of production and consumption, and this makes it difficult to conclude why some buildings are so ugly. Topping Out Whereas the traditional approach to understanding building aesthetics has worked from the building outwards, we have proposed a new approach working from the person outwards. We have considered the relationship of person and building, person and architect, and person and society. We have to take a more humanoriented approach to aesthetic evaluations in order to understand the concept of ugliness, and ultimately, to build more beautiful buildings. To do this, a person-centric approach advocates that buildings are designed with user behaviour and adaptation in mind; that the communication gap between architects and lay people must be bridged; and that any aesthetic judgements are understood within personal, cultural, and social contexts. The authors are part of the Environmental Psychology Research Group at the University of Surrey, UK. Contact: Birgitta Gatersleben, [email protected] Lily Bernheimer holds a BA from Brown University and is an MSc candidate in Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey. Her thesis research on barriers to change for transit-oriented development was selected for presentation at this year’s International Association of People-Environment Studies Congress. “Design solely from a bird’s eye perspective creates ugly buildings.” “Ugly buildings result from a lack of care for people.” — Eranga De Zoysa, B.Arch., Sci. In 2011 she co-directed and produced a documentary about public space, Open to the Public?, with Paper Tiger TV. She has also worked at the Gotham Center for New York City History and OpenPlans, a tech non-profit working for sustainable city design through open-source development and new media. [email protected] Sarah Hewitt graduated in 2010 with First Class Honours in Sociology from Manchester Metropolitan University, where she was awarded the Prize for Outstanding Achievement for her dissertation on social and architectural utopian visions. She has worked for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment in London and an architect’s practice in Cambridge, and is currently studying for an MSc in Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey. She is a member of International Association for People-Environment Studies, the Buildings and Social Science Network, and the Environmental Psychology Research Group at the University of Surrey. [email protected] Dipl.-Ing. Clara Franziska Maria Weber, graduated 2011 with distinction in Architecture (Dipl.-Ing. is the equivalent to MSc). She studied at the Technical University Berlin, Germany and at the IUAV Venice, Italy. Her dissertation, a Post-Occupancy Evaluation of the Unite d’habitation Berlin was recently published with Ibidem, Stuttgart. After her architecture studies she worked at the Office Innovation Center of the Fraunhofer Institute, Stuttgart – Europe’s biggest applied science institute. There she worked on the project >>FutureHotel<< and is co-author of the accompanying publication. Currently she is studying Environmental Psychology as a second masters degree and is part of the Environmental Psychology Research Group at the University of Surrey, UK. [email protected] of architectural preferences. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 33–44. n 18. Benz & Rambow (2011) n 19. Downing, F. (1992). Image banks. Dialogues between the past and the future. Environment and Behavior, 24, 441–470. n 20. Rambow (2000b) n 21. Downing, F. (1992); Stamps, A.E. & Nasar, J.L. (1997). Design review and public preferences: Effects of geographical location, public consensus, sensation seeking, and architectural styles. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 17 (1), 11–32.; Uzzell & Jones (2000) n 22. Devlin, K. & Nasar, J. L. (1989). The beauty and the beast: Some preliminary comparisons of “high“ versus “popular“ residential architecture and public versus architect judgements of the same. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 9, 333–344; Purcell, A. T. (1986). Environmental perception and affect: A schema discrepancy model. Environment and Behavior, 18, 3–30; Purcell, A. T. & Nasar, J. L. (1992). Experiencing other people’s houses: A model of similarities and differences in environmental experience. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 12, 199–211; Stamps & Nasar (1997); Uzzell & Jones (2000) n 23. Canter, D. (1969). An intergroup comparison of connotative dimensions in architecture. Environment and Behavior, 1, 37-48; Hershberger (1988); Nasar, J. L. (1989). Symbolic meanings of house styles. Environment and Behavior, 21, 235–257; Sadalla, E. K. & Sheets, V. L. (1993). Symbolism in building materials: Self-presentational and cognitive components. Environment and Behavior, 25, 155–180; Uzzell & Jones (2000) n 24. Rambow (2000a) n 25. Benz & Rambow (2011); Nasar, J. L. (1993). Connotative meaning of house styles. In G. Arias (ed.), The Meaning and Use of Housing: Ethnoscapes (bol.7) (pp. 143–167). Avebury: Gower; Rambow (2000a); Rambow (2000b) n 26. Benz & Rambow (2011); Rambow (2000a); Rambow (2000b); Uzzell & Jones (2000) n 27. See President’s Message, p. 6 n 28. Fawcett, W., Ellingham, I., & Platt, S. (2008). Reconciling the Architectural Preferences of Architects and the Public: The Ordered Preference Model. Environment and Behaviour. 