Billie Tsien, Tod Williams / On Slowness, Revisited

On Slow­ness, Revisited

Billie Tsien, Tod Williams

Tod’s desk, September 2019, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners
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Tod’s desk, September 2019, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners

Competition Sketch, Andlinger Center for Energy & the Environment, Princeton University, 2008, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners
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Competition Sketch, Andlinger Center for Energy & the Environment, Princeton University, 2008, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners

The work of our stu­dio has always been gen­er­at­ed through an ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion, reflect­ing on our col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences and lis­ten­ing to the many voic­es of peo­ple we meet through­out work and life. At peaks and val­leys of this con­ver­sa­tion, we have tried to for­mal­ize our thoughts, evi­dent in the essays that fol­low. Over time, these texts become voic­es from the past with whom we can re-engage. We can see how we’ve evolved, what we’ve learned, and what remains true. Twen­ty years ago we wrote one such essay that began as lamen­ta­tion for the loss of the draw­ing tools of archi­tec­ture but was real­ly a call for slow­ness”.

It was meant as a qui­et and per­son­al obser­va­tion in the Span­ish jour­nal 2G. What has sur­prised us is that teach­ers still assign this essay and stu­dents respond to it per­haps now more than when it came out.

For an archi­tec­ture stu­dent today, read­ing over the descrip­tion of lost and dis­ap­pear­ing tools must feel as if they were hear­ing sto­ries of quill pens and vel­lum. But cer­tain­ly the idea of slow­ness” is ever more frag­ile and ever­more pre­cious. Its pur­suit is either a way to save our­selves or a path to obso­les­cence. But we are opti­mists and we believe it is the only way in which one makes things that last. Unlike the speed and ubiq­ui­ty of social media though, archi­tec­ture still remains essen­tial­ly slow and is based in one place. It is a dis­ci­pline of phys­i­cal­i­ty, of real­ness, and mate­ri­al­i­ty. There is and nev­er can be a dig­i­tal equivalent.

So what has changed in the way that we work in the stu­dio? We now use the tools that are the uni­ver­sal tools of archi­tec­ture- the com­put­er and the evolv­ing pro­grams that are its lan­guage. We use Revit and Rhi­no and Sketch-Up but for us these are a lan­guage for trans­mit­ting infor­ma­tion but not for devel­op­ing ideas. Ideas still begin and are devel­oped with the hand. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]

Sunken Garden, Andlinger Center for Energy & the Environment, Princeton University, 2015, ©Michael Moran
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Sunken Garden, Andlinger Center for Energy & the Environment, Princeton University, 2015, ©Michael Moran

A sketch becomes a dig­i­tal draw­ing. The draw­ings are a com­pi­la­tion of the basic knowns — bleached and bare. The nuance, the shades and shad­ows, the idio­syn­crasies are devel­oped slow­ly in the lay­ers of draw­ings that are drawn over the prints. So those tools of direct trans­la­tion- the pen­cil, the pen are replaced by tools of edit­ing and shap­ing — col­ored mark­ers, thick sharpies and box­es and box­es of white­out. In fact white­out is the pow­er tool of choice because it is about bring­ing back uncer­tain­ty to what appear to be the facts. And we con­tin­ue to make real phys­i­cal mod­els often using unfold­ed rhi­no mod­els as a quick base. [ 3 ]

Rendering, U.S. Embassy Mexico City, Rendering by MARCH
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Rendering, U.S. Embassy Mexico City, Rendering by MARCH

Mock-up sunscreen section during design phase, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners
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Mock-up sunscreen section during design phase, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners

Sunscreen sketch, U.S. Embassy, Mexico City, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners
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Sunscreen sketch, U.S. Embassy, Mexico City, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners

Indeed as the world has become more dig­i­tal­ly based we rely more and more on the phys­i­cal. We now will not build a project unless we are able to have sev­er­al mock ups made. It is part of our con­tract. We vis­it all the quar­ries that are being con­sid­ered. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ]

Stone quarry, Madurai, India, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners
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Stone quarry, Madurai, India, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners

Mock-up, TATA Consultancy Services, Banyan Park, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners
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Mock-up, TATA Consultancy Services, Banyan Park, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners

We go to the stone fin­ish­ing yards to under­stand not only the tech­niques we know but some­times to dis­cov­er new ones. We go to the fac­to­ries where fur­ni­ture is made, where the rugs are woven, to the yards where the bricks are pro­duced, to the shops where the met­al­work and the win­dows are fab­ri­cat­ed. [ 7 ] [ 8 ]

Stone panels cut with CNC machines and finished with hand carving for Jali screens, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners
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Stone panels cut with CNC machines and finished with hand carving for Jali screens, Courtesy of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners

Completed Jali Screen, TATA Consultancy Services, Banyan Park, Mumbai, 2014, ©Michael Moran
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Completed Jali Screen, TATA Consultancy Services, Banyan Park, Mumbai, 2014, ©Michael Moran

Sketch, Hands, Tod Williams & Billie Tsien. “Our work is not just made from our hands as designers, but the many hands that bring a project to life.”
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Sketch, Hands, Tod Williams & Billie Tsien. “Our work is not just made from our hands as designers, but the many hands that bring a project to life.”

Each time we learn so much and as impor­tant­ly we make a per­son­al con­nec­tion with the peo­ple who are sup­ply­ing and mak­ing our work. We see and we get to know each oth­er. There is a greater sense of trust and also a sense of shared mis­sion. The phys­i­cal con­nec­tions apply not only to the mate­r­i­al but to the rela­tion­ship. [ 9 ] [ 10 ]

With time and per­haps with greater matu­ri­ty as well we have become more and more clear that we are here to be of ser­vice. That relieves us from the bur­den” of try­ing to be cre­ative.”

We do not have to gen­er­ate an imag­i­nary prob­lem. One of the great­est aspects of an archi­tec­tur­al prac­tice is that we are asked to solve someone’s prob­lem with­in the con­straints of a site, time and bud­get. We have para­me­ters, and with­in those para­me­ters we can go very very deep.

So to be of ser­vice is very dif­fer­ent than being servile. To be servile is pay­ing lip ser­vice to the prob­lem and con­straints. It is to stay shal­low. To be of ser­vice is to so deeply com­mit to the prob­lem that you dis­cov­er answers that nei­ther the client nor you would have ever imagined.

For us and our stu­dio that is where the present and the future lays. [ 11 ]

On Slowness, Tod Williams & Billie Tsien, 2G, 1999

In an ear­li­er edi­tion of 2G devot­ed to Arne Jacob­sen, Knud Aer­bo, one of his for­mer asso­ciates, spoke of Jacobsen’s office:

“What we had when we worked with Arne Jacobsen: A drawing table—a 90 x 160 cm uneven table top—a side chair with a straw bottom. Our own T-square and a pencil which had to be sharpened with a knife… Drawing pins to hold the paper; tape was not invented yet... If you look at it today, you will have to say: it could not be done. But luckily we did not know then.”

Photo by Peter Arnold, 1998
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Photo by Peter Arnold, 1998

Recent­ly, one of the archi­tects in our stu­dio put down the tele­phone and said incred­u­lous­ly, No more leads!” Call­ing to place an order for new F” leads, he was told that Faber-Castell was no longer mak­ing them. Peo­ple appar­ent­ly do not draw enough any­more to make it worth their while. This is just the lat­est dis­ap­pear­ance. And it seems to be hap­pen­ing more and more often to more and more tools that we use. Let­ter­ing and shape tem­plates are dis­ap­pear­ing. In 1993 we were told that there were only 144 more Diet­z­gen let­ter­ing tem­plates in all the ware­hous­es in the Unit­ed States. So, we bought twen­ty. The S”s and 4”s on these tem­plates are wear­ing out, break­ing, and there are no more tem­plates to be had. Because we hear that they too are being phased out, we are hoard­ing ink pens. It is iso­lat­ing and dis­ori­ent­ing; a very strange feel­ing, rather like wak­ing up to find that that the tide has come in, and famil­iar land­marks are sub­merged. Slow­ly, the tools of the hand disappear.

In the Unit­ed States, the prac­tice of archi­tec­ture has come to rely on the com­put­er. In offices the word effi­cien­cy” is always men­tioned, and in design schools the capa­bil­i­ty to cre­ate and rotate com­plex forms in space is laud­ed. So, with sur­pris­ing speed, the tools of the hand are becom­ing extinct.1

This is a lamen­ta­tion for lost tools and a qui­et man­i­festo describ­ing our desire for slow­ness. We write not in oppo­si­tion to computers—in fact we are in the midst of bring­ing them into our studio—but rather it is a dis­cus­sion about the impor­tance of slow­ness. We write in sup­port of slow­ness. [ 12 ]

“There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: A man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.

