Architectural Literacy for All

Architectural Literacy for All 

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I am on a mission to announce the secrets of architecture to all.  As a matter of fact Architecture should not be a secret. 

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. —Winston Churchill

Architecture affects everyone and yet most people have no power in shaping it and don't have the skills to understand it. We spend so much of our time in built environments, yet we don't participate in shaping this world.

Why Do We Need Architectural Literacy?

Humans need shelter for emotional and physical reasons. This phenomenon is known as “nesting.” “It is commonly characterized by a strong urge to clean and organize one's home and is one reason why couples who are expecting a baby often reorganize, arrange, and clean the house and surroundings.”¹

Slums in Rio

Housing is a human right: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." ² For citizens to exercise this right they need to be better informed and able to demand their rights.

Refugee camp in Jordan for Syrian refugees. 

According to Abraham Maslow in 1943, each of our human needs, starting with (1) Physiology (eating and sleeping, etc.), must be met before the need above it can be addressed. If a person is not safe, he/she is unlikely to be overly concerned with getting people to like them or having a spiritual life, etc. The quality of architecture can help with (4) Esteem and (5) Self-Actualization. 3 Beauty, comfort, good design, light, attention to details, decoration, and color all contribute to one's sense of well-being and happiness.

Understanding and appreciating architecture can help a person relate to their community. Architecture design affects the cohesion of communities. People enjoy visiting well-designed cities that offer plazas, arcades, street cafes, civic structures, public monuments, theaters, and libraries. As Jane Jacobs observed in her Life and Death of American Cities, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

Forest Spiral by Hundertwasser – the Unique House in Germany

Architectural choices are environmental choices. We all live on one planet with limited resources, and buildings must take into consideration their environmental impact. Some designs are bad for the environment, consume too much energy, affect the land, and are toxic to users (as in “sick building syndrome”). Consumers need to participate in the building design and construction process so the wisest decisions can be made to protect the environment.³

Architects only serve the need of 1% of the world's population (4). In the United States it is estimated that 80% of buildings are designed by non-architects. For humanity to manage 99% of the rest of the world, we need to inspire the public of all ages to design and build better architectural solutions.

According to Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory, visual and spatial intelligences are important means to learning, and teaching young people to think in architectural and spatial ways will help students access and empower that part of their brain. Teaching problem solving through architectural design is beneficial to all students even if they don't end up working in the architecture or construction industries.

There are overwhelming design and architectural problems that face humanity in many parts of the world: homelessness, refugee populations, slums, lack of adequate housing for lower income families, better designed communities for the elderly, parks and recreation spaces for teenagers, playgrounds for children, housing for young people, buildings for the disabled, sustainable cities that produce fresh foods, and many more. Our current design-and-build system, even with experts, is not producing the solutions.

Historic Background on the Root of the Architectural Illiteracy Problem

Architecture Literacy is a life skill or a survival skill. Our naked ancestors would not have survived brutally cold winters or the dangers of predators if they were not creative enough to invent shelter. The shelter of nomadic people developed with the agricultural revolution to become brick and stone villages and then the monumental ceremonial structures in larger civilizations. In the 10,000 years of documented architecture, people were engaged in shaping their human structures. The buildings they made had ceremonial meaning and held their ancestral history. The act of building strengthened communities as in barn-raising or pyramid-building.

During the last 5,000 years architects who sometimes were also priests had specialized skills and understanding of building technology. Nevertheless, the masses participated in creating simple houses and shelters based on tried and true methods and techniques.

    Traditional architecture in Yemen ( people knew how to build!) 

The industrial revolution changed architecture by mechanizing building technoloy, moving people from village to city life in large masses, and making the building arts into specialized professions. The industrial revolution introduced new materials like steel and concrete, which allowed large projects to be built fast. These materials were foreign to architects and people in the building trades, which led to wild experimentation with materials like asbestos, and the creation of buildings that did not pass the test of time. The new cities and modern transportation allowed for decentralized planning and high-rise buildings to be built on a scale that humans had never experienced before. All of these changes together created populations around the world that are living in slums and substandard housing.

To solve the problem of slums, architects and city planners started building gigantic impersonal projects with concrete and immigrants to the cities accepted them as an alternative to slums. At the same time cars allowed middle class and wealthier people to move to the suburbs and that led to fast easy-to-build track housing that was mostly uniform and had no cultural meaning.

