
The Mind of an Architect - anonu
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-mind-of-an-architect/
======
brudgers
The study touches on the central problem with the practice of architecture in
the US: pretending the central ethical issue of architecture is the integrity
of the architect's aesthetic vision [or less charitably, that architects tend
to believe their own bullshit]. Lundy's approach was correct and the
collaborative approach is what makes the Sarasota School the most important
architectural movement in American history.

Lundy is quite a contrast to Phillip Johnson. Like the other giants of the
Sarasota School, Twitchell and Rudolph, Lundy was a veteran [1]. Johnson was
an early fan of the Nazi's [2] -- something my mentor, the late David Crane
FAIA, never could forgive.

[1]: Lundy's wartime sketchbooks at the Library of Congress:
[https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=LOT%2014007&fi=number...](https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=LOT%2014007&fi=number&op=PHRASE&va=exact&co!=coll&sg=true&st=gallery)

[2]: A recent article: [http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/04/philip-
johnson-naz...](http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/04/philip-johnson-nazi-
architect-marc-wortman)

~~~
saeranv
I'm an architect, and personally I've yet too meet an architect who thinks
that way. The opposite is true, most architects think the clients and various
stakeholders are overly invested in aesthetic considerations and aren't
properly educated in other issues. There are significant bodies of
architectural theory dedicated to repudiating overly-aesthetic concerns.

I work as part of a research lab in a large architecture firm where we are
working on ways to communicate the importance of energy efficiency, housing
affordability, adequate daylighting, material health etc to the clients, and
deliver computational tools to architects, urban designers, interior designers
and urban planners so that they can being working with these issues. I have
never encountered a situation where someone has opposed or been reluctant to
engage these concerns.

~~~
brudgers
I am a licensed architect. My experience appears to be rather different.

~~~
dbshapco
If you have five architects in a room, you'll get six opposing opinions on
architecture.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
And unless one of them is _really_ famous, the final design will be made
exclusively of rectangles anyway.

------
carsongross
This article touches on something that has absolutely destroyed architecture
and art more generally: the cult of creativity and the new.

This is a very long story, but the short version is that genius is rare, and
tradition restrains the mediocre and outright bad, limiting the damage they do
and occasionally boosting them up near the genius level. Geniuses who can work
without the constraints of tradition, it turns out, can do their thing
regardless of the constraints put on them, so it all works out.

Now, this doesn't matter so much in the art world because there we can simply
ignore the non-geniuses.

Unfortunately, this is not the case with architecture.

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tacostakohashi
I'm working with an architect on a small renovation at the moment. So far, it
has been a fairly tedious and frustrating experience.

One of the main annoyances for me has been that, although the domain is
completely different, in many ways it's just like designing software in that
it can be very involved, with many interactions between small details that
quickly multiply.

However, as far as I can tell, while software has stolen some "architecture"
terminology, architecture has yet to learn some of the recent advances from
software, in terms of prototyping, minimal viable products, and avoiding
premature optimization.

~~~
adrianratnapala
All of the ideas you mention work for software because they rely on iterating
on a working version. This works because programs are documents. That means
you can iterate them like blueprints, but test them like a prototypes.

In architecture, and other fields, you can build your documents incrementally.
But it's expensive to actually build something. So it makes sense to
"prematurely" optimise the design.

~~~
tacostakohashi
Right - to be clear, I'm just suggesting applying software design principles
to architectural plans / blueprints, not to buildings.

As an example, coming up with a vague sketch, possibly even hand-drawn, or
with inaccurate measurements, to present to a client quickly, and get feedback
on, before progressing to a more details.

At least with the architects I've worked with, they have a tendency to present
plans A, B, and C, which are all _incredibly detailed_ , with exact
measurements 3-D renderings, etc, all beautiful to look at. However, it then
turns out that I, as a client, really don't like some fundamental things about
plan A and B, but can combine aspects of them, and that plan C involved some
materials that cost 10x the alternatives, or aren't permitted for use in the
building, and are basically a waste of time to discuss.

I'm just suggesting that it's good to get client feedback on things at an
earlier stage, before fleshing out the detail on things that turn out to have
fundamental problems.

~~~
brenschluss
Architect / software developer here.

MVPs/sketches/prototypes are valuable in software, in that they 'prove'
something, or set a general outline for how the program will grow.

In architecture, vague plans are unhelpful, even misleading. What if you
design, say, an indoor plan with inaccurate measurements and later find out
that the bed is not going to fit in the bedroom? All your work is for naught,
and your changes are going to affect everything else, as your bedroom
displaces the kitchen, the moved kitchen shifts the bathroom, etc. In some
ways, it's better to start with accurate plans and design while you're 'in
deep', than to get a general vague sense. DFS than BFS, to use an analogy.

Or to use another example -- it's very important in software to know what
platform your software will run on before you develop it. You wouldn't just
make a vague program _before_ knowing whether the software is a native iOS
app, a web app, a unix background process, a distributed database, etc, etc,
right?

Of course, there are sketchy versions that architects do all the time -
program sketches, massing diagrams, et cetera. But anything that isn't
completely abstract or pretty accurate will invariably be completely
misunderstood by the client.

I've even been burned on a web design project this way - I thought color-
coding the wireframes to indicate different functionality would be a helpful
idea. Never again - I had to explain over and over that, no, their website
would not be a sea of nested red, blue, and green lines.

------
AnkhMorporkian
I highly recommend this episode, if for no other reason than to hear a bunch
of architects in the mid 20th century bullshit about silly problems. It really
shows you how little people have really changed fundamentally in the past
century.

~~~
adamnemecek
It's probably not just in the last century though

~~~
pjmlp
Which is why I have so much fun reading several thousand year old manuscripts
that have survived to this day and see how in certain aspects, human society
has hardly changed.

------
abcanthur
If interested, here is another podcast featuring an interview with the author
of the book chronicling this historical episode.
[http://archinect.com/news/article/149954286/measured-
genius-...](http://archinect.com/news/article/149954286/measured-genius-one-
to-one-29-with-pierluigi-serraino-author-of-the-creative-architect)