40 (5), 599. n 29. Adorno, T. (1984). Aesthetic Theory. London: RKP. n 30. Toffler, A. (1973). The Cultural Consumers. New York: Vintage. n 31. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. n 32. Mann, D. A. (1979). Architecture, Aesthetics, and Pluralism: Theories of Taste as a Determinant for Architectural Standards. Studies in Art Education. 20(3),15. n 33. De Botton, A. (2006). The Architecture of Happiness. London: Penguin. w w w. o a a . o n . c a 19 O A A P e r s p e c t i v e s | fall 2 0 1 2 FIRMNESS, COMMODITY AND DELIGHT (OR LACK THEREOF): A Very Brief History of Architectural Theory Regarding the Creation of Beauty By Mary Ellen Lynch, oaa The oldest profession has always had high demands for success. At first we relied on Mother Nature for inspiration, but as time marched on, society began to develop more intellectual criteria for beauty. In fact, one might argue that only a genius could succeed in architecture. The pursuit of beauty has had its failures over the centuries, but as we can see from this list of architectural theories, the quest continues … and continues to evolve. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, De Architectura, ca.15BC The first to describe “well” building as the incorporation of “firmitas, utilitas et venustas,” Vitruvius is the author of the first known treatise on architecture. His near-divine description of a competent architect was a man of intelligence and spirit, who not only theorized, but also practiced, and who studied and utilized the principles of geometry, history, philosophy, music, medicine, law, astronomy and art. Practice of his theories, including manual labour, bring him closer to “the holy grounds of architecture,” which in turn act as stepping stones for the common man to access the gods. Leon Battista Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria (On the Art of Building), 1452 A true Renaissance Man, Alberti modeled his treatise on architecture after Vitruvius. He emphasized that the architect should work only for those in society who would appreciate his art. The best architecture is natural, simple and should not be overly contrived. Continual practice (exercise) produces results that garner lavish praise from society, for skills of the craftsman were more highly prized than the wealth of a prince. But if an architect fails in his work, he experiences the utmost disgrace. Andrea Palladio, I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), 1570 Palladio took cues from the ancients but pushed them further. Beauty is harmony and order; like nature, perfect architecture is in perfect balance—nothing should be 20 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 added or subtracted. He was well known for his drawings as he developed the mantra of commodity, firmness and delight in the forms of Plan, Section and Elevation, respectively. gardens. Ruskin’s camp fought materialism and the dishonesty of the machine; they promoted the virtues of the Gothic Revival style and the labour of the craftsman. Marc-Antoine Laugier, Essay on Architecture, 1753 Laugier found faults in Renaissance architecture and architects’ use of various elements such as pilasters. He initiated the idea of the Primitive Hut using only the necessities. “An architect overloads his work only because he is not gifted enough to make it simple.” Julien Guadet, École Des Beaux Arts, 1894 Look to history not for style but for the principles that could be extracted and utilized today. He criticized people who criticize architecture without the knowledge of constructing a building themselves. Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Architecture Considered in Relation to Art, Mores and Legislation, 1791 Ledoux was accused of being a “terrible” architect for taking excessive freedoms with the ancient orders, and was thrown in prison for providing the French government with facilities that proved useless. In prison, he wrote that architects rival the Creator, and by studying nature they can reach perfection in design; payment is immorality. Too many commissions restrain genius in the service of business. Like the heavenly bodies, though, architecture has its periods of waxing and waning. The genius’ mind never dies; it just recedes into the inner regions of the mind as a volcano’s lava recedes into the core of the earth, always simmering. Etienne-Louis Boullée, Essay on the Art of Architecture, ca. 1789, published 1953 A visionary contemporary of Ledoux, Boullée also believed in the genius and immortality of the architect, but he believed in working for the benefit of all of society—a utopian. His maxim for beauty, “nothing is beautiful if all is not judicious,” was expressed in pure geometry, repetition of forms and masterful