ANOTHER ARCHITECT

Eduardo Cadaval

How to build the architecture we need?
Throughout history, trades and later professions have had to be transformed to adapt to the needs of their time. This is something that has happened over time and that will undoubtedly continue to happen, but it seems, judging by the dizzying speed with which contemporary society moves, that today we may be facing a turning point or at least a special moment where the changes occur with a much greater speed than we were used to. In recent times we have seen how some of the professions that have accompanied us throughout recent centuries have disappeared and how many new ones have emerged, some of them so recent that just 10 years ago we would not have imagined them. Social changes, enormous technological advances and the speed with which society assimilates them have transformed in the blink of an eye what was up to now everyday.

Faced with this scenario, it is pertinent to ask: What about Architecture? the way how it has evolved? How can we transform our profession to prevent it from becoming obsolete? It gives the impression that architecture as a discipline has remained somewhat immobile in the face of many of the recent changes, perhaps overwhelmed by circumstances and pretending that things can continue to be done as before, that nothing has changed; but all the signs seem to point exactly in the opposite direction. “Transform or die” seems to be the premise that weighs on our discipline. It may be thought that in reality we are not facing a critical situation, that architecture has existed and will continue to exist, it can even be argued that they are temporary stages or passing fads -one more, some will say-, but this will not solve a problem. that the evidence shows that it exists and that it would be worth tackling the base.

At the same time, it would be worth avoiding falling into the fatalistic position that assumes that architects are no longer good for anything; This attitude not only does not solve anything, but it also contains a great deal of pride and nostalgia for an imaginary past in which the architect was some character of superior morality capable of solving all social problems. Not only has this never been the case, but the work of many people shows that we have always been, and known to be, part of a more complex gear that in the vast majority of cases has always looked after the most genuine interests of society. . In any case, it is essential to assume that there are aspects of our profession completely out of date and that in many aspects we will either reinvent ourselves or we will eventually become irrelevant.

Without going to any of the extremes, architecture, unlike many other professions, seems to continue to be necessary and it is precisely for this reason that it is vitally important to make the disciplinary adjustments that allow it to continue serving a society from which it has been far away. The answers to the current situation do not seem to lie only in attending to the most recent technological advances but rather in understanding social, cultural and economic changes in order to close the gap with the pressing needs of today’s society. We architects complain about our isolation, but an exercise in self-criticism will allow us to see that to a large extent we have been the ones who have distanced ourselves from the important issues. By leaving these spaces, other professions that approach problems from other perspectives have occupied them, in part because architecture has been more obsessed with itself than with what it could do for the rest of society. Shortening these distances is not only essential, but it is surely the best way to update our work and to continue being useful.

Extend the limits of the profession.

What this text would really like to highlight is that given the current situation, architecture has the enormous opportunity to expand its range of influence, to recover lost spaces. Architects are most useful when we occupy a broader range of our professional spectrum. Being an architect “of those who make houses or buildings” is only one way of the many that exist. Society and architecture itself need other types of architects, they need more architects-urban planners, more architects-politicians, more architects-public servants, more architect-editors, curators, academics, critics, theorists, urban managers, etc., etc.

If we analyze the current state of the profession we can understand that society is demanding another type of architect. And if this is so, why haven’t the architecture schools been able to respond? Why haven’t they made their teaching system more flexible? Why continue to produce only one type of architect?

The current academic landscape is full of myopic curricula that privilege only one type of professional. Architecture schools – in many cases guided by a commercial strategy and business model – are increasingly obsessed with the figure of the architect designer. It is precisely in these schools where, from the first years of training, both teachers and students begin to coin the disastrous classification that this or that student can be “a good architect.” This classification, which later accompanies the profession in its development, only refers to those students who may have the possibility of being a good designer, a good designer, those who have only a compositional ability or create good buildings. The implications of this statement are more profound than apparent and reflect simplistic and dangerous career aspirations. Are we so little? How limited are our expectations about what we can do and contribute?

The fact that schools prioritize the training of only one type of architect, weighs down and marks the development of the profession; but this does not mean by any means that only this type of figure exists in the professional panorama. There are many architects who have taken other paths, who have explored other alternatives and who have generated great contributions and expanded our range of influence. These new paths and ways of doing architecture have proven so transcendent that it would be worth asking why not promote them from the first training cycles? In the vast majority of cases, those professionals who have found new routes have done so to a greater or lesser extent following vocational intuitions or in search of new job opportunities in difficult times.

This text does not pretend to underestimate all aspects of architecture teaching, this training is still capable of endowing the student and future architect with a very particular mental structure and set of knowledge that no other profession offers; This knowledge allows us to approach problems from a very particular perspective that in many situations is very useful. The architect is a type of guerrilla who with his weapons is capable of fighting in many battles in which he always contributes something that no one else can contribute. Therefore, perhaps what would be worth reflecting on is what would happen if a more open training was promoted from the first years in schools? How many new opportunities would it generate?