In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”

Milan Kundera, Slowness

Slowness of Method

Our desire to con­tin­ue to use the tools of the hand, even as we may begin to use the com­put­er, has to do with their con­nec­tion to our bod­ies. Build­ings are still con­struct­ed with hands, and it seems that the hand still knows best what the hand is capa­ble of doing. As our hands move, we have the time to think and to observe our actions. We draw using pen­cil and ink, on mylar and on vel­lum. When we make changes, they occur with effort and a fair amount of tedious scrub­bing with erasers, eras­ing shields, and spit. We have to sift back through pre­vi­ous draw­ings and bring them to agree­ment. So, deci­sions are made slow­ly, after thought­ful inves­ti­ga­tion, because they are a com­mit­ment that has con­se­quence. It is bet­ter to be slow.

We like to keep the stack of fin­ished and unfin­ished draw­ings near­by so that the whole project can be reviewed eas­i­ly. Their phys­i­cal pres­ence is evi­dence of work done, and a reminder of what there is to do. The grime that builds up from being worked over is poignant and sat­is­fy­ing. We see the his­to­ry of the pres­ence of our hand. To have the actu­al draw­ings in reach allows us to under­stand the project in a more com­plete and com­pre­hen­sive way. In the build­ings we design, we strug­gle to achieve a uni­ty and sense of whole­ness that can come from a bal­ance of indi­vid­ual ges­tures with­in a larg­er and more sin­gu­lar con­tain­er. The focus of a com­put­er screen feels too com­part­men­tal­ized and tight to see and under­stand the whole. And if every time a change is made, a new print­out is made, there is the prob­lem that the print­outs are too clean. They don’t show the scrubbed and messy sec­tions of era­sure, so there is no evi­dence to indi­cate the his­to­ry of the devel­op­ment of an idea. Cru­cial to cre­at­ing whole­ness is the under­stand­ing of the devel­op­ment of the idea.

We work togeth­er, twelve peo­ple in one room with­out divi­sions. Much like a fam­i­ly, we expect that oth­ers will help when­ev­er we need them, and how­ev­er we need them. So there is no divi­sion of labor into design, pro­duc­tion, mod­el-mak­ing, or inte­ri­ors. Each archi­tect is involved in the mak­ing of con­tracts, billing, and writ­ing of let­ters. Since we have no sec­re­tary, the phone is answered by whomev­er has the least patience with the ring­ing. Because each per­son must be a gen­er­al­ist, a cer­tain amount of effi­cien­cy is lost, as each per­son must learn all the tasks of the office. We ask that peo­ple con­stant­ly shift their atten­tion between their par­tic­u­lar task and one which helps the office as a whole. What this rather casu­al approach to office man­age­ment accom­plish­es is that every­one knows what is going on around them. If there is a prob­lem, it is shared, and of course we try to share the joys as well. The sense of well-being in the stu­dio must be sup­port­ed and nur­tured by each member.

So our way of work­ing allows us to have the expe­ri­ence of slow­ness. Tools are con­nect­ed to the slow­er capac­i­ty of the hand; the pres­ence of hand-drawn pages doc­u­ments both the path of thought and the des­ti­na­tion. The gen­er­al­iza­tion of tasks means our office works not as an effi­cient machine, but as a loose and inde­pen­dent and some­what inef­fi­cient fam­i­ly. The slow­ness of method allows us breath and breadth.

We have writ­ten a Mis­sion State­ment for the office: What­ev­er we design must be of use, but at the same time tran­scend its use. It must be root­ed in time and site and client needs, but it must tran­scend time and site and client needs. We do not want to devel­op a style or spe­cial­ize in any project type. It is our hope to con­tin­ue to work on only a few projects at a time, with intense per­son­al involve­ment in all parts of its design and con­struc­tion. We want the stu­dio to be a good place to work, learn, and grow, both for the peo­ple who work in the office and for our­selves. The metaphor for the office is a fam­i­ly. Each per­son must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their own work, but as well must be respon­si­ble for the good of the whole. We do not believe in the sep­a­ra­tion or spe­cial­iza­tion of skills. Each archi­tect in the office will work through all aspects of a project. We would like to be finan­cial­ly sta­ble, but this will not out­weigh artis­tic or eth­i­cal beliefs, which will always come first. The work should reflect opti­mism and love. The spir­i­tu­al aspect of the work will emerge if the work is done well.