play of light. John Ruskin, The Seven lamps of Architecture, 1849; The Stones of Venice, 1853 In the Victorian era, the Industrial Revolution was threatening the status quo, and in architectural design one either embraced the new machines or retreated to the comfort of walled Louis Sullivan, The Autobiography of an Idea, 1920 In North America, Sullivan advanced the development of the skyscraper with extensive use of steel. “All is function, all is form, but the fragrance of them is rhythm, the language of them is rhythm.” Le Corbusier, Towards An Architecture, 1931 Buildings = Machines for living. “Corb” (he only needs one name) based his designs on Vitruvian proportions and mathematics but used materials such as concrete and glass to create plasticity. “You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good… . That is architecture. Art enters in.” Moisei Ginzburg, New Methods of Architectural Thought, 1926 “What is desirable is guided by what is possible.” Bernard Tschumi, The Pleasure of Architecture, 1978 “ … the importance is not the something, the meaning, or the reality that can never be reached, but rather the process of trying to reach it—that gives me pleasure.” Tschumi’s deconstructivist work has garnered much criticism, but he enjoys it. Mary Ellen Lynch is a Toronto architect and regular contributor to OAA Perspectives. AESTHETICS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE What is art? Unlike architecture, it has no utilitarian function to constrain it, so it is purely aesthetic. It used to be that art represented truth and beauty, reflecting the culture and the views of the artist. But since the 1970s and the growth of Western individualism and consumerism, the definition of art has changed. In the postmodern world, art is whatever the artist can get away with. The postmodernists believe that there is no singular truth, no facts, only interpretations. Reality, whether subjective or objective, is constructed and arbitrary. It rejects beauty in truth. Beauty is too subjective, entirely fabricated by culture, and so has no place in art. Instead, for the postmodern artist, irony is favoured. To mock and shock is the goal. Daring to be different at a large scale creates great impact. The work speaks primarily to our head, not our heart. The unconventional ideas are more important than the skill of execution. Mediocrity of the work is not a reason to reject it as art. What do you think of Damian Hirst with his dead sheep in formaldehyde and the wrapping of buildings with fabric by Christo? They were widely publicized and photographed as great art. Architecture also went into the postmodern period together with art, literature, music, performing arts, etc. Unlike art, architecture has two aspects for the architect to consider: function and aesthetics. In the modernist era, with the industrial revolution, truth and beauty prevailed in architecture where form followed function, as in nature. There was an implication that if function were the focus in the design, then the resulting form would automatically be fine, By Yimlei Yep, B Arch., M.B.A. even beautiful. So there was little worry about the aesthetic value if the building fulfilled its function well. Since many mediocre, functional buildings were created from the inside out, we know now that usefulness has nothing to do with beauty. In the 1970s, there was a desire for change. The austere aesthetics of modern architecture where “less is more” became “less is a bore.” Postmodern art influenced postmodern architecture. The shock of the new and incongruous, daring forms eventually became the norm for buildings, especially new art museums. These buildings from “starchitects” are more art than architecture, in my opinion. The function is only secondary to the sculptural form. Like pure sculpture, it is unconcerned with the context or environment in which it sits. These buildings can be cloned (as in limited editions) and placed in other cities without regard to the specifics of the site. So what makes a building or an artwork ugly or beautiful to me? I am hoping that in the next phase (post postmodern), aesthetic beauty will go back to being a reflection of culture and being subjective based on what the artist intends, and what the viewer perceives. Architects have the challenge of being creative and building beautifully designed places that have context for ordinary people to live, work and play. Molly Yimlei Yep is a Canadian who trained originally as an architect at McGill. While living in England, she studied ceramics full-time. She is now a fine artist in porcelain and painting, working in both eastern and western styles in Niagara-on-the-Lake. She also teaches architectural drawing by hand at the Willowbank School of Restoration Arts in nearby Queenston. “In 1984, I said . . . that the proposed extension to the Gallery was like a ‘monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.’ “ — Charles, Prince of Wales, A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture (London: Doubleday, 1989), p. 7 w w w. o a a . o n . c a Andre and Bella Meyer Hall of Physics, Broadway, NYC. PHOTO: Perspectives Capitol Complex, Le Corbusier, Chandigarh, India PHOTO: Mary Ellen Lynch Hundertwasser Haus Vienna/14.07.2010/ Vienna, Austria. Original 4320 x 3240 PHOTO: ©Sarah Ackerman Creative Commons Rodeo Dr., Beverly Hills, California PHOTO: Lucian Nan 21 O A A P e r s p e c t i v e s | fall 2 0 1 2 INTERNATIONAL Ugliness Abroad Southwyck House Brixton, UK This futuristic fortress was, in fact, built as a living place; it is a council estate in Brixton, London. The narrow windows seem almost an afterthought, like the air holes poked in a cardboard box for a captured lizard. They look like little natural light is let in. The strange contrast of the form and material of the center section give off a distinctly institutional feeling. If shopping malls had watchtowers they might look like this. And the entrances are raised up disconnecting the building from the street around it. Typical of hard architecture, this building seems designed as a defensive structure, cold and inadaptable to its surroundings and inhabitants. — Lily Bernheimer Southwyck House PHOTO: Lily Bernheimer Sussex Heights PHOTO: ©Idleformat Creative Commons Sussex Heights, Brighton, UK Sussex Heights is a residential tower block on the seafront in Brighton. It is the tallest residential building in the south of the country, and its imposing outline can be seen from most areas of the city. Although Brighton’s seafront is a mix of architectural styles, in varying degrees of repair, Sussex Heights, in all its concrete glory, really does stick out like a sore thumb. The insensitivity of the design of the block is what makes this building ugly. — Sarah Hewitt 22 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 Sussex Heights/13.02.2006/Original 1024 x 768 PHOTO: ©Idleformat Creative Commons 16 NIXON ROAD. BOLTON, ON CANADA L7E 1K3 T. �905� 857�3009 | F. �905� 857�6010 42600 EXECUTIVE DRIVE CANTON, MI USA 48188 T. �734� 844�9990 | F. �734� 844�9991 Gruene Zitadelle/ 20.06.2009/Original 3072 x 2304 PHOTO: ©Michael Fielitz, Creative Commons Gruene Zitadelle in Magdeburg, Germany From my personal point of view, I would rate architecture by Friedensreich Hundertwasser as unaesthetic, which, in common parlance would be expressed as “ugly.” This rejection is multifaceted since it is framed on the one hand by a disagreement with my personal understanding of aesthetics and on the other by an inconsistency of the concept behind it. Hundertwasser was driven by a need to “invent” a new form of architecture that would meet human needs better than former “conservative” architectural solutions. In his various manifestos (“Verschimmelungsmanifest” or “moulding manifesto,” 1958, for example) he advocated more rights for inhabitants to design their house or flat as they wanted—to give them maximum freedom and maximum rights. Promoting the importance of personalization is, in my perspective, an honourable idea, but his designs do not live up to their promises as they make personalization rather impossible—he left no room for it. In my view, his architecture dominates its users, is heavily dictatorial and not neutral enough to allow a wide range of users to possess the space. It is unclear, overloaded and highly sculptural. In my understanding he created art— a house as sculpture to live in—which I think is a false objective, since architecture must not be art. It is living space. ❚ — Clara Weber w w w. o a a . o n . c a 594867_International.indd 1 7/4/12 9:53:29 AM ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERS Specialists In: Designated Substances Surveys for Renovation, Demolition and Construction Projects Mould Investigations and Remedial Design and Supervision Air Quality Testing Asbestos Surveys and Abatement Design and Supervision Phase I and II Environmental Site Assessments, Site Cleanup and Risk Assessment Geotechnical Investigations For More Information Contact: Wayne Cormack, CIH or Rein Andre 121 Granton Drive, Unit 11 Richmond Hill, Ontario L4B 3N4 Tel: (905) 882-5984 Fax: (905) 882-8962 Web-Site: http://www.dcsltd.ca E-Mail: [email protected] [email protected] DECOMMISSIONING CONSULTING SERVICES LIMITED 476027_dcs_ad.indd 1 23 4/16/10 10:27:12 AM O A A P e r s p e c t i v e s | fall 2 0 1 2 practice The Sole Practitioner—Part I Paul Hastings OAA, MRAIC, LEED AP Introduction To many sole practitioners who are operating from a home office, competition and reduced cashflow is a major problem. How do you compete with larger firms to get on a consultant list? How do you compete with other designers in Ontario for smaller, simpler, Part 9 buildings? How do you qualify for business loans for equipment and software upgrades? How do you find time to market your firm, get your work done and still maintain your home base? How do you find and negotiate with consultants in the disciplines you require? How do you find answers in 10 minutes to practice and code questions? In short: how do you survive? Most sole practitioners have to know everything and have to do