Architect-urban planners and Architect-politicians helped transform cities like Medellín, Bogotá or Barcelona; professionals who from the public service or through their work in private offices joined broader interdisciplinary teams to recover entire sectors of their city, to turn what was chaos into order, to recover public spaces and project new parks and community spaces. Working without protagonism within a larger gear in favor of the poorest, rescuing neighborhoods and generating plans that would allow the construction of new libraries, new civic centers and nurseries where the less privileged people are. Architects who dedicated many years of their professional lives so that their city had a bicycle lane, architects who came out of the corset of the profession and who broadened the spectrum of their influence improving the lives of millions of their fellow citizens and changing the dynamics and physiognomy of cities. that they inhabited.

Jaime Lerner, an architect by training, dedicated part of his life to politics until he became the mayor of Curitiba. There, as part of a strategy to avoid the complicated and expensive construction of subway lines, he invented the “Integrated Transport Network”. This system would eventually be implemented in other cities around the world. From the Transmilenio in Bogotá to the Metrobus in Mexico City, they are direct debtors of the strategy proposed by Lerner; a politician who thought as an architect created this novel system that has become one of the great alternatives for updating public transport in many metropolises.

In a completely different area Sigfried Giedion, Reyner Banham or more recently William Curtis, Kenneth Frampton and Ignasi Solà-Morales among others, have brought about great disciplinary changes through the study of history and theoretical research of architecture. “Mechanization takes over” or “Theory and Design In The First Machine Age” among other books and essays by these authors have been as influential as the most transcendent buildings in our recent history. Without his work we would not have been able to see and understand many of the things that now facilitate our work and by which we have been able to take it to new frontiers. Most of these authors have developed their research from the academic field, spreading their knowledge through this environment that has provided them with the necessary space to carry out their work and give resonance to their proposals.

Universities on the other hand have always been an integral part of the disciplinary field. There are many architects who combine their professional practice with teaching. This binomial has been a constant throughout history, from classical schools to the Bauhaus and current universities; the examples of Architects-Teachers follow one another. The teachings of Alejandro de la Sota at the Madrid School of Architecture, marked both Spanish architecture and its excellent buildings. Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were directors of the Bauhaus. Later Gropius and Jose Luís Sert were deans of Harvard University and Mies of IIT. At present, hundreds of young and consolidated professionals feed back their professional practice with their teaching work.

Many other architects have chosen to be full-time professors or researchers. This is another way of exercising architecture as valid as the others. Mark Wigley, current director of the Columbia University School of Architecture in New York, has never built a building and his influence and that of the school he directs is global and unquestionable. Also related to the teaching of architecture, it seems pertinent to mention that the precept that suggests that to be a good architecture teacher you have to have an active professional practice or be a good architect-designer, in reality it is not only false but also distorts the most intimate aspects of the architecture. academic training. From my experience as a student, I can see that several of my best teachers were full-time professors who dedicated themselves exclusively to research and teaching, and therefore did not have an active professional office. Their passion, their pedagogical experience and the methods they used were much more effective than those of several renowned architects who also taught me and in some cases barely had time to attend to their students. I do not mean to suggest that every architect with a successful professional practice is by definition a bad teacher; I only affirm that being a good designer does not automatically make someone a good pedagogue, and on the other hand, that someone who does not have an active professional practice can be an excellent teacher capable of influencing the professional development of thousands of students and therefore both also in the future architecture.

There are many other areas in which the profession has influence but in which it could also strengthen its presence. From the restoration and protection of heritage to anthropological and urban research. There are also diverse examples of architects involved in the publishing world, in curating or disseminating architectural culture. From Gio Ponti founder of the legendary Domus magazine, to newly graduated architects who have created some of the most influential and visited blogs on the web. We all know that knowledge is only such if it can be transmitted and therefore the work of many architects within the publishing world and of cultural diffusion is not only essential but should make us reflect on the fact that if we do not know how to explain our work to the rest of society, we should not be surprised that it does not understand us. Therefore, it seems essential not to underestimate the enormous impact of the work of editors, curators and critics to strengthen our craft. There are those who are architects by training and those who from other professions have provided invaluable help to strengthen architecture. His work is as indispensable as that of the best designer or builder. Let us remember that in the end, ideas are useless if they cannot be expressed.

If Architecture is the answer, what is the question?

Paraphrasing Jorge Wagensberg, it seems pertinent to ask again what is architecture used for today? and what do we call “architect” today? There are multiple ways of doing architecture, in the previous paragraphs only some examples were outlined but perhaps the most important thing is to understand that it is imperative to expand the range of influence of the profession, recover the spaces that we used to occupy and fill some new ones and invent others.

What would Medellín or Barcelona be without the group of citizens and professionals who turned into such great urban transformation efforts? What would the history and criticism of architecture be without figures like Reyner Banham or Sigfried Giedion? If these types of architects are so important to the discipline, why don’t we form more of these types of figures in our schools? Why should vocations be exceptions instead of continuous generations formed under greater flexibility? We should promote a system that allows generational renewal and turn specific efforts into a continuous and long-term strategy. Unless architecture schools want to continue training future unemployed, they will not only have to foresee these new formulas but also promote them. After all, the figure of the architect is attractive when it includes a wide range of his sphere of influence, either as a designer or as a politician, as an urban planner or landscape designer, critic or cultural manager. We are all equally essential and it is together that we give meaning to what we do.