Over the past year, many offices in the profession have seen their projects shrink. Institutions are moving away from the all-at-once construction of a single new building. They are instead asking architects for ideas about phased, long-term master-planning - with an emphasis on step-by-step reuse, renovation, and optimization of existing space, structures, and resources.
A lot of this is happening for budget reasons as available cash and credit dwindles, but it also reiterates, at a smaller scale and timeframe, the habit of postindustrial shrinking cities in general. As property becomes vacant and gaps get knocked out of the block's teeth, city planning and development agencies are stuck with outdated methods that only deal with the scale of the neighborhood and the street.
"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big."
-Daniel Burnham, 1880
"All of humanity now has the option to 'make it' successfully and sustainably, by virtue of our having minds, discovering principles and being able to employ these principles to do more with less."
-R. Buckminster Fuller, 1980
These two quotes foreground the dangers and opportunities inherent in shifting scale. Are big moves and big things the only way to stir the blood, money, and political will that drives development and tax base expansion? Is dealing with less a kind of settling - a resignation that we must tighten our belts and diminish our expectations? These manifestos appear to be in contradiction, but if they are read as describing, not large scale objects - but large scale systems and large scale time spans, they interlock and reinforce a worldview that privileges temporal relationships over static objects:
1. "Make no little plans ..." / "All of humanity ..."
Burnham's quote falls right at the end of the Post-Civil War Reconstruction, a period of change and industry. Bucky Fuller's quote is at the end of the 1970s, the last era of energy shortage and economic stagnation. If Burnham is calling for extended optimism, Bucky is playing the role of the anti-pessimist, and clearly for both architects, the stakes are high.
2. "... a noble, logical diagram ..." / "... discovering principles ..."
There is the shift away from the object, and towards the diagram or principle - that is the underlying yet present system that produces and sustains it.
3. "... long after we are gone ..." / "... successfully and sustainably ..."
Again there are the high stakes, but now with the reminder that a project, in Burnham's terms a plan, is not successful unless it persists and unfolds in time, that time is the arena in which the system manifests and grows.
4. "Let your watchword be order, and your beacon beauty." / "... employ these principles to do more with less."
And finally that the system, the 'noble, logical diagram' must have a certain kind of consistency in order to function, and that consistency is not the least important for its emotional impact: the recognition of beauty. The purpose of every project is twofold, first to do what it is intended to do - but second, and almost more importantly - to stir the blood: to generate interest and passion and capital, all the things it needs to come into being and survive in a world where attention and resources are scarce.
Everything has a form. Diagrams and principles and systems are inextricable from their formal structure - they are nothing if not clunky, self-similar, noble, logical, articulate, baroque, elegant or lean ... If aesthetics is the purposeful manipulation of form for emotional and cultural impact, then the design of systems becomes a new field in which the methods of architecture can be applied.
The current scarcities in credit, energy and imagination are, in another sense, opportunities to realign the priorities of the profession: away from object aesthetics and towards system aesthetics. Think Small: small scale objects, expanding incrementally and opportunistically over large scale timeframes. Generate beauty and surplus through adaptation, flexibility, elegance and economy of means.
(Developed from notes intended to be delivered at Design Conversation #2 at the Windup Space in Baltimore, MD. Thanks to Mark Cameron, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, Dan D'Oca, and Eric Leshinsky for background, context and other ideas related to this topic)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Unlicensed Architect, Amateur Urbanist, Uncredited Designer, Sometime Researcher and Writer
8 Comments
thanks, 765. I think the practice of architecture is definitely shifting like this.
thanks 765. that was a good read. i think western thinking often neglects the scales of time. it would be interesting to think about how architecture can be one step ahead of economic cycles rather than one step behind like in the housing bust.
Indeed, there are lots of reasons to get small.
Nice, hadn't seen that. Thanks for linking, Lloyd, that's a great roundup.
I just went looking for the original Steve Martin bit on youtube, but all I found was the transcript:
'And, you know, I'll be home, sitting with my friends, and, uh.. we'll be sitting around, and somebody will say, "Heeeyyy.. let's get small!" So, you know, we get small, and uh.. the only bad thing is if some tall people come over. You're walking around going, "Ah hahaha..!" Now, I know I shouldn't get small when I'm driving.. but I was driving around the other day, and I said, "What the heck?" You know? So I'm driving like.. [ extends arms high in the air like he's reaching up to a giant steering wheel ] And, uh.. a cop pulls me over. And he makes me get out, he looks at me and he says, "Heyyy.. are you small"? I said, "No-o-o! I'm not!" He said, "Well, I'm gonna have to measure you."'
765- if i'm understanding correctly, the idea here is to think small in scale but not necessarily in scope? meaning, a large, skeletal framework for extensive development could be thought out as a diagram that allows the right set of conditions for growth to occur independently afterwards? i like this idea of the diagram that allows for spontaneous independent growth. good read.
re Op-Ed sevensixfive
an interesting argument and one that resonates with the profound unease that many feel about the high value that has been placed on the 'unique' objects of contemporary architecture - buildings valued for their 'signature' of instantly recognizable individual authorship.
architecture is what we do with other people for other people - and if we cannot address the systemic changes that are induced by the interaction of climatic, ecological, economic and human systems that are loom in front of us, then others will - and whilst other people are getting on with designing the future, architecture will become a subdivision of Gucci.
System thinking probably begins with Holbach's 'Systeme de la Nature', published in France in 1770, posits Nature as following 'only necessary and immutable laws', an immense system in which "Man is the work of Nature: he exists in Nature:" Across the world there are young architects and engineers who are evolving a new architecture that is more closely and symbiotically related to the systems and processes of the natural world.
nice to hear Op-Ed sevensixfive speaking up.
@aml - yep, the idea is that a small physicality can be just the visible part of a larger, unseen diagram.
The case studies in Lloyd's article illustrate this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lloyd-alter/lets-get-small_b_126209.html
Small houses, usually prefabricated, take advantage of economies of scale that allow many to be built and transported at once.
Small vehicles become the obvious choice when the inefficiencies in larger system of energy distribution become apparent.
Similarly, less meat in the diet starts to look good when the real costs of livestock agriculture are known, not to mention long-term dietary concerns.
The LOIS system for local economies is a clearly designed and articulated set of decision making principles that engenders small-scale regional transactions.
And small cities tie a lot of this together.
@mikew - I've just read a little about Holbach and will absolutely have to check out his writing. Thanks again for pointing that out.
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