everything, all within the 24-hour day. Most sole practitioners complete one job and have to go looking for the next—attract a new client and then negotiate an accounts receivable settlement with an old one. Oftentimes this old client is the same one who was happy to meet with you in the beginning and now has to be chased for payment, so that the amount owed is being reduced by the time spent in collecting. There has to be a better way. Value added by Architects First of all, architects provide added value to projects, both quantitatively and qualitatively. An architect adds value by monitoring the contract and contractor, ensuring quality workmanship, fair credits and extras, all of which can be quantified to show value added. Notwithstanding inspections by the city or municipality, the contract management and payment certification aspect is very important and architects share heavily in that responsibility to protect the client. Certifying proportional payment for work done properly; ensuring that warranty, maintenance material and commissioning in “wired-homes” are completed—it is not only the CAD drawing and heat loss calculations; it is also the contract and construction review where an architect adds value to projects. Many people who have undertaken a project without an architect live to regret it: having to deal with contractor 24 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 deficiencies, schedule changes and ridiculous extras. But they are convinced that they now know how to handle those problems on the next project and are even prepared to offer advice to others. Unfortunately, as architects well know, the next project will have a different set of problems. No matter how many house renovations or additions they do, the contractor has done many more and an unscrupulous contractor has many tricks to draw on. After all, it has been said that construction is a continuous process of concealment. Building Classification The non-requirement for an architect in smaller and less complicated Part 9 buildings seems to stem from the principle that every citizen should be allowed to build a shelter for him- or herself and immediate family and perhaps a building in which to conduct a business that will provide for that family. However, as concerns for safety increase, an architect is needed to assure that these concerns are not left to the assumed skill and competence of the citizen/builder, even under the oversight of city building inspectors. The larger, more complicated Part 3 buildings—churches, schools, apartments and hotels, for example—require licensed architects as part of the design team and a professional seal on construction documents for building permit submission and approval. In cases such as these, architects are needed to ensure the safety of occupants and to tend to the complexities of “Firmness, Commodity and Delight.” Clients and Architects need each other Clients need design services and architects provide them. Clients come in various sizes, ranging from the individual to multinational corporate conglomerates and governmental agencies. Most larger buildings are in the corporate and governmental domain, where a larger architectural practice with many architects and designers can provide the resilience, continuity and resources to satisfy the client. But the reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery of these larger firms also allows them to attract smaller Part 9 buildings, putting them in competition with sole practitioners. Because the sole practitioner may have more difficulty than a larger firm in assuring the client that all deliverables will be met, many available projects, even small ones, remain beyond the grasp of the sole practitioner. Furthermore, it only takes one unfortunate event to render the sole practitioner incapacitated, and the client’s risk tolerance does not favour such odds when large projects are at stake. This means that the many single practitioners in Ontario are faced with their own management issue: how to serve their client’s needs and their own needs at the same time. The next step for the sole home-based practitioner Sole practitioners are very well trained, resourceful, generalists—and specialist at the same time. The training for architecture is a lengthy one—holistic, comprehensive and intense. Architects have a broad knowledge base that includes building science, history and aesthetics, as well as general topics that an architect might encounter, which includes almost everything. They are creative. They are able to articulate ideas clearly and represent them graphically. They can build consensus, resolve disputes, conduct research and feasibility studies and provide expert opinions. Architects are “people persons.” But in the twenty-first century, the sole practitioner must have the additional skill of extreme adaptability in order to remain relevant, competitive and profitable. With all its attendant liabilities, deliverables, risk management and marketing challenges, sole practice still presents tremendous opportunities. ❚ Paul Hastings is an architect with a background in engineering, environmental design and LEED. He is the 2012 OAA Vice President, Regulatory Activities, and a strong proponent of a consortium business model for Sole Practioners. 