Scan of excerpt from 2G
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Scan of excerpt from 2G

Slowness of Design

In a pub­lic forum we were asked, What is your design strat­e­gy?” We were at a loss for words. There is no strat­e­gy for either an ascen­dant career, or more impor­tant­ly, the way that we design. It is so easy to use the cush­ion of past thoughts to soft­en the ter­ri­fy­ing free fall of start­ing a new project. It is inevitable that, as we accu­mu­late a longer design his­to­ry, we repeat things uncon­scious­ly. Still, per­haps naive­ly, but in earnest, we try to start each project with a blank slate. The design is incremental—small steps that are made in response to the site, the client, the builder, and our own intu­ition. We try to fight through what we have learned, toward the free­dom found in inno­cence. The design is a slow and often uneven accu­mu­la­tion of stitch­es, that are often ripped out part way through while we strug­gle to make clear, or to under­stand, what the pat­tern and orga­ni­za­tion might be, even as we avoid as much as pos­si­ble know­ing what the final image might be.

So, the first intu­itive draw­ings are usu­al­ly very rough plan forms which might demon­strate the ges­ture of the body’s move­ment and how that is expressed by a mass in rela­tion­ship to the land. We always show these draw­ings to the client because we want them to under­stand the intu­ition or ges­ture that is the gen­e­sis of the design. It is also a way of say­ing, I don’t know what I am doing yet, but I do have a feel­ing about it.”

Often, as the plans are worked through, an idea about a sec­tion or a detail or a piece of cab­i­net work will come to mind. And for a while the plans are put aside and the stray thought is pur­sued. Progress is a stut­ter step, not a for­ward march: three steps for­ward, two to the side, and one step back. It is a chore­og­ra­phy that some­how pulls itself togeth­er. With each project, it feels as though we are infants learn­ing how to walk. We pull our­selves up, wob­ble, take a few steps, and fall down.

This way of devel­op­ing the design mir­rors the work­ing method of the office: mov­ing back and forth between advanc­ing the par­tic­u­lar task and attend­ing to the myr­i­ad details that are the side­track. One gen­er­al­ly thinks that to be side­tracked” is a bad con­di­tion, but we think that it is enrich­ing. The side­track is sim­ply a par­al­lel route. It has been said that archi­tec­ture is the moth­er of all the arts; mean­ing, one sup­pos­es, that it is the gen­er­a­tive root. We pre­fer to think that archi­tec­ture is like a moth­er car­ing for a tod­dler: she must keep hold of the larg­er vision of the adult whom the child will become, while stop­ping to clean up fin­ger­prints and wipe noses.

For us, ele­va­tions are always the last part of a build­ing to be devel­oped. Often we are at the end of design devel­op­ment before we even begin to rough out the ele­va­tions. This is because ele­va­tion draw­ings close down the process of ques­tion­ing by mak­ing the image of the build­ing too clear, too gras­pable,” and there­fore too final. Clients, magazines—in fact, we as archi­tects and human beings—all want an easy and clear answer. But it is bet­ter not to pro­vide one before the inte­ri­or habi­ta­tion and the struc­ture of the build­ing has been giv­en enough time to devel­op as the log­ic for the facade.

In our cur­rent prac­tice, the con­struc­tion draw­ings are pro­duced on 30” x 42” mylar sheets using pen­cil and ink. Notes are typed up on the com­put­er and Xerox­ed onto what we call stick­y­back,” which is an acetate with an adhe­sive sur­face. This is glued to each page. The work­ing draw­ings con­sist of the typ­i­cal site plan, plans, reflect­ed ceil­ing plans, wall sec­tions, and gen­er­al details. At the same time, and con­tin­u­ing through almost the entire con­struc­tion process, is a sketch­book. The page size is 11”x17,” which is the largest sheet size that our Xerox machine can dupli­cate. Divid­ed into sec­tions of cab­i­net­work, mis­cel­la­neous met­als, win­dow details, roof­ing details, and mis­cel­la­neous build­ing details, the sketch­book can often run up to two hun­dred pages. Based on pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence we try to have the con­trac­tor set an allowance for cer­tain trades like cab­i­net­work or met­al fab­ri­ca­tion. There are sev­er­al rea­sons why the sketch­book is use­ful. It allows sev­er­al peo­ple to work on parts of a spe­cif­ic sec­tion at the same time. It means that ques­tions can be answered quick­ly by issu­ing a sketch sheet rather than by going back to the large draw­ing set. Most impor­tant­ly though, it means that we don’t have to stop design­ing at the issuance of con­struc­tion doc­u­ments. It allows us to con­tin­ue to devel­op draw­ings and details even as the project is being built and constructed.

