Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
- Bob Dylan
I start with these lyrics by Dylan not because of any meaning that they have, though like many of Dylan’s lyrics, they are timeless, but I start with them because of what I felt when I first heard a Dylan song. I first truly listened to a Dylan song when I was preparing to head out into the world after high school. When I heard the guitar and the harmonica, I was hooked, but it was the lyrics that drove me to think. They were simple words about simple people and places that were formed into dynamic poetry and stories. The simple lives of the people in the songs connected with my simple and humble upbringing, which can be assumed formed who I am today. As an aspiring architect, I look back to those simple times of my childhood and try to determine how my family lived without air conditioning or reliable running water, and how my family built their homes and barns and I realize that though we may have been uncomfortable, at times, we were happy and content. Now that I prepare to take another step forward into the future, I ask myself: Will I remember that simplicity when it comes to my future designs?
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. – William Morris
The statement above has been with me for the past six years, and to be honest I think it may have been part of me for much longer. Morris’ statement came at a time when the world was in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, when the machine was making lives easier. Products were being created and copied quicker for consumers to possess. Buildings were being built bigger and faster. The question that Morris brings forth in his statement is: Did we need those ‘things’ and those bigger buildings, or were we consuming them because they were there? Morris’ statement throws down the gauntlet and asks us to reexamine how we live and, in a way, how we design and build.
Today our world is in peril, and many believe, I being one of those, feel that our lifestyles are the reason. We live our lives following the mantra of more, bigger, faster, better, and cheaper. Our lifestyles continue to fail to provide what they promise and instead deliver only more unmet needs, grief and stress. I will be the first to acknowledge that I am guilty of this pattern. I drive a gas-guzzling vehicle that pollutes the air. I purchase the latest in technologies, hoping they will make my life easier. If it is hot, I will find an air-conditioned space for shelter, and I visit and admire pieces of architecture that are anything but simple. I am just as guilty as anyone else, but realizing this is the first battle. It is my goal to reexamine what I find important to my everyday life and to my design work. I cannot change those things that I possess now, but I can reconsider those things I feel I may need. In my design work I feel that it is important that I step back and refocus where I feel it should head.
I feel that my design work needs to find simplicity. I need to step away from the grand buildings that one sees in the architectural periodicals and monographs. Don’t get me wrong, the works of Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Coop Himmelblau, and countless others are beautiful in their own ways. They provide a look into the psyche of the designer and provide the world and many doe-eyed architecture students with much to look at and be amazed, but what are the periodicals saying? I can speculate and state that they consider these works to be great architecture, and I tend to agree, but did the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao need to be designed with the such flair and complexity? Could it have been just as successful as a simple white-box gallery? I do not know. I do know that it was expensive, just as many of Mr. Gehry’s buildings have been known to be. I cannot judge though, but look toward finding my own path and learn from what I see.
What I see is a need for the simplistic. I see a world that is suffering from countless struggles of ecological deterioration, poverty, disease, and war. I will not be naïve and feel that anything I do architecturally will change this, but I feel that it is my duty, as an architect, to take the skills that I have obtained and use them to improve that which has been entrusted to me and my profession. I accept the works of my contemporaries and I will continue to find them fascinating and beautiful, but I will also attempt to create buildings that are just as beautiful and dynamic through much simpler means.
These simpler means will entail creating spaces using the least amount of effort, materials, details, and connections. Some examples of work that is doing such would be that which Samual Mockbee began in rural Alabama. Mockbee made it his life’s work to teach students how to create dynamic and beautiful buildings for simple people. Using a limited pallet of materials and inventive details and connections, Mockbee’s Rural Studio created many inexpensive but dynamic structures. Mockbee found that the architecture no matter how simple the materials and modest the budget as long as attention was paid toward the crafting and making then a sense of dynamic could occur. The same can be said about many other contemporary architects that receive little attention. The work of Patkau Architects from Vancouver, British Columbia or Tom Kundig from Seattle, Washington are examples of this idea of craft being the driving force behind simple materials and dynamic buildings. I relate to these designers and builders much more than I do the Gehrys, Coop Himmelblaus, or Liebeskinds, just as I can relate to Lou Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright, and William Morris for what they spoke of and built long ago. I am not saying that Gehry does not consider craft and making in his designs and buildings, because he must, but it is the excessiveness that I fail to relate to. It is the essential pieces that create a dwelling that I must attempt and will find dynamics within.
Give me soil, wood, brick, and glass over steel, titanium and concrete. Give me the wind and the sun over the air conditioning and fluorescent lights. Simple materials and systems are more human and full of life than excessive and violent. I find more beauty and life in the humble Midwest farm barn than the Guggenheim of Bilbao. The Guggenheim may have more tricks and eye candy, but I have just one question, “Why?” Why when the world is struggling to stay afloat would we continue to build mile-high towers and overzealous museums? The answer I realize is because we can, but that to me is not the best answer. Like the Dylan lyrics above say “…the times they are a-changin’”, and I feel it is time to change to the simpler and away from the excessive.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. ~E.F. Schumacker