Public housing in Saudi Arabia,designed as if no one care and nobody matters

This revolution of how we live where we live and what kind of buildings we are spending time in happened so fast relative to human evolutionary time. This created an out-of-control building boom that transformed the way the world around us looks and feels. Societies accepted this so-called progress without examining what effects it had on society. Now almost a hundred years later, the results are out. We are surrounded by a largely inhumane and ugly environment. Our schools look like jails, our houses are impersonal and don't feel like homes, we work in dark office cubicles. Our building experiments are taking a huge toll on society and environmental psychology is confirming these devastating results.¹

What I have found surprising is that the human need for shelter, comfort and community can be easily met and has been for hundreds of years. My aim is to take architectural understanding back to people and reintroduce to them a simple and humanistic architectural literacy. I propose to teach architecture to every school child as a language and a discipline. With this knowledge everyone can start articulating their architectural needs and will be able to participate in shaping our communities and our world.

How to Introduce Architectural Literacy to Students

Ancient Roman architect Vitruvius insisted that three fundamental principles are essential to architecture. His formula still holds true. A building must balance all three to be considered architecture. These three fundamental principles are as follows:

Function: This refers to how a building is used. Whether a building is used as a house, a classroom, or a museum, buildings must meet practical requirements for every use within its walls. A building without function may be beautiful, but it's sculpture, not architecture. This principle is easy to teach. Most people understand that a bedroom needs a window and a door for privacy, comfortable furnishings and good ceiling height. Christopher Alexander in his great book A Pattern Language demystifies basic design functions based on tried and true methods and historic precedence.

Structure: This refers to how a building stands up. Whether it consists of steel columns, wood studs, or brick walls, the framework must resist gravity and the loads placed upon it. But to be architecture, it must do more. It must create beauty from structural necessity; this is what differentiates architecture from engineering.

I teach structure to young children by using paper folding techniques and using wood and glue and they all are able to build well-designed structures that are ingenious and fun.

Beauty: This refers to the visual and sensory appeal of buildings. It is what Vitruvius called "delight." Architectural delight can be found in a neatly patterned brick wall, a vaulted stone ceiling, or a tiny window emitting a stream of sunlight. Beauty is the ultimate test of good architecture. Without beauty, a highly functional building is merely utilitarian without rising to the realm of architecture.

I compared this 2 buildings:

Cooper Union's Foundation Building is an Italianate brownstone building designed by architect Fred A. Petersen, It was the first structure in New York City to feature rolled-iron I-beams for structural support; Petersen patented a fire resistant hollow brick tile he used in the building's construction. The building was the first in the world to be built with an elevator shaft, because Cooper, in 1853, was confident an elevator would soon be invented. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.

the one below is the new school at Cooper Union. Alien and hard to read as a building.  I think many modern buildings fail the test of Function, Structure and Beauty!

^{I do like modern architecture when it is done right :}

I will use an example of two skyscrapers to explain good architecture. One is an image of a great skyscraper by Mies van der Rohe, a master German architect who pioneered modern glass buildings. The building is in NYC on Park Avenue surrounded by other skyscrapers in a city with many other tall buildings (context is very important in good design). The building sits on an open large flat plane with two reflecting pools. This allows the visitor to appreciate its scale and offers a crowded city nice usable open space.

Above Maine-Montparnasse Tower in Paris. There is is no adjective to describe it more than it is tall. It is out of scale with its surroundings, has no beginning or end. It does not make any aesthetic statements or connect to the local culture. As a matter of fact, after this monster building was constructed, the codes changed to ban such tall buildings in Paris.

Conclusions

The lack of architectural literacy is wreaking havoc across the world. There needs to be a universal training in the architectural basics of function, structure, and beauty. Without this understanding, we will continue to create social, environmental, and cultural problems. Visual literacy and architectural literacy have to go hand in hand. The average high school student in the US does not receive sufficient visual training, let alone architectural education.

In “The Dawn of the People: The Right to Literacy in Nicaragua” by Colin Lankshear the illiteracy that was plaguing the country was reduced from 53% to 12% over one year's time due to aggressive policies to reverse the level illiteracy. This makes me hopeful that with the right education and philosophical attitude we can develop strategies that could improve people's awareness of the architecture around them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/arts/design/05coop.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nesting_instinct

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25. United Nations.
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

http://backspace.com/notes/2003/11/its-the-architecture-stupid.php

“Getting Lost in Buildings: Architecture Can Bias Your Cognitive Map.” Laura Carlson. Nov 23,2010.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/getting-lost-in-buildings-architecture-can-bias-your-cognitive-map.html

Architecture: Form, Space, and Order. Francis D. K. Ching.
John Wiley & Sons. 2007.

Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt. Hassan Fathy.
University of Chicago Press. 2010.

Sticks and Stones: Study of American Architecture and Civilization. Lewis Mumford. Dover Publications. 1955.

“Architecture for the people by the people.” Alastair Parvin. 2013.
http://www.ted.com/talks/alastair_parvin_architecture_for_the_people_by_the_people?language=en

“How To Tell If A Building Is Well-Designed.” The Royal Institute of British Architects. http://www.architecture.com/Explore/Stories/Howtotellifabuildingiswell-designed.aspx