Final­ly, dur­ing the con­struc­tion peri­od, the project architect—who has been involved since the begin­ning intu­itive drawings—supervises the con­struc­tion. Often on larg­er projects, the project archi­tect has moved to the site for as long as a year and half. In this way as ques­tions come up dur­ing the course of the project, the choic­es that are made are made with a sense of the his­to­ry of the idea and they are true design deci­sions that accrue to whole­ness. They are not sim­ply the result of expe­di­en­cy in the field. This posi­tion of not know­ing a pri­ori” is anti­thet­i­cal to the gen­er­al mod­el of the archi­tect as hero. This is a dam­ag­ing mod­el because it dis­cour­ages the slow­ness of process that comes from the patient search. Cer­tain­ty is a prison. [ 13 ]

Slowness of Perception

As our work matures, the per­cep­tion of it is less and less under­stand­able through pho­tographs. One can only under­stand it by being there and mov­ing and stay­ing still. One rea­son is that we have been try­ing to inte­grate our build­ings into the land­scape. Thus, often the most impor­tant space is the emp­ty space that is con­tained by the built forms. This emp­ty space is the heart of the project at the Neu­ro­sciences Insti­tute in La Jol­la. It is the invis­i­ble mag­net that holds togeth­er the sep­a­rate build­ings, and pro­vides the coher­ence that makes the project feel whole. So what is not there is equal­ly impor­tant, per­haps more impor­tant, than what is there. How does one pho­to­graph noth­ing? One expe­ri­ences it.

And because we devel­op our facades as late as we can, we are not rely­ing on a flat plane to car­ry the strength of the build­ing or to trans­mit a sense of the place. So it is dif­fi­cult to shoot the facade of a build­ing because it is only seen by itself, and not, as your eyes see it, in rela­tion to the build­ings next to it, in rela­tion to the emp­ty space next to it.

So there is no quick take on our work; no sin­gu­lar pow­er­ful image that is able to sum it all up. We are not sure how to present our work. We know that the answer is not a com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed fly-through,” or even a video of the real thing. The pac­ing and the view­point of these meth­ods are still too con­sis­tent. They are cold, machine-like lens­es that fol­low a too-log­i­cal sequence of move­ment. A human eye scans panoram­i­cal­ly, and then sud­den­ly focus­es down on a tiny point. You see the ocean, and then you see a grain of odd­ly col­ored sand. The bound­aries of what one choos­es to per­ceive are con­stant­ly expand­ing and contracting. 

And of course there are the myr­i­ad of stray thoughts, mem­o­ries, and images that are called up by what you see in the col­or and shade of an actu­al space. There are the dis­trac­tions (and per­haps one can also see them as pos­i­tive addi­tions) of sound, smell, shift­ing light, and the con­ver­sa­tions of passers-by. This can only hap­pen when you are there. So, we sup­pose we can only offer this mono­graph of our work as a sug­ges­tion of what we do, or per­haps even as a pack of lies, which must be proven or dis­proven by your own feet and eyes.

“Carceri”, 1761, Giovanni Battista Piranesi
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“Carceri”, 1761, Giovanni Battista Piranesi

“Carceri”, 1761, Giovanni Battista Piranesi
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“Carceri”, 1761, Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Slowly (improving) Vision, Tod Williams & Billie Tsien, 2G, 1999

We wrote this essay as a con­tin­u­a­tion to Slow­ness in 1999 for the pub­li­ca­tion 2G.

Dur­ing a recent tele­phone inter­view, a stu­dent asked me to describe our archi­tec­tur­al vision.” The ques­tion, asked by a per­son still in high school was so naïve as to be eas­i­ly dis­missed, yet so pro­found that I real­ized it was deserved a thought­ful and con­sid­ered response.