581516_GRAPHISOFT.indd 1 11/04/12 5:40 AM Craftsmanship. Style. Performance. Carefully crafted with outstanding quality, superior functionality and unmatched performance; all backed by the best warranty in the business. 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For more information visit: www.aecdaily.com/sponsor/fenzi Iron Eagle offers over 62 unique designs for Commercial, Industrial and Residential applications 11 Dansk Court, Toronto, Ontario • M9W 5N6 Tel: 416-674-3831 Fax: 416-674-9323 Toll Free: 1-866-899-6799 www.fenzi-na.com [email protected] • CAD drawings available on our website • 1256 Cardiff Blvd. Mississauga, ON L5S 1R1 Tel.: (905) 670-2558 • Fax: (905) 670-2841 www.ironeagleind.com • e-mail: [email protected] INDEX OF ADVERTISERS 29/06/12 2:18 461908_IronEagle.indd PM 1 594631_Fenzi.indd 1 139 Bentworth Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M6A 1P6 Tel: (416) 787-0271 • Fax: (416) 787-5421 www.oasinc.ca • [email protected] A USG COMPANY 481582_OAS.indd 1 w w w. o a a . o n . c a 5/31/10 10:03:02 PM ACOUSTICAL DISTRIBUTORS OAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 ACOUSTICAL ENGINEERS HGC Engineering Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Valcoustics Canada Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 ALUMINUM DOORS/WINDOWS/ CURTAIN WALLS Commdoor Aluminum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 ARCHITECTURAL ACOUSTICS Valcoustics Canada Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 ARCHITECTURAL GLASS Fenzi North America Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 ARCHITECTURAL WOODWORK Baywood Interiors Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 BRICK MANUFACTURERS/SUPPLIERS Arriscraft International . . . . Inside Back Cover Hanson Brick Canada . . . . . . Inside Front Cover Thames Valley Brick & Tile . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 BUILDING CODE CONSULTANTS LMDG Building Code Consultants Ltd. . . . . . . 28 CARPET Tandus Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 CLAY BRICK & MASONRY Hanson Brick Canada . . . . . . Inside Front Cover CLAY PAVING BRICKS Thames Valley Brick & Tile . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 CODE ENFORCEMENT Ontario Building Officials Association . . . . . . 29 CONSTRUCTION LAW SERVICES Aird & Berlis, LLP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Blaney McMurtry LLP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 DESIGNATED SUBSTANCES & HAZARDOUS MATERIALS Decommissioning Consulting Services Ltd. . . 23 DOUBLE DOORS & REMOVABLE MULLIONS Post Latch Industries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 ELEVATOR/ACCESSIBILITY CONTRACTORS Motion Specialties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 1/20/10 11:08:58 AM ELEVATORS Delta Elevator Company Ltd. . . . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover EXTERIOR STONE DESIGN StoneSelex Inc. . . . . . . . . . . Outside Back Cover FLOORING Tandus Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 FLOORING - INFORMATION RESOURCE Concrete Flooring Association . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover GLASS BLOCK & GLASS FLOOR SYSTEMS Thames Valley Brick & Tile . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 MODULAR BUILDINGS NRB Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 NATURAL STONE PRODUCTS Beaver Valley Stone Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 International Logistics and Stone Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 NOISE & VIBRATION CONTROL Valcoustics Canada Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 ORNAMENTAL IRON FENCING Iron Eagle Industries Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 SOFTWARE - BUILDING INFORMATION MODEL GRAPHISOFT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 STONE DISTRIBUTION International Logistics and Stone Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 TESTING SERVICES (LAB & FIELD) Can-Best . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 TILES Olympia Tile International Inc. . . . . . . . 16, 17 WHEELCHAIR LIFTS Delta Elevator Company Ltd. . . . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover WINDOWS All Weather Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Azon U.S.A., Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 WINDOWS & DOORS Strassburger Windows and Doors . . . . . . . . . 