As archi­tects com­mit­ted to resolv­ing prob­lems of human habi­ta­tion through built form, most of our thoughts of peer­ing into the future are restrict­ed to such ques­tions as, How will poten­tial users need their space to func­tion when they move in, or, sev­er­al years hence, what issues of growth and change might there be? What kind of expan­sion and use might be expect­ed? Will there be more chil­dren? Guests? How much stor­age in the future? What kind of main­te­nance will be required? How long will the roof last?”

These con­cerns for a project’s future are sim­i­lar for prac­tic­ing col­leagues all over the world. They are issues that car­ry such impor­tant impli­ca­tions that they occu­py much of our cre­ative thought. We believe that cre­ative res­o­lu­tions to such ques­tions are often pre­cise­ly the ingre­di­ents of our cre­ative search. The spo­radic moments when the answers man­age to tran­scend the ques­tions are the foun­da­tion of what we imag­ine to be our vision. The con­struct­ed result of answer­ing these ques­tions is Archi­tec­ture. [ 14 ] [ 15 ]

But this answer, as under­stand­able as it might be for most prac­tic­ing pro­fes­sion­als, pro­vides lit­tle inspi­ra­tion for a thought­ful and con­cerned high school student.

So I thought about the work of the vision­ary architects—Boullée, Ledoux, Sant’Elia—and came across Twelve Lines, a poem by Louis Kahn:

Spirit in will to express
can make the great sun seem small.
The sun is
Thus the Universe.
Did we need Bach
Bach is
Thus Music is.
Did we need Boullée
Did we need Ledoux
Boullée is
Ledoux is
Thus Architecture is.

“Cenotaph de Newton”, 1784, Étienne-Louis Boullée,
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“Cenotaph de Newton”, 1784, Étienne-Louis Boullée,

The pow­er of the drawn idea can be almost as irre­sistible as the sun, and as Bach. Piranesi’s dark, lay­ered, mys­te­ri­ous draw­ings, Sant’Elia’s bold stud­ies for the Cit­ta Nuo­va, the Mile-High tow­er of Frank Lloyd Wright, have all rever­ber­at­ed in our col­lec­tive archi­tec­tur­al imag­i­na­tions. Today, cyber-archi­tec­ture occu­pies many stu­dents’ imag­i­na­tions. [ 16 ]

Vision­ary archi­tec­ture achieves its great­est pow­er as unbuilt work.
What is lost in the actu­al real­iza­tion of the work? Is the thought more pow­er­ful when it is expressed with­out dilu­tion than the ambi­gu­i­ty that results from respond­ing to a com­plex series of fac­tors so com­mon and nec­es­sary as client, cost, code, and use?

Antoni Gaudí is one archi­tect whose work has retained its vision in built form. He is one of the most extra­or­di­nary, elu­sive, and intrigu­ing of the vision­ary archi­tects. Yet upon exam­in­ing the Colò­nia Güell mod­els, one is struck by the absolute log­ic that informed the fan­tas­tic. A series of strings with small, weight­ed sand­bags were used to deter­mine the curves cre­at­ed by grav­i­ty. Gaudí’s work is so based on the phys­i­cal obser­va­tion that it seems very much in the spir­it of obser­va­tions made cen­turies ear­li­er by Leonar­do da Vin­ci. Da Vin­ci is a prime exam­ple of an artist, an archi­tect, an inven­tor, whose vision­ary ideas may be best appre­ci­at­ed in hind­sight. As much as he was appre­ci­at­ed dur­ing his life­time, he was also very much crit­i­cized. Today, how­ev­er, vir­tu­al­ly all of his work is regard­ed as vision­ary,’ even though it was orig­i­nal­ly gen­er­at­ed by very prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions, and was part of a larg­er soci­ety. It is the prod­uct of prac­ti­cal­i­ty and devo­tion to prob­lem-solv­ing. The tech­niques he and Gaudí used were very much a prod­uct of their time and place. Gaudí’s work, prin­ci­pal­ly exe­cut­ed in the 20s, when most of the great archi­tec­tur­al minds were look­ing to the machine for inspi­ra­tion, hard­ly fore­shad­owed the future. Rather, it was an obser­va­tion and rumi­na­tion on the present. He, as Leonar­do, was try­ing to solve a prob­lem set before him at that moment.