25 27 O A A P e r s p e c t i v e s | fall 2 0 1 2 Get the Brick Colours You Want With the Sizes and Shapes You Need! • Clay Facebrick • Genuine Clay Paving Brick • Thin-Brick Veneer and TABS Wall System The Millwork Solutions Company Proudly Canadian, serving the industrial, commercial & institutional construction industry since 1994 - all are available in thousands of variations of colour, texture and size. Catalogues and samples are available on request. [email protected] #9 - 5115 Harvester Rd., Burlington, ON L7L 0A3 Burlington (905) 637-6997 | Toronto (416) 252-5811 | Toll Free: (800) 567-5800 Email: [email protected] | www.ThamesValleyBrick.com 473440_ThamesValleyBrick.indd 1 – JOHN D. LASSEL DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS 830 TRILLIUM DRIVE, KITCHENER, ON 4OLL&REEswww.baywoodinteriors.com 3/29/10 2:48:06 586437_Baywood_Interiors.indd PM 1 592520_Blaney.indd Elevation 1 11/05/12 2:24 PM dia 24mm 27/06/12 3:37 552021_PostLatch.indd PM 1 Legal advice 9/21/11 1:55:34 PM L M D G Space for seating you can build on Building Code Consultants Ltd x4131 Auditorium We have been providing innovative counsel to the design and construction industries for over 25 years. To find out how we can help with your construction projects, please contact: control room Bernie McGarva Certified Specialist in Construction Law [email protected] or 416.865.7765 Logo airdberlis.com Website 532122_Aird.indd 1 28 554950_Motion.indd 1 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 Fire Protection & Life Safety Solutions Head Office: 4th Floor - 780 Beatty Street Vancouver, BC V6B 2M1 Tel: (604) 682-7146 Fax: (604) 682-7149 www.LMDG.com Ontario Office: 300 North Queen Street Suite 206 Toronto, ON M9C 5K4 Tel: (416) 646-0162 Fax: (416) 646-0165 Emmanuel A. Domingo, P.Eng. Glenn A. Gibson, M.Eng., P.Eng., CP James R. Ware, FPET 6/2/11 2:55:58574534_LMDG.indd AM 1 10/4/11 5:17:30 537125_Valcoustics PM Canada.indd 1 2/15/12 5:59:16 PM 6/24/11 7:49:01 PM ontario places continued f rom page 30. from Edwin to keep its legacy and history alive. To me this embodies what is beautiful in buildings. When one compares Edwin Pass’s shop to those adjacent, especially the ones that have been “renovated,” the contrast resonates immediately. Although the block contains a number of buildings built in the same era, the streetscape reveals modern materials chosen and applied in a random fashion including a multitude of veneers, non-operable shutters and plastic disposable windows. I can appreciate that these buildings have at least been stabilized and are not falling into disrepair, but I think that our communities would be better served if we took a more considered approach to these valuable cultural artefacts; our historic buildings, streetscapes and neighbourhoods. People relate in a remarkable way to the aesthetics of a historic window, the summer sun bouncing off its wavy glass. There is a vague feeling of loss when the originals are gone. It is really striking when older windows have been replaced. It is as if a building has lost some of its character, its soul. $*/ e of t t On rges Visi a’s La plays is ad Cantdoor D Ou Your one stop shop for pond and waterfall kits and accessories Office and yard: 25 Langstaff Rd. E., Thornhill, Yonge & Hwy 7-407 Manufacturing plant: 12350 Keele St., Maple 416-222-2424 or 905-886-5787 Fax: 905-886-5795 www.beavervalleystone.com 517594_BeaverValley.indd 1 These intangible things are all part of the cultural landscape of a building, and the loss of them contributes to the “ugliness” of buildings. We might not look at a building and think immediately of who made it or what their relationship to their community was, but knowing these things contributes enormously to our ability to perceive the building and its beauty. The architect and the builder are personified in the building as long as the mark of their work is there. Once it is gone, some of the beauty of the building is lost. I liken this to how one relates to music. The joy of movement and change that make up our experience of music derives from both the immediate past and the present being held in the mind together. There is an anticipation of what notes will come next, based on our memories and experiences, and that influences how we experience the music. Julian Smith, Executive Director of Willowbank School of Restoration Arts remarked, “the reading of the cultural landscape requires being inside the cultural imagination. The closer you are to a community, the more likely you are to understand the cultural landscape. A physical landscape can be observed, whereas a cultural landscape has to be experienced.” Heritage conservation projects are not necessarily all or nothing, or old versus new. I am not a purist, although I do love what heritage embodies. I do recognize that it is sometimes appropriate to adopt contemporary design in heritage conservation projects. There is no single definition of beauty. In a heritage conservation project there is always much more involved than just a building. There is a community and a culture involved and all those who have an interest; professionals, trades-people, philosophers and citizens alike should have a say. All are valid to the discussion because all form part of the community that will bestow these wonderful Ontario Places to the future. ❚ Walter Furlan is a conservator of historic buildings and landscapes, principally trained by Julian Smith and Craig Sims at Willowbank. He resides with his loving family in Hamilton. Noise, Vibration and Acoustics A wide selection of natural stone and precast concrete products • Flagstone • Interlocking • Cultured Stone • Masonry products • Retaining walls • Aggregates • Accessories • Bulk/bag road salt Consulting Engineers Mississauga, Ontario P: 905-826-4546 HOWE GASTMEIER CHAPNIK LIMITED 2/8/11 8:23:39540899_HGC.indd PM 1 • Architectural Acoustics • Building Noise and Vibration Control www.hgcengineering.com 8/23/11 6:08:24 PM ONTARIO BUILDING OFFICIALS ASSOCIATION Building Knowledge. Growing Communities. 