Citta Nuova, 1914, Antonio Sant’Elia
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Citta Nuova, 1914, Antonio Sant’Elia

So how does one address the ques­tion of vision’ in built work?

Per­haps we are look­ing for a clear vision rather than look­ing to be visionary.

Vision can be attained after a long peri­od of build­ing. To be vision­ary is exclu­sive of building.

We believe clear vision is slow in evolv­ing, as is good work.’

We are not vision­ary archi­tects, but we are begin­ning to see more clearly.

We have cho­sen to work in a par­tic­u­lar way; it is a way at once ordi­nary and con­nect­ed to the world around us. But it is pre­cise­ly in the ways it is ordi­nary and con­nec­tive that it pro­duces extra­or­di­nary results. In this way, it may (even­tu­al­ly) be con­sid­ered to have vision. [ 17 ]

Maqueta de la Cripta Guell, 1898-1915, Antoni Gaudí
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Maqueta de la Cripta Guell, 1898-1915, Antoni Gaudí

Relationship to the Earth

Archi­tec­ture is con­nect­ed to the Earth. Too many build­ings have an ambigu­ous rela­tion­ship to the land. As long as we live on Earth, we will be deal­ing with prin­ci­ples of grav­i­ty, atmos­phere, and the very rich­ness of Earth’s surface. 

Vir­tu­al­ly all adults, stand­ing, are con­nect­ed to the ground with their feet, their line of vision a mere four to six feet above it. This is the point of ori­gin of our wak­ing per­cep­tion. Archi­tec­ture must first be con­cerns with this zone: our feet in con­tact with the ground. The sur­face of the Earth is the can­vas of the archi­tect. The pre­cise detail of this zone is ours to affect. If we give away respon­si­bil­i­ty for these cru­cial areas of con­cern (to the land­scape archi­tect, to the inte­ri­or design­er), we then reduce and weak­en our abil­i­ty to be effec­tive with­in our most inti­mate envi­ron­ment. [ 18 ]

“Le notti di Cabiria”, 1957, Federico Fellini
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“Le notti di Cabiria”, 1957, Federico Fellini

Location on the Earth

We need shel­ter from the bril­liant sun in a desert site in Phoenix, but with­in an infill house con­di­tion in New York, we need as much light as pos­si­ble. The con­struc­tion method­ol­o­gy in Phoenix will nec­es­sar­i­ly be dif­fer­ent from that of New York, because of codes, labor, mate­r­i­al avail­abil­i­ty, site acces­si­bil­i­ty, and a host of oth­er rea­sons, all of which could be con­quered, if one wished. And peo­ple do wish! Whether by pur­chas­ing a Big Mac or hir­ing an impor­tant sig­na­ture’ archi­tect or artist, there are peo­ple who choose to ignore or erase the dif­fer­ences of locale. The explo­ration of ideas (which are uni­ver­sal) and loca­tions (which are sin­gu­lar) should give rise to an unlim­it­ed series of con­nec­tive respons­es. It is easy to step up and order the known; more dif­fi­cult, risky and slow­er to search for the orig­i­nal. [ 19 ]

Care for Our Vision

As we become old­er, it is a lit­tle dis­cour­ag­ing to dis­cov­er our eye­sight is less clear, par­tic­u­lar­ly when near- and far-sight­ed­ness occur at the same time. For­tu­nate­ly, this is a prob­lem which is eas­i­ly solved. A more dif­fi­cult one is real­iz­ing that in this sec­tion of our lives we have more demands than ever, and with so much on our minds we find our­selves walk­ing with­out see­ing. But ear­ly this sum­mer we attend­ed a screen­ing of Fed­eri­co Fellini’s film, The Nights of Cabiria.” Twen­ty-five years had passed since we had seen it first, and here we were aston­ished. A sto­ry was revealed to us in ways we nev­er could have appre­ci­at­ed when we were young. Was it that the film’s vin­tage had come into its own, or had our abil­i­ty to see the work improved over the years? Our under­stand­ing and com­pas­sion for the human con­di­tion does improve with time. We have more to bring to our work as we grow old­er. Even as we may lose our abil­i­ty to see dis­tance, the accu­mu­la­tion of life as expe­ri­ence enables us to see depth. Over time our vision is (slow­ly) improving.

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    clutch pen­cil, lead, and lead pointer*
    bun­ny bag*
    pounce*
    eras­ing shield*
    let­ter­ing template*
    (*soon to disappear)