588001_Can.indd 1 w w w. o a a . o n . c a 16/05/12 1:26 507900_Ontario.indd PM 1 29 12/2/10 9:04:28 AM O A A P e r s p e c t i v e s | fall 2 0 1 2 O ntario P laces A Window on Beauty Above, left to right: The Pass shop, part of a historic block on John St. South, Hamilton; (top) restored wood frame and sash basement window; (bottom) vinyl and aluminum replacement window; Historic oak doors under repair using original tools and methods Below: Restored double hung windows on second floor of There is almost no “place” in Ontario that is not somehow defined or whose origin cannot be traced to what has gone before it. Our cities continue to be shaped by the decisions of citizens long past, but whose influence lives on in ways they could never have imagined. This is the beauty of cultural history and its cousin, the cultural landscape. Heritage buildings and their landscapes can be beautiful in a number of ways. Some appreciate the historical aesthetic, the patinas, the styles and the settings. For others, the beauty lies in its relevance to local events, family ties and significant rituals. Some are just pretty to look at. What makes a building ugly or beautiful? Perhaps in part it is the craftsman’s intuitive ability to blend form and function. An early 20th-century basement window was little more than a means to provide ventilation. Some are much more than this, though. The example shown has been purposely crafted to the golden ratio and its panes are divided again into the same proportion. Its pleasing nature and the bead and quirk detail around the frame draw the eye to the window. One cannot look away. the Pass shop PHOTOS: Rick Mateljan The older neighbourhoods in our cities were once full of windows such as this but they are slowly being lost in the name of efficiency and modernization. The replacements are 30 OAA Perspectives|FALL 2012 Walter Furlan sterile and institutional and will need replacement again in 20 years. Consider that the restored wood window with properly fitting weather seals and a storm window offers thermal efficiencies at least as good as a new PVC window. The wood window has already lasted 100 years and with maintenance can last another 100 years, not only providing protection from weather and allowing in natural light, but also remaining a part of the historic fabric and record. Beautiful! Modern PVC windows appear to be a maintenance-free solution but are not entirely problem-free. They have a limited lifespan as they cannot easily be repaired or recycled. In addition, the manufacturing process of polyvinyl chloride poses major hazards in product life, manufacturing and disposal. Recently I had the privilege of restoring the windows of the former watchmaker Edwin Pass’s shop—a man whose family had repaired watches from 1885 until a few years ago. This is the only building in this historic Hamilton neighbourhood that still retains almost all of its original fabric, including its original façade with the storefront, double door and original wood windows. Having the opportunity to work with material that was crafted by people who lived in this community before me is a gratifying experience. The original 125-yearold wood windows with their slim muntin bar detailing are more pleasing proportionally than anything they could have been replaced by and the wood is first growth—far superior to woods available today. The Pass property has a rich, layered history. It is located near King Street, now a major road, but historically an aboriginal trail that existed before European settlement. The land was once owned by George Hamilton, the city founder. An original rubble-stone wall still exists and, in it, a wooden door head still embedded in the original lime mortar. All of this is important to Robin McKee, who bought the property cont inued on page 29. Who is installing your next concretĞŇŽor ? OR The Cowboys The Professionals • Hard working but don’t read speciĮcaƟons. • SubsƟtute speciĮed materials with whatever was leŌ over from the last job. • No guarantees – they leŌ town yesterday ! • Are skilled and technically proĮcient. • Use speciĮed methods & materials. • Proudly stand behind their product with a wriƩen guarantee. Make sure you next concrete floor is a success by prequalifying members of the “Concrete Floor Contractors Association”. www.concretefloors.ca Tel: 905-582-9825 590041_concrete.indd 1 28/05/12 10:04 PM Discover the most comprehensive set of thin-clad materials on the market and deliver stunning results. 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